Great Generations:
Caring For Our Immigrant Neighbors and Their Children
“THERE IS A SURREAL QUALITY TO THE FRESHETS, STREAMS, RIVERS, AND OCEANS OF WORDS EXPENDED ON THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE, WITHOUT A WORD ON THE BIG POINT,”1 WROTE BEN WATTENBERG IN 2006. THE BIG POINT, HE WRITES, IS THAT “AMERICAN GREATNESS AND INFLUENCE DEPEND ON IMMIGRATION AND ASSIMILATION.”
Immigrants do serve and sacrifice themselves for America. For instance, Mexican-Americans GIs “have been awarded proportionately more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other sub-group in the American military.” Immigrants give America good publicity abroad. Their billions of dollars in remittances are the “best kind of foreign aid.” Kicking out immigrants would mean that America’s tax base and revenue for Social Security would likewise diminish.
The cornerstone of Wattenberg’s argument is that “Americans are the principal purveyors of liberty and democracy to the world….We have not done it perfectly, but we have done more than any nation in history has.”2
To be purveyors of freedom and democracy, America does need an economy that encourages an increasingly diverse population that participates and competes at home and abroad. Draining immigrants would bleed the U.S. of economic and cultural vibrancy, while other industrialized countries would benefit by incorporating them. (For instance, a recent study reveals that, since 1990, immigrants “have started 1 in 4 U.S. venture-backed public companies.”3)
At the end of his piece, Wattenberg asks: “Are we are going to be a great country in the world, or not? I vote yea.”4 In the oceans of words of this watershed election year, I wonder: Is he right about the big point? Before I cast my vote, let me address one measurement of greatness that he misses.
MORAL GREATNESS
Wattenberg inadequately addresses the moral case for immigration. The Economist made this point clear: “the moral case for immigration is incontrovertible: it lessens human misery.”5Across America many moral arguments have been made for immigration reform. Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church has been a leading voice. An unprecedented number of Catholic bishops and church leaders have cited volumes of well researched economic studies on immigration. In citing scripture, social teaching, and humanitarian reasons, they’ve backed up good economic news with the Good News. Greatness, however, means getting the facts right and having right character.
Why haven’t their astute assessments and sound moral arguments been a life-line for Christians, treading water in surreal oceans of words on immigration? One word weighs down the moral imagination of many Catholics and stunts advocacy for immigrants—illegal.
“ILLEGAL” AS NEIGHBOR
America’s public discourse turns on one point: the outsiders who are called “illegals.” The question “Who is the illegal?” stigmatizes and criminalizes a whole class of people. Ignoring the context of globalization, America has neglected to see its responsibility for policies that have pulled migrants here and hurt economies abroad. Americans have forgotten that at the start of the last century, its own congregations, particularly Catholics, had helped “tired, poor…huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”6 The children of that generation looked beyond themselves with civic duty to increase the dignity of all. That generation was later named America’s “greatest generation.”
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus makes a point to a young lawyer: the outsider is your neighbor. A relevant moral question that reorients America’s public discourse is, “Who is my neighbor?” At a recent conference on migration, Rev. Bill O’Neill, S.J. (who also has an essay in this issue), eloquently invited Catholics to reconstruct their moral imaginations so as to construct stronger moral connections with what he called our “near and distant neighbors.”7 Greatness begins with the moral vision of being able to see everyone as neighbor.
Furthermore, Catholic teaching holds that a basic moral test is how a society treats its most vulnerable neighbors. The Last Judgment (Mt. 25:31-46) “instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.”8 We need to search for greatness in how we treat newcomers, especially one group: immigrant children.
