September 24, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 15Oakland, CA

COMMENTARY

A Labor Day reflection on immigration and work

By Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio
Bishop of Brooklyn
Chairman, Domestic Policy Committee
United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops

(Below is a portion of Bishop DeMarzio’s Labor Day statement. The complete text is available at www.usccb.org/sdwp/laborday2006.htm)

Labor Day 2006 is a time when our nation and our Church are struggling with the difficult and important issue of immigration. Men, women and children come here seeking work and a better life for their families, hoping to be welcomed as neighbors and contributors to our communities.

They come as skilled and unskilled workers, agricultural laborers, or to study or join family already here. They come, in part, because U.S. employers need their labor and our economy depends upon them. Many come through official legal channels. Many others do not.

These realities and our inadequate immigration system have led to a necessary, but sadly divisive, debate on how our nation should respond. Unfortunately, the debate sometimes has not brought out the best in us.

People of good will can and do disagree over how to improve our immigration laws. Regrettably, this disagreement sometimes disintegrates into polarization, partisanship and now paralysis. We must get beyond the anger and fear, stereotypes and slogans that too often dominate this essential discussion.

Immigration is not a new reality. We are a nation and a Church built by immigrants. However, immigration raises continuing questions with new urgency. Who is an American? Who is our “neighbor?” What are the impacts of immigration on our national economy?

How much is too much–or not enough–immigration? How are individual workers and families affected – both native-born workers and those newly arrived?

How are we to address the reality that over 10 million people are here without legal documentation, but, with few exceptions, leading lives that share our values of work, family and community? How can we stand with some American workers who feel left behind or pushed aside? How are we to protect our borders against those who would do us harm?

We all bring our own perspectives, biases, even prejudices to this discussion. I hope as we observe this Labor Day, each of us might try to see these difficult questions through the eyes and experiences of someone very different from ourselves:
• A father in Mexico who cannot feed his family, or a rancher on the border whose land has become a dangerous path for desperate people, threatening their lives and his livelihood.
• A worker without legal status cutting meat or picking fruit, or a U.S. worker, with little education and few skills, searching for a job at a decent wage
• A farmer or business owner who can’t find enough workers, or a union leader working for exploited and unrepresented workers.
• A border guard asked to do an impossible task with limited resources, or a legislator who has the difficult responsibility of trying to reconcile these very different perspectives in pursuit of the common good.

The Catholic Church has a long history of involvement with immigrants. …The Church’s mission in assisting and standing with immigrants flows from our belief that every person is created in God’s image. Indeed, in His own life and work, Jesus called upon us to “welcome the stranger,” for “what you do for the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” (Mt. cf. 25: 35, 40).

This is why the Catholic community has a broad and growing Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform that we hope will contribute to a constructive debate on immigration.(http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org)

Immigration touches many aspects of national life, but I want to focus on those aspects that touch on work. The challenge of immigration today is not just at the borders, but in our labor markets.

Right now, more than 12 percent of U.S. residents and some 15 percent of workers were born in another country, up from about 5 percent in 1960.

Recent census data reveals that many newcomers are settling in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity—regions like the South, Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain states.

As this happens, newcomers can find themselves linguistically and culturally isolated and more vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination. And local communities can feel overwhelmed by the growing presence of people in their midst with different languages and different ways.

The simple fact is many parts of our nation’s economy have become dependent on immigrant workers. Agriculture relies heavily on seasonal workers to pick our crops. Our fruits and vegetables cannot be harvested without the backbreaking work of farmworkers.

Immigrant workers are increasingly moving from fields to factories: working in meat and poultry processing plants, and large hog and cattle operations. The poultry industry, increasingly industrialized and offering some of the highest risk jobs in the U.S., has a low-paid workforce that is nearly half immigrant. Our country’s hotel and restaurant industries to a great extent rely on foreign born workers; they bus the tables, make the beds and clean up after us.

The fact is we have come to depend more and more on international migration to fill our workforce. Without them our economy would have huge gaps.

Our immigration laws have failed to keep up with the demand for labor, so the need is filled by those who come into the country without legal sanction. Over 80 percent of those who have come here illegally are working part-time or full-time, contributing to the common good of our country through the work they perform and the taxes they pay.
I believe most Americans recognize the need for comprehensive reform of our fundamentally flawed U.S. immigration system. Some call for strictly limiting admission to the country as the only way to protect American workers. It is true that many newcomers may do difficult work at very low wages.

But according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, it appears that overall increases in immigration do not result in increases in unemployment among native born workers.
Catholic teaching on work insists that human beings share in God’s creation through their work. In Catholic social teaching, work is for the person, not the person for work.
Catholic teaching supports the right of workers to decent and fair wages, health care, and time off. This is why our bishops’ Conference has traditionally supported the minimum wage and why we urge, once again, that our leaders move beyond their current partisan and ideological conflicts to enact a long overdue increase in the minimum wage. Workers, also have a right to organize to protect their rights, to have a voice in the workplace and to be represented by trade unions. These basic human and economic rights are not invalidated or relinquished when one crosses a border.

The increasing international movement of goods, services, money, and people require new economic norms, ethical restraints and wise laws to regulate and address their moral and human dimensions. We need to recognize that growing globalization brings with it benefits, lost jobs, falling living standards, and inhumane working conditions.
A role of the Church, as a universal community of faith and an international institution, is to raise up the dignity and value of workers. That is why the U.S. bishops support policies that will help people to remain in their own countries, as well as policies to address the impact of immigration in our own nation.

Men and women come to America because they cannot find in their own countries the economic, political and social conditions they need to support their families, live in dignity and achieve a decent life.

The bishops and others are working to develop and advocate policies on global trade, international aid and debt relief that will reduce poverty and empower the poor, foster long-term economic development, protect human dignity in underdeveloped nations, and includes effective protections for workers in the U.S. and other countries. People should be able to provide a decent life for their families in their own countries.

Still, people come from all over the world seeking opportunity in the United States, and many come outside of the structures of our immigration laws. While the Church does not condone law-breaking, their presence here is a reality. We know their names and faces; they are in our parishes, schools and Catholic Charities agencies.

That is why a comprehensive approach to immigration reform must include a pathway to earned legalization for the millions of those working in our country without legal status. Justice and prudence demand that we treat them with dignity and find a reasonable way for their contributions and presence to be recognized within the law.

Our Bishops’ Conference has also come to support a carefully designed and closely monitored, temporary worker program that ensures workers are not exploited and protects the rights of both foreign-born and U.S. workers. Everyone working in our country should have a safe workplace, wages and employment benefits to support their families, and the protection of our labor laws, including the right to organize and have a voice.

Free trade unions have long played an essential and important role in protecting workers’ dignity and rights. We welcome the newly announced AFL-CIO partnership with day laborers. The labor movement’s effort to bring order and recognition to street corners inhabited by men, mostly immigrants, seeking a day’s work is an important step forward.

For the Catholic Church, immigration is not a political issue, but a fundamental human and moral issue. We bring to this discussion our faith, our moral principles and our long experience. Through the decades, immigrants have built our communities of faith and they are still bringing new life to our church. Immigrants are not numbers for us. They are our brothers and sisters; they are our “neighbors.”

In his powerful encyclical “Deus Caritas Est,” Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that Jesus calls us to expand who we see as our neighbor. The Holy Father, citing the parable of the Good Samaritan, says that “neighbor” can no longer be limited to “the closely-knit community of a single country or people. This limit is now abolished. Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbor. ... ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Mt 25:40). Love of God and love of neighbor have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God.” (para. 15).

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