http://www.catholicnews.com/data/sto...ns/0603038.htm

HILL May-25-2006 (700 words) With photo. xxxn

Border wall has no place in nation of 'Lady Liberty,' says speaker

By William R. Genello
Catholic News Service

SCRANTON, Pa. (CNS) -- The televised images of the Berlin Wall are still seared into Candy Hill's mind: people desperately trying to get over it, to the point of some losing their lives.

"We (the free world) thought it was horrible, and we cheered when that wall came down" in 1989, she said.

"Now, in the greatest country on earth, we're debating whether to build a wall here" to prevent people from crossing the border into the U.S. from Mexico illegally, Hill said.

"If we build that wall, we'll have to tear down the Statue of Liberty. We can't have that lady in the harbor welcoming people, and a wall in the desert keeping them out," she said.

Hill is senior vice president for social policy for Catholic Charities USA. She spoke May 19 to the staff of Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Scranton. The diocesan agency's offices provide various services to immigrants, many of them Latinos from Mexico and other countries.

Hill's presentation focused on the church's social teaching, in particular how it relates to the immigration law debate.

In a May 15 address on immigration reform, President George W. Bush proposed a plan to deploy National Guard troops on the Mexican border. He also outlined a program for enabling most of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. to legalize their status.

Meanwhile, Congress was considering legislation to revise the immigration system. Some lawmakers have suggested building a fence or wall along the border.

Catholic officials are promoting a comprehensive approach that provides an avenue to citizenship and allows immigrants to keep their families together.

The current system is broken, said Hill, citing long waiting periods for visas -- leading to situations where people desperate to provide for their families risk the dangers of coming here illegally. This often results in families being separated, or cases in which children who are U.S. citizens are living with one parent or even both parents who are not citizens.

"We are not suggesting that we simply open our borders and allow everyone to come in," Hill said. "But we have to find an orderly way for people to enter our country, and return home if they wish. Now people come here, get trapped and are separated from their families."

Responding to a question about security, she said it was unfair to profile all people from other countries as potential terrorists. She noted the terrorists who attacked the country Sept. 11, 2001, entered through Virginia.

On the issue of assimilation, she recalled the 18 million immigrants, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, who came to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In most cases, it took at least a generation for those families to learn English and become fully assimilated.

By 1920, Hill noted, immigrants constituted 75 percent of U.S. Catholics. They often encountered hostility, not only because of their ethnicity, but also simply because they were Catholic.

The church responded with ministries to meet their needs. Parishes, schools, hospitals, charities, religious communities, mutual aid societies and fraternal groups provided much of the assistance.

To a large extent, that legacy is carried on today by agencies such as Catholic Social Services, under the Catholic Charities USA umbrella.

Msgr. Joseph P. Kelly, the Scranton diocesan secretary for Catholic human services and executive director of Catholic Social Services, said his agency is committed to serving the growing Latino community and all immigrants in the 11 counties in the diocese. He has hired eight bilingual workers for the agency's nine offices.

"We want to be the welcoming church to meet the social needs of these people," he said.

The Catholic Church is in fact an immigrant church, Hill said, noting that Jesus himself was a migrant. From its earliest days, the church has tried to preserve the sanctity of the family and protect human rights, she said.

"Citizenship does not confer rights, personhood does," she said. "The church is committed to standing in solidarity with the poor and the stranger. The Bible is the ultimate immigration guide."

END