People on the Move, N° 88-89 - Migration and the Social Doctrine of the Church

If there is an issue today that affects the dignity of individual persons and society, cries out for justice, requires solidarity, and calls for coordinated action that promotes the common good at national and international level, it is that complex of experiences that we call migration. Dignity, solidarity, common good – these are three of the pillars of the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC), which has a contribution to make to a world where often dramatic movements of people are realities of every day.

Dignity, solidarity, common good: These are not humanitarian ideals or political slogans. They are a synthesis of what Jesus Christ proclaimed as Good News and lived out even to death on the cross. Jesus Christ, who came that all might have life and have it in abundance (see Jn 10,10), “reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (GS 22). This life is inseparably linked to a complex of relationships: to other people and groups (social, cultural, and national), the earth and creation, and ultimately the Holy Trinity.

These relationships determine whether individuals or groups have a land and home they call their own or whether they have to get uprooted in the search for a dignified life or even for escape from persecution and death. Unfortunately these relations, instead of reflecting the gospel and making migration a chance for enriching contacts among cultures and civilizations, are usually disrupted, making migration is a problem. That is why there is a social teaching of the Church that, among other issues, also addresses migration.

1. Some specific questions about migration in the SDC

The SDC has evolved in response to concrete questions. The first “social encyclical”, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891), for example, was a response to the 19^th century industrial revolution and its disastrous effects on the lives of millions of workers. The same Pope “not only upheld vigorously the dignity and rights of the working man but also defended strenuously those emigrants who sought to earn their living abroad”.^[1] The great movements of people, which Vatican II considers a sign of our times (see GS 4-6), is one of the concerns that helped expand the breadth and depth of the SDC. So what are some important issues in migration that the SDC addresses?

The first is the right to emigrate. “Among man's personal rights we must include his right to enter a country in which he hopes to be able to provide more fittingly for himself and his dependants” (PT 106). The SDC has repeated this on many occasions and in many ways.

What is the basis of this right? It is the dignity of the human person, created in the image of God, the God of life. The human person has a right to live in a way befitting the image of God, fulfilling his/her vocation through the God-given duty of labor (see Gen 3,19). Work is rooted in the human person who participates in God's creative act of being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and subduing it (see LE 3). Labor is not only about survival but also about developing one’s personality, family, culture, social and political life.

So every human person has an inalienable right to life and the activities needed to sustain and develop it.^[2] Obviously when these rights are continually impeded, people have a right to go where they hope to start again to live humanly.

The protection of human dignity and life itself becomes evident in the more dramatic forms of migration, especially in the case of refugees. While there may be justified limitations on immigration, “respect for the fundamental right of asylum can never be denied when life is seriously threatened in one's homeland” (RCS 6; see also Appendix One).^[3]

The SDC also recognizes the right of states to control entry of persons and their borders. They have a right and duty to protect their sovereignty as well as the internal order that guarantees security, basic human rights and freedoms. Thus states can make practical decisions that control immigration.^[4] It is, however important to remember the principle that immigrants must always be treated with the respect due to the dignity of every human person. In the matter of controlling the influx of immigrants, the consideration which should rightly be given to the common good should not ignore this principle. The challenge is to combine the welcome due to every human being, especially when in need, with a reckoning of what is necessary for both the local inhabitants and the new arrivals to live a dignified and peaceful life.^[5]

This position is quite different from sometimes bitter debates on migration controls or even “zero migration”. To be morally justified, however, a decision to restrict immigration has to take into account several issues, such as:

First, there in an obligation to search for the truth about migration, its benefits in society, and critically examine the notions circulating in the media, on talk shows, and in bars. Decisions based on insufficient information harm not only migrants but also those who make them. Only the search for the truth brings freedom, peace, and justice.

Second, limiting migration cannot be based on egoistical motives, e.g., the hope of preserving a certain lifestyle while the greater part of humanity lives below the poverty line.^[6] The discussion of the rights of states and their citizens cannot be separated from solidarity, which is also basic to Catholic social teaching. Solidarity is based on our common human origin and equality and is manifest in the quest for a more just social order. “Socio-economic problems can be resolved only with the help of all the forms of solidarity,” including at an international level, on which world peace in part depends.^[7] There needs to be a globalization of solidarity.

