Issues Page

Immigration raids on workplaces and their destructive fallout were the focus of a press conference sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Sept 10. The bishops and other immigrant advocates have felt increasing concern at the rising number of raids since the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in the summer of 2007, a reform that President Bush once favored. The conference also underscored the fact that the bishops have been trying to work with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to curtail the raids because of the humanitarian damage they cause.

During the next four weeks, Immigration activists plan to swarm through nearly 700 Chicago-area neighborhoods, visiting some homes several times in a $1 million effort to pull at least 140,000 voters into the polls for the Nov. 4 elections, organizers announced Tuesday. The campaign, involving about 2,500 volunteers, is part of an aggressive last push across the country to sway the result of the presidential race and several congressional contests in the direction of Immigration reforms. "This is a serious campaign," said Juan Salgado, president of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which is coordinating the effort. "We have an agenda that's about democracy and living the best ideals of what this country is about."

Millions of Americans point to Ellis Island as the place where their family was first introduced to the United States. Others trace their ancestry to ships that dropped anchor centuries ago in New England. Still more greeted Lady Liberty by way of airplanes and a visa. My father? He fondly remembers the comfortable space in the trunk of a Chevy Bel Air that was his ticket to the American dream. The American frontier will never close, not as long as there are people like my father who were and are willing to cross deserts, stuff themselves into cars, float across water -- just for the chance to establish themselves in this country and thrive.

Reeling from work-site raids that have jailed thousands of illegal workers, immigration organizations are quietly assembling informal networks to gather advance information about federal enforcement operations and to help locals and laborers prepare. Students, union officials, waiters and others are volunteering to call in tips about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents checking into hotels or renting facilities, about the sudden appearance of out-of-town cars and about a surge in action at the local courthouse. The spontaneous development of these intelligence networks stems from the scale of recent ICE raids: hundreds of agents and vehicles plus a major infrastructure.

During the heat of the primary season late last year, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said it was imperative for his party to nominate a candidate who was tough on illegal immigration and didn't parrot President Bush's centrist stance on the issue. Yet as Republicans prepared to ratify Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) -- author, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), of the comprehensive immigration measure that died in the Senate last year -- as their presidential nominee this week, little of that squabbling has been on display in the Twin Cities. Immigration has received scant mention in speeches on the convention floor, and King conceded Wednesday that "the number of people who have come up to me to complain about this, so far it's zero."

Laith Kasshana left Baghdad, Iraq, early in 2007, when his 2-year-old daughter Media was an infant. In Baghdad, Kasshana's life was threatened and his brother was shot. "I felt so afraid," he told Catholic News Service. "Even today, when I talk about Iraq, I feel full of anxiety." But Kasshana, his wife and his two children -- 10-month-old Mathew was born in Lebanon -- left Sept. 7 for resettlement in San Diego. All through the family's troubles, Kasshana's 25-year-old wife, Ban, never lost faith that God would do something for her family.

The Catholic Church has joined an interfaith effort to change U.S. immigration law. To prepare for that effort in the next Congress, it is also joining the Tour of the Faithful, an educational effort during September and October to convince people of faith to support changes in U.S. immigration policy. "Our current national immigration policy ... consists of work-site enforcement raids" that result in, among other things, "the dislocation of U.S. citizen children from their parents," he added. "As a nation -- a nation of immigrants, I might add -- we cannot accept the labor of immigrants while undermining their basic human dignity," Bishop Wester said.

Pope Benedict XVI said the global phenomenon of immigration represents a social emergency that must be faced with a sense of responsibility and humanity. He called on richer countries to be attentive especially to the needs of illegal immigrants, but said immigrants themselves must respect "the duty of legality that is valid for everyone." The pope made the remarks at his noon blessing in Castel Gandolfo Aug. 31, in a courtyard packed with cheering pilgrims. His comments came as Italy and other Mediterranean countries experienced an annual summer influx of clandestine immigrants arriving from Africa by boat.

The raid at Howard Industries, a manufacturer of electrical distribution equipment, was the largest of its kind in many years,and it exposed some of the rawest emotions that fuel the illegal immigration debate. It was also carried out during a period of political limbo: Polls suggest that for voters, the immigration issue has been eclipsed by the sputtering economy, and neither of the two major presidential candidates has made much of the topic during the election season. As the Bush administration winds down its tenure in Washington, it has made efforts to step up immigration enforcement, especially after Congress last year failed to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.

