Archbishop calls for immigration reform
The time is now for comprehensive immigration reform to address the estimated 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer said Friday.
And he said the failure of the federal government to address immigration reform may cause more states to pass laws similar to Arizona’s.
“This should not be an ‘amnesty. Nor are we asking for ‘open borders,’” Archbishop Niederauer said.
Archbishop Niederauer spoke in front of historic Mission Dolores with a woman, Rosa, a married mother of four who is fighting deportation on an expired visa.
“Yes, to undocumented people -- you belong in the line for citizenship but because you just joined the line you belong at the end of the line,” he said.
Later speaking to reporters, the archbishop said Congress needs to act and if it doesn’t more states will follow Arizona’s example of a crackdown on undocumented residents.
"They did it for health care; I would like to see them do it for immigration,” Archbishop Niederauer said.
The U.S. bishops have long called for a series of measures that would allow undocumented people to come “out of the shadows,” create a work permit system for foreign nationals, and increase the number of family and employment visas.
While both President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush support the reform, it has stalled in Congress. Two polls published in May indicate a majority of Americans support the stringent measures embodied in the Arizona law, a law opposed by all of Arizona’s bishops.
“SB 1070 (the Arizona law) gives law enforcement officials powers to detain and arrest individuals based on a very low legal standard, possibly leading to the profiling of individuals based upon their appearance, manner of speaking, or ethnicity,” said George Wesolek, director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco's Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, which organized Friday’s press conference.
“Reform legislation is long overdue and there can be no better time than now to change our immigration laws,” said Archbishop Niederauer, who was accompanied by Auxiliary Bishop William Justice.
The archbishop and Bishop Justice issued a joint statement reiterating their and the U.S. bishops’ longstanding support for immigration reform, and referred to recent statements by Salt Lake City Bishop John Wester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration.
Rosa said she, her husband and 22-year-old daughter are fighting deportation on expired visas. Three younger children, ages 19, 8 and 5, were born in this country, and she is waiting for her 19-year-old son to turn 21 so he can apply for residency for the rest of his family.
In the meantime, a 6 a.m. raid and threat of deportation, after more than 10 years of legal attempts to stay, has the family living on edge.
“The American Dream is becoming an American nightmare,” said Rosa, who said she came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1989.
She reports to the Immigration and Naturalization Service each month, via a deal worked out by a new attorney. The family had worked with another attorney from 1997 until the deportation raid earlier this year, she said.
Rosa said she employs 28 people in a business. “Since we have come to this country we have worked hard, paid taxes.”
The U.S. bishops support rewriting the immigration system “to bring the 11 million undocumented out of the shadows, register them with the government, require them to pay a fine and any taxes owed, and require them to learn English and work as they wait in the back of the line for a chance for citizenship,“ Bishop Wester said in a recent interview with Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, which was cited in the San Francisco bishops’ written statement.
The U.S. bishops also support an increase in family-based and employment-based visas so that immigrant families could migrate to the United States in a safe, legal and controlled manner, and not be subject to the abuse of human smugglers or to death in the desert, the bishops said.
The U.S. bishops believe that the “broken U.S. immigration system contributes to the exploitation of migrant workers in the workplace; their abuse by ruthless smugglers; and their deaths in the desert as they seek to find work to support their families,” Bishop Wester said.
"They come illegally because there are insufficient visas under the current system to come legally," he said. "Our system contains only 5,000 permanent visas for unskilled laborers to come to the United States, but the demand for their work is much higher, since as many as 300,000 undocumented people each year are absorbed into the U.S. work force."
“We know and respect these good people because they pray in our churches with us and they send their children to our schools,” Archbishop Niederauer and Bishop Justice said in their statement.
“Many of them are undocumented. Many have been here for decades, raised families, started businesses," they said. "It is our belief as their pastors that they should be given a chance to right the wrong of their undocumented status.”
By Valery Schmalz
From the May 21, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco
