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Undocumented Mercy


Inside Bay Area

TAKE CALTRAIN up to San Francisco. Approaching San Mateo on the right, you'll see the city's Day Worker Center. My train passes by at 2 in afternoon and there are still 10 or 15 hopeful migrant workers milling about the parking lot, talking in small clusters, pitching pennies — where else is there to go?

Driving north from my church on Middlefield Road, you pass another Day Worker Center on Fifth Avenue in unincorporated Redwood City. By 7 a.m., undocumented men from Mexico, Guatemala, even Peru, are sipping coffee inside the small office, away from the cold and chill, looking out the window, hoping that a truck will pull into the back driveway and their names will be called.

Such centers are noble efforts. Everyone who has struggled to establish them deserves a hat tip. But we all know that the real solution to the presence of 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States is to be found in Washington, D.C., where the federal agenda regarding immigration is traveling in two different directions.

The first piece of legislation is a bill called The Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Protection Act, HR-4437, introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Rep. Peter King, R-NY, makes unlawful presence in the U.S. a felony; subjects anyone who assists an undocumented alien to criminal penalties; requires mandatory detention of all aliens apprehended along the border, including children and families; and limits relief to asylum seekers through an expansion of expedited removal.

It successfully passed the House in December, and is now being reviewed by our Sen. Dianne Feinstein's Senate Judiciary Committee.

I'm worried about some of the provisions in this bill, particularly its implications for hundreds of undocumented workers and families who daily come to my parish's Padua Dining Room for a hot lunch. Would our service in the name of Jesus been seen as "assistance" to felons? I wonder how the courts would interpret such language.

There is a contrasting bill passing through Congress, called the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, S-1033, introduced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., includes an earned legalization program, a temporary worker program with worker protections, and reductions in backlogs for family-based visa categories.

I prefer S-1033 — though not because I believe in "open borders" nor because I want to see illegal immigration rewarded with another amnesty such as the one I remember from 20 years ago, when thousands of undocumented migrants received permanent resident status simply by being in the United States and being able to prove that they had worked in the fields.

S-1033, on the other hand, provides no such free pass. It requires undocumented workers to pay a fine, to demonstrate English language capability and to "earn" permanent status by working and paying taxes over a six-year period before qualifying for permanent resident status.

The U.S. Catholic bishops also favor S-1033 and so do my largely Latino parishioners.

From my own faith perspective, S-1033 has the advantage of now only helping the foreigner work above ground in the U.S., but also to integrate himself and his family into the American dream.

The Rev. James Garcia is the parish priest at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.