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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

In polarizing debate, a bid to inject morality, humanity
U.S. Catholic bishops campaign for immigration policy reforms.
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, February 06, 2006

Mining the depths of what it means to be a Catholic, the Rev. John Korcsmar broached the subject of illegal immigration on a recent Sunday morning at Dolores Catholic Church in East Austin. Consider, he asked parishioners, that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees fleeing King Herod's terror.

The Gospel, Korcsmar said, illustrates church teaching that immigrants, like all people, have inherent human rights and dignity.

"I think we as Catholics have a duty to welcome the newcomer, to be open," Korcsmar said later.

Comparable messages repeated lately in Austin area parishes, and across the country, underpin a controversial new campaign by U.S. bishops urging Congress and the White House to legalize potentially millions of immigrants already in the country.

The campaign, Justice for Immigrants: A Journey of Hope, aims to create a political will for change by first winning the hearts and minds of the nation's 65 million Catholics, including an estimated 450,000 in the 25-county Austin diocese.

In opinion polls, Americans consistently rank immigration, particularly illegal immigration, as one of the country's top five problems. There is consensus that the system is broken but none on how to fix it.

Stepping decisively into one of the most divisive political issues in Congress and the nation at large, the church is finding that the immigration debate divides Catholics as it does all Americans.

The U.S. House has passed legislation focusing entirely on beefed-up enforcement of immigration laws, an agenda at odds with the bishops' campaign.

The national debate generally pits those who want to clamp down harder on illegal immigration against those — including business, labor and religious groups — who want more channels for immigrants to enter the country legally.

"A legal, manageable approach to immigration is what the bishops are calling for, and they've got a proposal that has the potential of fixing the problem," said Mark Franken, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services, who is leading the campaign for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.

"We realize that you can't open up any country to everybody else," said Bishop Gregory Aymond of the Austin diocese. "There has to be limits, but we're calling for limits that are just and generous and would give a deep respect for the life of other human beings who are looking for justice and a better way of life."

The bishops' campaign reached Austin last month, when parishes began distributing materials explaining the church's involvement and its vision for comprehensive reforms. Some are holding workshops, and pastors are incorporating Justice for Immigrants themes in their homilies.

About 60 of the country's 295 Catholic dioceses have officially joined the campaign since its May 2005 launch, and others are expected to join as it expands across the country, said Leo Anchondo of Justice for Immigrants in Washington.

The campaign mirrors themes of a landmark 2003 statement the bishops issued with their counterparts in Mexico, urging Presidents Bush and Vicente Fox to enact policies respecting the dignity of immigrants.

The statement embodied the spirit of Pope John Paul II's 1999 exhortation for church leaders to do more to help the poor and oppressed, including immigrants and refugees. During a U.S. visit four years earlier, the pontiff had rebuked Americans' growing anti-immigrant sentiment.

With roots in the immigrant experience, the U.S. Catholic Church has a history dating to the 1920s of serving immigrants and refugees of all faiths, sometimes in partnership with the U.S. government.

Nationally, the Catholic Charities social services network for the poor reaches out to immigrants. Locally, Catholic Charities' Office of Immigrant Concerns helps those who qualify establish legal status in the country, and the Office of Hispanic Ministry serves ministerial needs.

But local Catholic leaders privately admit that some Catholics harbor strong anti-immigrant feelings, and a recent pastoral letter from Catholic bishops in Arizona noted mounting hostility toward illegal immigrants.

Some within the church are critical of its foray into government policy.

"They get involved in political stuff that doesn't concern them," said Lupe Ortegon, an Austin Catholic.

Outside the church, advocates of stronger immigration controls charge that the church wants open borders, an accusation Catholic leaders strongly deny. Still other critics suggest that the church is pandering to immigrants, the majority of whom come from heavily Catholic Mexico and Latin America. The pope's 1999 apostolic exhortation was widely seen as a move to reverse Catholicism's decline in the Americas.


'Our brother's keeper'

Like a skillful comedian, Korcsmar recently told a story about ordering egg rolls at a Chinese restaurant in Austin.

The waiter marched to the kitchen barking, "Necesito dos egg rolls!"

After letting a wave of laughter roll across the room, the pastor loudly punctuated his story: "That's when I knew we had . . . many, many people working here from Mexico."

Korcsmar made the larger point that Americans benefit from foreigners who work, cooking food, building houses. His sympathetic audience of Catholics, church leaders and immigrant advocates included Beatris Vega, a U.S.-born citizen and daughter of Mexican immigrants, who came to the Dolores educational hall to hear about the bishops' campaign.