Third, another pillar of CSD, the universal destination of goods, needs to enter any discussion of restrictions, for “the goods of creation are destined for the whole human race” (CCC 2402). “Peace and prosperity . . . belong to the whole human race: It is not possible to enjoy them in a proper and lasting way if they are achieved and maintained at the cost of other peoples and nations by violating their rights or excluding them from the sources of well-being” (CA 27).

Thus we can understand the exhortation of Ecclesia in America: «The Church in America must be a vigilant advocate, defending against any unjust restriction the natural right of individual persons to move freely within their own nation and from one nation to another» (n. 65).

So can states limit or control migration? The answer is “Yes, but ..” It can be done when accompanied by two actions.

The first is a severe examination of conscience based on the three principles mentioned above. Here the Church is called to be prophetic in forming society’s conscience and helping in its examination. It has a right and duty to speak on this issue, being “an expert in humanity” (SRS 7 and 41) that keeps recalling the basics about human dignity and a more just and fraternal social order.

The second is the need to put this discussion into the context of another pillar of the SDC, namely just international cooperation^[8] on migration that serves the common good of both the receiving and the sending countries. Support of this cooperation is evident in the presence of the Holy See as an observer in the International Organization for Migration, a forum for discussion of “ordered migration”, in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a full member and in other U.N. discussions on the international economic order as an observer, in the Pope’s appeal for reduction or cancellation of international debt, and in The Holy See’s support for the 1990 Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families.^[9]

Regarding borders in this part of the world, Church teaching raises serious questions about the morality of tolerating crossings and barriers that cause death and injury. To this can be added the abuse of migrants in transit by police or vigilantes and the dubious practice of interdiction at sea, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or on the Pacific, with the real possibility of refoulement.^[10]

Migrants, with few exceptions, are people looking for a decent life. The reaction of states and law-enforcement officials to them as they carry out their duties must be appropriate and proportionate and respectful of human dignity.^[11]

The family is one of the great themes in the SDC, for it is “the original cell of social life .... the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life” (CCC 2207). This gift of God is also deeply affected by many factors today, including migration, as Pope Pius XII knew very well fifty years ago when he published the Apostolic Constitution on migration, Exul Familia, a title already reflecting concern for the family in migration.

Among the rights of the family is “the right to emigrate as a family in search for a better life” (FC 46). They do this to fulfill duties for “the physical, spiritual and religious welfare of the family” (MM 45). The need to seek a worthy livelihood constitutes a right to migrate, and that is all the more so when migration is forced.

The right to migrate includes the right to be with one's family.^[12] The human person in his/her primary relations takes precedence over political considerations as well as production and profit. That leads John Paul II to protest against “systems that perpetuate the forced separation of spouses”^[13] or of parents from children:

The Church repeats with insistence that . . . the protection of families, and particularly of those burdened by further difficulties of being migrants and refugees, constitutes an indispensable priority . 'What God has joined together, let no one separate' sounds like an implicit condemnation for a society that grants economic advantage to the detriment of moral values.^[14]

These are quotations from Sixteen years ago. They do not seem to have lost any of their urgency.

When we consider the normal obligations of society towards the family and its development as well as the rights of the family itself (see FC 46), it is reasonable to also draw the conclusion that there is a right not to migrate or, put positively, “the primary right of man to live in one’s homeland”.^[15] Migration so often means this right is not respected as individuals and families are unable to fulfill their basic obligations to themselves and their children in a particular society.

The Church’s pastoral outreach brings it face to face with the need to defend the value of the family, its freedom of movement and decision-making, its right to educate children and bring them up “in accordance with the family’s own traditions and religious and cultural values” and the other rights of the Charter of Rights of the Family (see Appendix One). The SDC also insists that states have the obligation to assure to immigrant families what it guarantees to its own citizens.^[16] Denouncing abuse of these rights, she asserts that the family has preference in cases of conflict between society and family. There should be no discrimination against migrant families.

The Christian communities in host countries are called to solidarity and burden sharing with migrant families. Papal documents appeal to them to accept immigrants so that no one is without a family in this world. The church should be that family, especially for the heavily burdened. In the Church no one is a stranger.

