http://www.catholic.org/international/i ... p?id=20685

Central American church leaders want humane immigration policies

By Jill Replogle
7/27/2006
Catholic News Service


TECUN UMAN, Guatemala - While the U.S. Congress holds hearings on immigration reform, Central American church leaders are calling for "more reasonable, more humane policies" than the versions being considered.

Scalabrinian Father Ademar Barilli, director of Casa del Migrante or the House of the Migrant in Tecun Uman, was among church leaders criticizing the hard-line attempts to stop illegal immigration -- both on the U.S.-Mexican border and the Guatemalan-Mexican border. Critics also said constructing more miles of fence along the U.S. border will not stop poor immigrants from crossing illegally.

A real immigration reform, said Father Barilli, would attack the causes of migration.

"We can't change the migratory flow by combating the consequences," he said. "We can only change migration if we attack the causes that generate the exodus of so many people."

He said money invested in building fences and increasing border controls would be better spent on development projects in Central America.

Scalabrinian Father Mauro Verzeletti, head of the Guatemalan bishops' migration pastoral program, said Central American governments have done little to prevent emigration or to stick up for the rights of Central American immigrants working in the U.S.

"Migrants are seen as dollar signs, not as human beings," said Father Verzeletti, referring to the billions of remittances that bolster the economies of many Central American countries.

Last year, Latin American and Caribbean nations received $54 billion in remittances from workers abroad, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which said that was more than all foreign direct investment and aid to the region during the same time period.

Church leaders said U.S. and Mexican immigration control measures are alternately tight or porous, depending on the interests of these two countries.

"It's a wall that opens and closes when it's convenient," said Scalabrinian Sister Ligia Ruiz, head of the Honduran bishops' migration pastoral program. "There's a lot of corruption in all this, and the ones who lose are Honduran families."

Undocumented migrants from Central America often complain of getting robbed or extorted in Mexico or along the Mexican-Guatemalan border mostly by gangs or authorities.

Sandra Garcia, a 30-year old Honduran woman with three children, said she was robbed by immigration authorities in Tecun Uman, on Guatemala's northwestern border with Mexico.

"They told me they'd take me to jail if I didn't pay," she said.

Garcia was waiting at Casa del Migrante for family members to send her money to embark on her third attempt to get into the United States.

"I'll keep trying," she said.

In the last four years, detentions of illegal immigrants in Mexico have grown nearly 75 percent, according to the Mexican National Immigration Institute. Mexico has tightened controls along its border with Guatemala under pressure from the U.S., said Father Barilli. Plus, stopping the flow of Central American immigrants gives Mexicans a better chance of getting jobs in the U.S., he said.

Building walls and tightening controls against illegal immigration has not proved successful in the past, said church leaders.

"Migrants would make wings if they had to," said Father Barilli.

The shelter run by Father Barilli last year received nearly 16,000 migrants, mostly Central Americans on their way to or from the U.S. or Mexico. He said policies to detain migrants by force only increase travel costs, pushing them into greater poverty and debt.

"The first three years, the migrant works to pay off debt, not to improve conditions for the family," said Father Barilli.

The price of hiring a smuggler, or coyote, to take immigrants across the border has increased, while immigrants who are caught often try their luck over and over again until they are successful. Fathers Barilli and Verzeletti said the U.S. government and the governments of home countries do little to crack down on the network of coyotes.

"These governments are enriching a network of human traffickers," said Father Verzeletti.

Father Barilli, who is originally from Brazil and of Italian descent, encouraged people to remember their own family's immigration history when judging the current immigration crisis in the U.S.

"Let's hope that people reason not just with their heads, but also with their hearts," said Father Barilli.