(continued)

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

En Español

Statement of Most Reverend John C. Wester

Bishop of Salt Lake City, Utah

Chairman, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration

April 27, 2010

On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), I join with the Catholic bishops of Arizona in strongly opposing the enactment and implementation of Arizona SB 1070.  This new law, although limited to the State of Arizona, could have impact throughout the nation, in terms of how members of our immigrant communities are both perceived and treated.

SB 1070 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.  It could lead to the wrongful questioning and arrest of U.S. citizens and permanent residents as well as the division of families—parents from children and husbands from wives.  It certainly would lead to the rise in fear and distrust in immigrant communities, undermining the relationships between their members and law enforcement officials.

SB 1070 is symptomatic of the absence of federal leadership on the issue of immigration.  For years now, the U.S. Catholic bishops have called upon Congress and two Administrations to enact meaningful and just comprehensive immigration reform. 

While many of our federal elected officials have made good faith efforts to pass reform, too many still view the issue through a political lens, using it to gain political or partisan advantage. This gamesmanship must stop.  

Our national leaders must educate the American public on the need for reform and show courage in making it happen. Until immigration reform is passed, other States will attempt to create and enforce immigration law, with harsh and ineffective consequences.

The U.S. Catholic bishops stand in solidarity with the bishops of Arizona in opposing this draconian law. We call upon the Administration to review its impact on civil rights and liberties.  We renew our call for the Administration and Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to enact comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible. 
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Keywords: Immigration, Arizona SB 1070, comprehensive immigration reform, Bishop John C. Wester, USCC

<<http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2010/10-080.shtml>>

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Catholics' respect for human life and dignity must be clear in the way they welcome migrants and refugees, offer them pastoral care and lobby their governments for fairer treatment of people on the move, Vatican officials said.

Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, said globalization is not only an economic phenomenon. It also has an impact on the movement of people, and people must be the focus of Christian attention, he said.

"We know as Christians that life's core is fundamentally spiritual and that the challenge is how to promote and safeguard every human person," focusing particularly on the most vulnerable, including migrants who leave home in search of a better life and refugees forced to flee violence or oppression, the archbishop said Nov. 3.

The archbishop spoke at a Vatican press conference previewing the Sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, which his office is convoking Nov. 9-12 at the Vatican.

With globalization the church not only has had to reach out to welcome and assist people on the move, but also to try to address situations that force them to seek a new life away from their homeland as well as attitudes and policies that make it difficult or impossible for them to live with dignity in a new land, Archbishop Veglio said.

Christians are obliged to work with other people of good will to build "a civilization that is worthy of the human person, meaning a life model wherein each person can enjoy legitimate freedom and security; where suffering, discrimination and fear are eliminated to the greatest degree possible; (and) where respect for fundamental human rights -- exercised with their corresponding duties -- is guaranteed," he said.

Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the council, said the congress would bring together more than 300 representatives of bishops' conferences, Catholic aid agencies and religious orders to look at how to improve the way Catholics welcome and assist newcomers.

Citizens have a right to be concerned about the security of their homelands, but for Christians security "must always been seen together with welcome -- that is the Catholic approach," Archbishop Marchetto said.

The council secretary said the number of people living outside their homelands is huge: an estimated 200 million migrants in the world and an estimated 11 million refugees who have fled violence or persecution.

"If we said probably 30 percent are Catholic, we probably would not be far off," Archbishop Marchetto said.

The archbishop said he spent three weeks in the United States recently lecturing at Catholic universities on the obligation to welcome and assist people on the move.

He said the reaction to his talks made clear that many people have "difficulty in accepting migrants, and this was on the part of good Catholics.

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