Nearly 600 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were detained, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern Mississippi town. The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday. One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago. Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

Last week's announcement that minorities collectively will make up a majority of people in America by 2042 comes at a contentious moment in U.S. history. A bitter and largely negative debate about immigration roils the country.Stoked by angry politicians, the shouting rarely goes beyond variations on the theme of how to send 12 million illegal immigrants back home. Hardly anybody acknowledges that 38 million legal immigrants and their 31 million children already call America home. These people, along with other minorities, will be a powerful force in shaping America's future. Word to the wise: The future is here; get used to it.

Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors. Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin asked for a blanket moratorium on immigration raids in Rhode Island until the nation adopts comprehensive immigration reform. Tobin made the requests in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston. Tobin's action comes during a heated debate over illegal immigration in heavily Catholic Rhode Island. Authorities recently raided six courthouses looking for illegal immigrant maintenance workers and Gov. Don Carcieri, himself a Catholic, signed an order requiring state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation. "We believe that raids on the immigrant community are unjust, unnecessary, and counterproductive," the bishop's letter says. It urges individual federal agents to consider the morality of their actions and refuse to participate if their conscience dictates.

For years, even decades, these Mexican and Guatemalan families had called Postville home. Here, in a place first settled by German and Norwegian Lutherans and Irish Catholics more than 150 years ago, Hispanic immigrants were raising children, buying houses, building businesses. Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they should not be faulted for carrying out the law and guarding against identity theft. And yet Sister Mary McCauley, the pastoral administrator at St. Bridget's, said the lament of one longtime resident, surveying the chaos unleashed by the raid, summed up the thoughts of many: "Sister, a real terrible thing has happened to our town."

More than 100 citizens and legal residents were snared along with nearly 140 illegal immigrants in a raid on a software company in Van Nuys, Calif., early this year. Five citizens in Texas joined a lawsuit against the department, asserting that they were subjected to unreasonable search and seizure when agents raided a meatpacking plant where they worked last year. An African American worker said in a hearing that he was handcuffed and detained for hours without food and water during a raid on an Iowa meatpacking plant in 2006. Critics say the raids and arrests have led members of Congress to launch investigations and to a mounting number of lawsuits.

Massachusetts investment banker and philanthropist Robert Hildreth's success in business means Luis Delgado, a Mexican immigrant arrested in an immigration crackdown on a Maryland roofing company June 30, will get to be with his wife and children for the months it will take his legal case to be adjudicated. Hildreth's offer to help pay a few immigrants' bonds after a raid in 2001 has now led to the creation of a national fund to help other people facing detention far from their homes and families. His concern for families separated after a major immigration raid in New Bedford, Mass., last year led Hildreth to start writing checks so some of those factory workers wouldn't have to wait in detention centers thousands of miles away while their cases were heard.

It’s rare, in the parched landscape of the immigration debate, to come across policies that are simple, realistic and humane. But here is one: The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote on Wednesday on an ordinance requiring big-box home-improvement stores to protect order and safety when day laborers gather in their parking lots looking for work. The ordinance is primarily aimed at Home Depot, which has 11 stores in Los Angeles and would like to open at least a dozen more. It would require new or renovating stores to have a plan for what to do when the day laborers show up, as they almost always do when Home Depot moves in.

As national authorities step up immigration enforcement through workplace raids, advocates for immigrants are raising bond money to prevent people from routinely being detained while awaiting trial. Advocates are conducting a fundraising campaign so that suspected illegal immigrants will be able to post bond after being arrested during raids. "This is one tool to help them have access to justice," said Liz Alex, senior manager in Baltimore for CASA de Maryland, a statewide immigrant advocacy group. The national fundraising campaign will be launched at a news conference today in Silver Spring, where CASA is headquartered.

The public outcry that derailed last year's push for comprehensive immigration reform hasn't stopped lawmakers from trying to change immigration law. It has merely scaled back their ambitions. Prodded by advocacy groups on both sides of the issue, members of Congress are considering various narrowly targeted proposals -- "rifle shots," in Washington parlance -- to ease or tighten the limits on legal entry. These include bills to allow more guest workers to be hired by farmers and other seasonal employers, relieve the backlog in visa requests by foreign workers with high-tech skills, and reauthorize the program that verifies applicants' eligibility for employment.