This brief section briefly touches the complex area of families and individuals being inserted into a new society, new culture, and new experience of being Church. The issues are even more urgent since globalization includes strong tendencies towards the «homogenization» of cultures, “the slavish conformity of cultures, or at least of key aspects of them, to cultural models deriving from the Western world” and “the aggressive claims of some cultures against others”.^[17] The SCD requires that the “cultural practices which immigrants bring with them should be respected and accepted, as long as they do not contravene either the universal ethical values inherent in the natural law or fundamental human rights”.^[18]

In this context it is not surprising to recall themes of earlier Messages for the Day of Migrants and Refugees. “Respect and Increase the Cultural Identity of Migrants” is the theme of the 1981 Message. Culture is closely linked with migrants' identity, both personal and spiritual, as well as with their faith. It also gives them something to fall back on as they meet a new and alien society, often dominated by very secularized attitudes and approaches.

The Church has a special role in this area. The experience is that assuring migrants feel at home in a local church,^[19] is the first step to “integration” into it. Feeling at home necessarily means being themselves in “language, liturgy, spirituality, particular traditions”. That is the path to the kind of “ecclesial integration, which enriches the Church of God and which is the fruit of the dynamic realism of the Incarnation of the Son of God”.^[20] When not forced ahead nor held back, migrants make their own contribution to the catholicity of the church, i.e., that “complete openness to the other, a readiness to share and to live in the same ecclesial communion”.^[21] The teaching and experience of the Church here can be a lesson to civil societies that struggle with their multi-cultural challenges.

“Human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question”,^[22] states John Paul II in the Encyclical Laborem Exercens. Since migration is so often in search of work, it is closely linked with labor as one of the first themes of the SDC, as I mentioned earlier in the talk.

The SDC of the Church has great concerns for migrant workers, particularly for the serious problems they face: discrimination and xenophobia,^[23] deception regarding contracts or conditions of work, treatment as tools and not persons, dangerous occupations (the “three D’s”: dirty, dangerous, demanding), long working hours, pay lower than that of citizens for the same job,^[24] poor housing or none, and non-integration into social life.^[25] The message of Church documents and teaching to governments and others responsible for such situations is clear: They must protect all workers from these evils, even if they are migrants and not citizens, and work together with all nations to deal with labor migration at its roots, which means seeking a just global economic order.^[26] Local churches have a special call to solidarity with migrant workers and to formation of public opinion to promote justice for them.^[27]

Since attitudes towards migrant workers often reveal a thinly veiled racism, this issue also needs to be faced. The Holy See has made its position on racism and xenophobia clear many times.^[28] Its participation in the World Conference Against Racism (Durban, September 2001) also included consenting to the propositions in its Declaration and Program of Action, which has some forty points dealing with the issue. These merit our attention for developing our programs of education and pastoral care.

Undocumented or irregular migration is an issue that arouses many emotions. Without going into details of a complex question, I simply want to state the principles on which the SDC operates regarding this question.

But first a preliminary remark: There are no illegal migrants, for migrants are persons, and no person is illegal. Persons can engage in illegal movements but their Creator does not do illegal things. There is a need to change language that already carries with it a judgement. I believe Church documents are already correcting their previous language as we have in the Message of 2000, which speaks of “‘clandestine’, men and women in illegal situations”. Ecclesia in America n. 65 calls for attention “to the rights of migrants and their families and to respect for their human dignity, even in cases of non‑legal immigration”. This is only respect for the truth. Illegality is not necessarily a result of personal bad will. Judgement needs to be suspended when we speak about people, particularly at this moment when the tendency to judge is very strong. The dignity of a person in an irregular situation does not expire as a visa or a passport does.

One final point is that there are situations where there is no legal way to be regularized or to return home. Solidarity calls for finding a way out of such situations. In 1998, as one example, Pope John Paul II, during the Fourth World Congress for Migration, spoke about his Jubilee year plea for condoning or reducing international debt. He then appealed for something analogous for migrants: a significant gesture “through which reconciliation, a dimension proper to the Jubilee, would find expression in the form of an amnesty [in Italian, sanatoria] for a wide range of those immigrants who, more than the others, suffer the drama of precariousness and uncertainty, that is, those who are illegal.”^[30] It is notable that some episcopal conferences have taken up that call in their respective countries.

