Immigration horribles

We face an avalanche of horrible news regarding immigration and the challenges are not limited to the US. All throughout the world there are people running from violence and poverty to places where there is less violence and poverty. This is not a new story.

I have been trying to track my family history. I had my DNA sequenced and discovered relatives I did not know I had. Their grandmother and my grandfather may have been brother and sister and at least first cousins. They both left Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was at a time when the country welcomed immigrants, at least on paper. That all changed after WWI. Until the Great War broke out, there was great demand for labor to support the growing industrial giant that was the US.

My ancestors were escaping the mess that was the Russian Empire and the about to collapse Austro-Hungarian Empire. I am grateful they did. Since that time, humankind has gotten better at moving people around. The great migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was facilitated by the steamship. Fifty years earlier it would have been unthinkable that so many people could have immigrated so far and so fast.

Fast forward a century and we have chaos in South and Central America, in Africa, in the Middle East, and parts Asia.  There is violence, bad government, and poverty. There is also the internet which allows for even the poorest people to know what they might be able to attain and transport of all sorts that allow motivated and intelligent people to migrate. And they are migrating in droves from Africa to Southern Europe, from Central and South America to the US, from Burma to Bangladesh, from North Korea to China.

No one seems to know what can or should be done to deal with these migrations. The pressures of migrations make normally well functioning governments look awful. Put bad leadership in place and they look even worse. However, no matter how bad the leadership might be, we are still left with choices that may make even the best of leadership look bad.

What are our options. At one end of the spectrum we could simply try to close the borders and let no one in. That will not serve our needs in that we need immigrants. Furthermore, we do not have the ability to close the borders, On the other hand, we could simply open the borders and let everyone in. How would that work? We did that 100 years ago but we needed the infusion of immigrants to propel our economy and there were physical limits on how many people could actually get her. What would happen now if we opened the borders to ALL interested parties. Is that really a viable option? How many people would end up entering the country and how would we handle them?

That leaves us with the need to come up with workable rules and the resources to allow some people in and some not. How does that look? I have not heard a single voice out there that has framed this issue within workable limits to immigration .Perhaps this is what they are talking about in terms of comprehensive immigration reform. I did a basic search on the terms "comprehensive Immigration Reform" and there are a number of parties that have issued position papers. It is surprising how little meaningful discussion has made it into the mainstream press.

As noted in the "Catholic Vision of Just Immigration reform (Link)

We do know that policies that indiscriminately separate children from their migrant parents at our national border violate the sacred sovereignty of families. They need to be stopped.

But it’s not enough to condemn the treatment of a mother separated from her child without asking what should happen instead. There have been, unfortunately, too few solutions proposed to address a real problem: how should the identity of family members be verified at the border, to ensure that children are not being trafficked? That issue needs more than moralizing or grandstanding. It needs a real solution.

It’s also not enough to call for an end to family separation at the border without asking what led to this humanitarian crisis, and what kind of reforms will really make a difference.

For that reason, no matter how discouraged they are, Catholics need to lead efforts to develop comprehensive immigration reforms rooted in the principles of justice. Only serious reforms, which create a system that protects security and the right to migrate, will end humanitarian crises at the border, mass detentions and deportations, and the deaths of migrants crossing through the desert.

When do we get to this discussion?