Vega, a member of St. Ignatius, Martyr Catholic Church in South Austin, said that remedies such as the pending House legislation criminalize immigrants.

"Although I don't condone coming into the country illegally, we have to look at the reasons and be humane about how we treat (immigrants) and how we deal with the problems," said the 43-year-old organizer for Austin Interfaith.

But Ortegon, another St. Ignatius member who was not in the Dolores audience, said she resents illegal immigrants, doesn't agree with the church's outreach to them and won't support Justice for Immigrants.

"God teaches us to love one another and to share what we have with each other," said Ortegon, a 69-year-old retired state worker. "But why should I share everything I have with these people when they really are not doing anything for me?"

Campaign leaders hope to win over Catholic critics with church teachings and by explaining what draws the foreign-born to the country.

The campaign's Web site (www.justiceforimmigrants.org) highlights immigrant contributions and tries to dispel what it calls myths, such as that immigrants don't pay taxes.

Strong feelings are understandable, and the church must confront the reality that laws are being broken, leaders say. But the church, they are quick to add, also has an obligation to teach moral dimensions rooted in Scripture.

"That survival and living with some human dignity is a greater right than the right to control borders," Korcsmar said.

Father Joe Tomei, St. Ignatius' pastor, said Catholics can be reminded that "Jesus makes it clear that we are our brother's keeper."

"We have to understand that when we meet God, we can't say, 'Well, I didn't take care of them because they were illegal.' Because in God's eyes, that doesn't really matter."


On Capitol Hill

Supporters of the House measure, known as the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, believe that illegal immigration is out of control and that tougher enforcement is the solution in the security-conscious era after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Others, including President Bush and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, say they want some form of temporary worker program allowing immigrants to legally take jobs before returning to their homelands.

The Senate could take up the House legislation next month and consider its own proposals for guest worker programs. Few expect the House measure to survive intact, but that it got this far causes opponents alarm.

Franken of Migration and Refugee Services says advocates of enforcement-only reforms successfully seized the immigration debate by framing it in security concerns.

The nation's Catholic bishops think reform must include more avenues for legal immigration along with enforcement, Franken said, such as allowing workers with clean records and established lives to legalize their status over time.

Franken said enforcement alone has failed. Illegal immigration and border-crossing deaths have soared during the past 20 years, hitting record levels, despite dramatically more money and resources being poured into border security.

But John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which advocates stronger enforcement of immigration laws, said the bishops' campaign continues a history of political advocacy for a broad liberalization of immigration policy.

Keeley, who is Catholic, said the church's advocacy is out of step with the wishes of most Catholics and out of step with the country's needs.

The church's prescriptions "sanction the status quo," Keeley said. "I'd like to see them lead a dialogue that says, 'We are a nation of laws; now let's try something new.' "

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635


What the U.S. Catholic bishops want

•Ways for immigrants to obtain legal status if they demonstrate good moral character and have built up financial or family ties in this country.

•Help for home countries to develop economically and socially so their citizens don't migrate simply to survive or rejoin family.

•Policies that reflect the growing transience of labor in a global economy by increasing the number of visas available for foreigners filling jobs in the United States.

•More visas available for families to reunite.


What the pending House legislation would do

•Change illegal presence in the country from a civil violation to a federal felony.

•Require detention of an immigrant caught attempting to enter the United States illegally.

•Speed up deportation of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada.

•Stiffen penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants.

•Build fences along about 700 miles of the border with Mexico.

•Offer state and local police departments money to enforce federal immigration laws.


For more information

A workshop about the Catholic campaign for immigration reform will be from 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 26 at St. Ignatius, Martyr Catholic Church, 210 W. Oltorf St. in Austin.



A growing concern

•Each year since 1995, illegal immigration has grown faster than legal immigration.

•An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, including more than 6 million Mexicans.

•About 1.4 million illegal immigrants lived in Texas in 2004, second only to California's 2.4 million.

•The Austin metro area is an emerging immigrant gateway. The total immigrant population surged nearly 600 percent to almost 153,000 between 1980 and 2000, but it is not clear how many are here illegally.

•Nearly 2,000 people died attempting illegal border crossings between 1998 and 2004. Deaths have increased 500 percent since the 1990s, when toughened security funneled the flow of migrants away from California and Texas into remote desert and mountain areas in Arizona.

Sources: Pew Hispanic Center, Brookings Institution, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner