October 9, 2006VOL. 44, NO. 17Oakland, CA

Border fence ok'd; religious leaders lament

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Legislation calling for construction of a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border passed both houses of Congress before they adjourned until after the November elections.

The fence was widely criticized by advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, who said the bill was little more than an election-year stunt aimed at voters who want a crackdown on illegal immigration.

In a Sept. 29 teleconference, Kevin Appleby, director of migration and refugee policy for the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services, said the bishops opposed a fence for a variety of reasons. For one thing, half of those who are in the country illegally come in legally and stay beyond their permitted period, he said.

Also, a fence will not prevent people from attempting to cross into the U.S. over even more difficult terrain, he added.
But it’s also a moral issue, said Appleby, citing a Government Accountability Office report that showed the number of deaths in the southwestern deserts doubled after the United States began to blockade less hazardous crossing points in the 1990s.

“It’s going to lead to more deaths because people will become desperate,” said Appleby. “It’s an embarrassment. It sends the wrong signal to our neighbors. Instead of meeting the problem head-on, we’re hiding from it.”

Immigrant rights demonstrators protest in front of the office of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., in Batavia, Ill., last month. The rally was one of many around the country calling for comprehensive changes in U.S. immigration law.
CNS PHOTO/JOSHUA LOTT/REUTERS

Frank Sharry, director of the National Immigration Forum, said in the same teleconference that the fence legislation was pushed by the House Republican leadership “obviously playing to a minority of its own party
in hopes of turning out voters.”

Also before the recess, Congress included $1.2 billion in appropriations to go toward various border enforcement measures including the fence, the cost of which is estimated conservatively at more than $2 billion.

Despite that, Sharry said he doubted that the fence would ever be built, in part because of the harsh mountainous terrain of some areas and because of objections such as those expected from environmentalists and the Tohono O’odham Indian tribe, whose reservation traverses the border in Arizona.

In the days before the late night vote Sept. 29, religious leaders joined senators from both parties in a final push to prevent the passage of several immigration bills that House leaders threatened to add to last-minute legislation.
Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto of Orange, Calif., said at a Sept. 26 press conference in Washington that “this is not the time to make political points.” He said Congress was faced with “a stark moral challenge,” as well as a complicated economic, political and cultural issue.

“We cannot accept ineffective proposals which masquerade as solutions,” Bishop Soto said.
He was among religious leaders and politicians who insisted that any broad immigration legislation must include measures to enable foreign workers in the country to meet labor demands legally and to provide a path for illegal immigrants to “come out of the shadows” and regularize their status.

Jewish, Baptist and evangelical Protestant leaders also put immigration proposals emphasizing enforcement into a moral context.
“Thirty-six times the Bible tells us to treat strangers as we treat ourselves,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “It is its most common command.”

The Rev. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said immigration legislation that only deals with enforcement is “a political issue with profound moral and ethical implications.”

At the same press conference, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., all argued for holding out for a comprehensive immigration law that includes a guest worker plan and provisions that would allow the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country to legalize their status.

Several enforcement bills were put on the table in September by House members who had blocked efforts to move forward on a comprehensive immigration bill passed in May by the Senate. The House had earlier passed a bill with only strict enforcement measures. It was expected that the two vastly different bills would go to a joint House-Senate conference committee over the summer and that a compromise version would emerge.

Instead, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., House Judiciary Committee chairman, and other committee chairmen held a series of field hearings around the country during the summer that focused largely on enforcement.
Supporters of comprehensive legislation, including Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, criticized the hearings as one-sided.

When Congress returned to work after Labor Day, Sensenbrenner resurrected parts of the original House bill as three separate pieces of legislation, which passed Sept. 21. A fourth, expanding enforcement authority against people who build cross-border tunnels, was attached to the Defense Department appropriations bill and also passed.

In a Sept. 26 letter to the Senate, Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., chairman of the bishops’ migration committee, had urged senators to oppose the Secure Fence Act.

The fence law “would create more problems than it would solve,” Bishop Barnes wrote. “We fear it would lead to increased exploitation and deaths of migrants attempting to enter the United States and an increase in smuggling-related violence directed at Border Patrol agents and others."

He said that a fence “would send the wrong signal” to Mexico and the world, and might be viewed “as a sign of fear, weakness and isolation, not strength and engagement. It would also undercut our moral authority to request other nations to accept war refugees, for example, or other vulnerable populations.”

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