This article comes from the HeadlineBistro blog.
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Bishops Support Route to Legal Citizenship
A bill that would help integrate immigrant children into the United States by granting them legal status made it through the House of Representatives last week. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, or the DREAM Act, has been a goal for some legislators for the past decade, and as it just cleared the House by a vote of 216 to 198, it awaits a vote from the Senate later this month.
“We can give them a chance to serve,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the lead supported of the bill, told the New York Times last Wednesday about the undocumented immigrants who would benefit from the bill. “We can put them on a road where it will be difficult but no more difficult than what they’ve gone through in their lives. Or we can say, no, wait for another day.”
If passed, the DREAM Act would give undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria a six-year window of temporary immigration status to complete two years of college or the same amount of military service. Criteria to participate require that applicants prove that they entered the United States before they were 16 years old; prove that they have lived in the U.S. for the past five years; are between 12 and 30 years old when the bill passes; have graduated from an American high school, received a GED or are accepted into college; and be of “good moral character.” If they complete the two years of either college or military in the six-year period, they are granted permanent residency status, which would help them achieve citizenship.
People are taking their usual sides on the bill -- some deriding it as amnesty and others clearly convinced of its value for children who were brought to the U.S. by parents at a young age -- and a number of bishops are openly supporting the bill calling it the right thing to do.
Some critics of the bill see it as another amnesty measure, while others look at the long-term demographic impact of legalizing a large number of Latinos, which they say would bolster the Democratic voting base. One cable news network called the bill a nightmare for Republicans while it flashed a string of clips of young Latino men climbing a fence in the dark of night.
Nearly four of every five Americans agree that immigration reform can both secure the borders and protect the rights of immigrants, according to a Knights of Columbus/Marist College poll in July 2010.
The Catholic Church in the United States is largely Hispanic, about 39 percent, and at least 44 percent of Catholics under 10 years old are Hispanic. Also, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 71 percent of growth of the U.S. Catholic population since 1960 has been because of the increase in the overall Hispanic population.
The migration office of the United States Catholic Bishops fully supports the bill, and sees it as a way to ensure the future of “talented, intelligent, and dedicated young persons” who were brought to the United States.
Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, chairman of the USCCB migration committee, wrote a letter to Congress expressing the bishops’ support of the bill. “It is important to note that these young persons entered the United States with their parents at a young age, and therefore did not enter without inspection on their own volition,” he wrote.
“We would all do the same thing in a similar situation. The United States is the only country that they know. They have incredible talent and energy and are awaiting a chance to fully contribute their talents to our nation. We would be foolhardy to deny them that chance.”
Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph similarly wrote a letter to Senator Claire McCaskill in support of the bill. In his letter to Senator McCaskill, who should vote on the DREAM act in the coming month, Bishop Finn wrote: “Simply put, it is the right thing to do.” He noted that he and fellow bishops weren’t able to support past attempts to pass the DREAM act because they were packaged with less favorable bills that, for example, supported abortion in military hospitals, but since the act is being introduced alone, he and the other bishops are able to throw their support behind the measure.
- Brian Dowling