In March 2000 the United Nations Population Division, Dept. Of Economic and Social Affairs, published Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?^[31] Its basic message is that the average age of the populations in developed countries will increase significantly in the next fifty years, that the population of working age people will decline while those of retirement age will increase. In some countries the decrease of the population of its citizens is irreversible in the medium term. One solution is increasing migration to these countries so that industries, services, social welfare, etc. can continue. The report offers different hypotheses for how this might happen, but the increase in migration, even in countries were some politicians dream of “zero migration”, is almost inevitable. In one hypothesis, just to give an example, the U.S.A. would need to accept more than eleven million a year as compared to the less than one million a year at present.

Last November I attended a major meeting of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, at which this report was presented by its main author. Surprisingly, there was very little negative reaction. Even some European Union countries, which are most affected by this report, recognized its importance.

Of the many issues raised in the report, I want to focus on a migration issue, the so called “brain drain”. The fact is that developed countries are already recruiting talent outside their borders. The U.S.A., for example, recently made an exception to its 1996 immigration law and authorized issuing 600,000 visas information technology workers, most of whom come from India. The search for foreign talent sometimes even becomes a “hunt for brains”, not a brain drain. That raises questions of justice: Does anyone have the right to buy talent from developing countries simply on the basis of having money to do this? Is it right to attract people who have been educated and raised in their homelands at much cost to their own social and educational services to serve the interests of businesses in other countries?

This is a serious moral question that also affects the personal capital available in many countries. A recent statement of the U.S. Bishops Conference raises the issue: “While we welcome all the new immigrants and recognize that our Church, like the United States as a whole, has come to depend upon the many talents and profound energy of newcomers, we must also remind our government that the emigration of talented and trained individuals from poorer countries represents a profound loss to those countries.”^[32]

In terms of SDC, the solution needs to be elaborated on the basis of solidarity, the universal destination of the goods of the earth, international common good, and the priority of persons over work and possessions. This needs to be proclaimed in its education and formation programs and advocacy in order to form the conscience of individuals and nations as a whole in facing this issue. During the IOM meeting of last November, it was heartening to hear many developed countries affirm the need for international agreements on migration to assure that both the countries of origin and those of destination share the benefits of migration. It is still to be seen how noble discourses of international conferences are translated into action over the next years. I believe that this is a point well worth monitoring.

2. Some final observations on the SDC on migration

a. It should not surprise us then that there is a broad convergence of the SDC on migration with many people of good will who are not particularly religious. That is the result of right reason about the human person and can lead to a rich dialogue between Christian and humanitarian thinkers. I would add, however, that Christian faith, among other things, protects the results of right reason and even goes beyond it. For example, to the right of leaving one’s country, the SDC adds “the right to enter a country in which he hopes to be able to provide fittingly for himself and his dependents” (PT 106).

Faith furthermore protects justice, human dignity and solidarity from being hijacked by ideologies and politics that have their own agendas. Thus the SDC considers human rights as rooted in the person. That is radically different from dominating currents of thought today, where rights are conceived more in terms of what public opinion believes or law recognizes than in reference to anything transcendent. The fact remains that when the Creator is denied or ignored, the creature is also easily sacrificed. Migrants and refugees, for example, can be easily pushed aside by “policy decisions” and language that deprive them of their individual human dignity.

b. What all the discussion on the SDC and migration tries to do is put into action the consequences of our faith, based on the Word of God and proclaimed in the scriptures. “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Ex 23,9). Every generation had to learn this lesson, rooted in the collective history of God’s people. And so, in consequence, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Lev 19,33). This alien, loved by God, is a kind of “sacrament” of the Beloved Son: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25,35). Recalling God’s love in Christ’s sacrifice, St. John reminds us: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4,11). Our situation of being aliens, estranged from God by our sin and separation from the Covenent is changed in the redeeming act of Jesus in his death and resurrection: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Ephesians 4,19). The SDC helps us live out that reality as individuals and community of believers in Christ in the world of human mobility.