YOUNG MIGRANTS
When Pope Benedict XVI gave his message on young migrants, he identified those neighbors to whom America needs to pay special attention. On the 94th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Benedict mentioned trafficked children, unaccompanied immigrant children, and refugee children (whether accompanied or unaccompanied by family members) who spend years rootless, or segregated in detention centers. The Pope asked churches in host countries to “welcome the young and very young people with their parents…and to try to understand the vicissitudes of their lives and favor their insertion.”9
The most vulnerable group of migrant youth in America is the nearly two million immigrant children who are trafficked, who come here alone, or whose families immigrate without documents. Estimates of persons trafficked indicate that up to 10,000 of these modern-day slaves are children, “mostly from the former Soviet Union and Southeast Asia.”10 Each year between 1997 and 2005, the number of unaccompanied immigrant children who attempted to reach America ranged from 80,000 to 100,000. In 2007 nearly 8,000 of these children were detained. They are denied state-sponsored guardians or free legal representation. Some are moved from facility to facility until they “age out,” or turn 18, then are deported. Even though the Senate has overwhelmingly passed the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act this decade, the House of Representatives has played politics with similar bi-partisan legislation by letting these bills sit without a debate.
A significant moral issue for America concerns 1.8 million children of undocumented immigrants. Brought to America by their parents, they are products of American society, but are denied a way of becoming productive members of it. Yearly, more than 60,000 of these young people earn high school diplomas, yet they have no path to the American dream. The Dream Act, a targeted measure that offers a path to earned citizenship for those who attend college or serve in the military, was recently proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin. This proposal lacked four votes in the Senate. The scene reached a surreal low when Rep. Tom Tancredo alerted authorities that three undocumented youth were accompanying Durbin to the Capitol. No arrests were made, but it made me wonder: Does Capitol Hill need to be protected from youths asking to go to college, serve in the military, and become tax-paying citizens?
Despite its imperfections, America has vigorously demonstrated what U.C. Davis Professor Bill Ong Hing told audiences in Congress and at Santa Clara University: “When immigrants do well, society does well.”11 After racist and xenophobic laws, such as 1892’s Chinese Exclusion Act or 1924’s Immigration Act, citizens ultimately changed their country’s course. Though America needs to do more, it has shown moral character with respect to trafficked persons and to refugee children (such as those from Sudan). Informing one’s moral imagination requires looking at reality in new ways. To aid this, I recommend three award-winning documentaries: Lives for Sale, produced by the Maryknoll Missionaries; God Grew Tired of Us, a transformative film about Sudanese “lost boys”; and Posada (see sidebar).
American citizens and Jesus’ disciples have argued over the meaning of greatness. In response to his bickering disciples, Jesus “took a child into his arms”12 and told them that greatness is found in service and in the way one welcomes a child. When American Catholics commit to stronger moral relationships to immigrants, especially children, as neighbors, we create a stronger nation and a more credible church. This commitment hasn’t always been popular, but it has been the Catholic Church’s legacy. Perhaps in this generation, Americans can awaken to a desire not only to repay others for doors that were opened for our ancestors, but to a desire for America to find its moral voice. That’s a vote for greatness.
NOTES
1 Ben Wattenberg, “Open to Greatness: We Need Immigrants” National Review Online, 2006-2007 (April 18, 2006), http://www.nationalreview.com/.
2 Ibid.
3 Stuart Anderson and Michaela Platzer, “American Made: The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on U.S. Competitiveness,” (Arlington Virginia: A study commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association, December 7, 2006), 11. Full text can be accessed at http://www.nvca.org/pdf/AmericanMade_study.pdf.
4 Wattenberg.
5 “The Long Term,” The Economist 386, no. 8561 ( January 5, 2008), 15.
6 Excerpt from “The New Colossus,” a poem by Emma Lazurus, which appears on a bronze plaque installed in 1903 inside the Statue of Liberty.
7 Bill O’Neill, S.J., “The Ethics of Immigration in Catholic Social Teaching” (a public lecture presented at the Reflection on Migration: Bridging the Divide Conference, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, July 19-21, 2007).
8 U.S. Catholic Bishops, “Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions” (Washington D.C: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Office of Justice, Peace and Human Development, 1998).
9 Pope Benedict XVI, “Message of his Holiness Benedict XVI for the 94th World Day of Migrants and Refugees,” (Vatican, January 13, 2008), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/migration/documents.
10 Nathalie Lummert, “Children on the Move: The Plight of Immigrant and Refugee Children” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Office of Migration and Refugee Policy, June 2000), 10. Full text can be found at http://www.brycs.org/documents/COTM.PDF.
11 Bill Ong Hing, “Values, Morality and Immigration” (a public lecture presented at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, May 7, 2007).
12 Mark 9:33-37.