Statement on behalf of the US Catholic Bishops on Immigration Reform

Bob misses the point made by the Cardinals. I know of no one who supports illegal immigration andI can think of no one who doesn't want people to respect and observe our laws. However, we have no functioning legal immigration system when you have an annual quota for low-skilled workers of 5,000 including immediate family members. Those numbers are so low that if the annual quota of low-skilled workers were distributed equally throughout the United States among the 7,000 cities with populations greater than 20,000, it would mean that every 3 years only 1 low-skilled worker could legally immigrate to Dallas or New York or Houston. This is nonsensical and is the ROOT CAUSE of illegal immigration.

Yes, people should obey the law and should pay some penalty for violating the law, but immigration reform would not only require those that are in violation of the law to come forward and register and pay a penalty for having violated immigration law, but would also assure that they would not "cut in line" and would ultimately have to go through the normal process of qualifying once visa numbers were increased.

What the Cardinal has called for is simply common sense changes in immigration law that will recognize the inadequacies of our current legal immigration system.

With respect to people contributing their talents to the "economic, social and spiritual well being of their own countries," remember that America was built on the back of immigrants who only came here to work. The only difference between what's going on now and what was going on 100 years ago is that there is no legal mechanism by which low-skilled immigrants can legally enter the country.

Thank you for your thoughts regarding legal immigration. I think in reality there is a huge parallel between the large mass immigration of today and the turn of the last century, meaning the beginning of the 20th Century. The overwhelming large numbers that entered through Ellis Island as well as Pelican Island off the coast of Galveston and Angel Island off of San Francisco, came across in steerage bringing only the possessions they could carry, with semi to low work skills again, almost identical to the profile of the immigrants coming today. The only difference is that at that time there were no quotas at all until 1920, so anyone could come as long as they did not appear to have any contagious diseases. Ellis Island was nothing more than a quarantine station. There were no viable ways to access overseas criminal records, so it would have been very difficult to know who had been convicted of any crime so certainly a number of criminals were able to pass through. Today, all legal immigrants go through a very extensive background check to exclude all those with criminal records.

Today, the annual quota for low skilled workers worldwide no matter where they come from is 5,000, so as a practical matter there is no way for legal immigration. I would also say the immigrants that come today are coming 99% for employment and do not "expect/demand" any more support programs than they did previously. In fact, illegal immigrants are not entitled to any benefits other than the fact that their children can go to public schools as a basic right. No other benefits are provided. The only hospital benefits they get are in emergency rooms because by law emergency rooms cannot turn anyone away. Interestingly, the head of the Harris County Hospital District said he calculated that only about 10% of the low income individuals that show up in the emergency room are undocumented workers.

What's missing is a legal system so that people can come in dignity. With respect to the "work visa" being available as a legal avenue, that does not exist for low skilled workers. As I mentioned, the annual quota of 5,000 for low-skilled immigrants would mean that given the fact that most immigrants have a spouse and two kids, if you spread that out among cities with populations of more than 20,000 that means that one low-skilled or semi-skilled immigrant could immigrate to the City of Houston or New York City every 3 years and so forth. There is no viable temporary workers program for low-skilled workers. The existing temporary workers programs are all heavily weighted for high-skilled immigrants and even these visas are difficult to obtain.

There is a seasonal workers program of 65,000, but those numbers are essentially taken and used by the same industries year after year and most jobs in America are not seasonal. A large number of these visas go to ski resorts and hotels that require seasonal workers. Very few, if any, are used by low-skilled workers from Latin America because they are not coming for seasonal work, but mostly non-seasonal jobs in agriculture, construction, hotels, restaurants, lawn services and other areas which by and large are not considered attractive jobs by U. S. workers.

To solve illegal immigration, we must also have a viable legal system in order to have circular immigration because the only thing we are doing now is fencing illegal workers in, not out.

One more comment: Just as today many newscasters and others look upon immigrants from Latin America - legal and illegal - as somehow not able to adapt and the wrong type of people, this attitude is relatively mild in comparison to the anti-Catholic, anti-German/Irish and subsequently anti-Southern European, anti-Eastern European, anti-Jewish, anti-Chinese immigrant bigotry at the time of the last large waive of immigration. At that time, all of those immigrant groups were viewed as dangerous, wrong religion, unable to assimilate, threatening the American way, contaminating our blood stock, etc. It was so bad that signs in windows in Boston would frequently say "No Irish or Dogs Allowed".

Many thanks for your comments