Charter of the rights of the family

Article 12

The families of migrants have the right to the same protection as that accorded other families.

a) The families of immigrants have the right to respect for their own culture and to receive support and assistance towards their integration into the community to which they contribute.

b) Emigrant workers have the right to see their family united as soon as possible.

c) Refugees have the right to the assistance of public authorities and International Organizations in facilitating the reunion of their families.

Notes:

[1]. Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Exul Familia, (1952), Title 1.

[2]. «Specifically, these are the right to have one’s own country, to live freely in one’s own country, to live together with one’s family, to have access to the goods necessary for a dignified life, to preserve and develop one’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage, to publicly profess one’s religion, to be recognized and treated in all circumstances according to one’s dignity as a human being.
«These rights are concretely employed in the concept of universal common good, which includes the whole family of peoples, beyond every nationalistic egoism. The right to emigrate must be considered in this context. The Church recognizes this right in every human person, in its dual aspect of the possibility to leave one’s country and the possibility to enter another country to look for better conditions of life» (Message for the Day of Migrants and Refugees 2001, n. 3. Henceforth Message, followed by the date).

[3]. This point is supported by Article 31 (1) of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, the foundation of modern asylum law, which recognizes that entering a country, even illegally, for the purpose of seeking asylum is not a crime.

[4]. «Certainly, the exercise of such a right [to enter another country] is to be regulated, because practicing it indiscriminately may do harm and be detrimental to the common good of the community that receives the migrant. Before the manifold interests that are interwoven side by side with the laws of the individual countries, it is necessary to have international norms that are capable of regulating everyone’s rights, so as to prevent unilateral decisions that are harmful to the weakest» (Message 2001, n. 3).

[5]. Pope John Paul II, «Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 2001" n. 13.

[6]. «In this regard, in the Message for Migrants’ Day of 1993, I called to mind that although it is true that highly developed countries are not always able to assimilate all those who emigrate, nonetheless it should be pointed out that the criterion for determining the level that can be sustained cannot be based solely on protecting their own prosperity, while failing to take into consideration the needs of persons who are tragically forced to ask for hospitality» (Message 2001, n. 3).

[7]. CCC 1941. See also the whole context in CCC 1939-1941.

[8]. See CA 57, LE 23, LG 66; Message 1991 n. 2; 1995 nn. 2 and 4

[9]. See discourse of Pope John Paul II to the Fourth World Congress on Migration (L’Osservatore Romano, 10 October 1998, p. 8) and his earlier statement in the 1980 Message: «This huge flux includes hundreds and thousands of emigrant husbands and wives who are obliged to submit to forced separation, even if one may note with relief that the reuniting of spouses and families is becoming an increasingly strong concern and interest in legislation and international agreements aimed at regulating or disciplining migratory policy» (n. 1).

[10]. The principle of non-refoulement is sacred in international refugee law and is violated by policies and actions that limit access to asylum procedures or return people to places where they face persecution or torture. See RCS n. 14; 1951 Geneva Convention, Article 33.

[11]. Those responsible would do well to reflect on what the Pope recently said about legitimate defense against terrorism and realize that they are not dealing with terrorists:
There exists therefore a right to defend oneself against terrorism,a right which, as always, must be exercised with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means. The guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong. International cooperation in the fight against terrorist activities must also include a courageous and resolute political, diplomatic and economic commitment to relieving situations of oppression and marginalization which facilitate the designs of terrorists. The recruitment of terrorists in fact is easier in situations where rights are trampled upon and injustices tolerated over a long period of time.(Pope John Paul II, “Message for the World Day of Peace 2002,” n. 5.)
If such precautions are to be exercised in dealing with terrorists, what should be done in the case of people who are looking for a job?

[12]. GS 66 has a clear statement on this that builds on earlier teachings of John XXIII and Pius XII: "All the people . . . must treat them [migrants] not as mere tools of production but as persons, and must help them to bring their families to live with them.»

[13]. "The Serious, Sorrowful and Complex Conditions of Families involved in the Difficult Situation of Emigration" (Message 1986). The 1993 Message, "Problems of the Migrant Family," takes the similar positions as a contribution to the International Year of the Family. His 1980 Message also deals with migrant families, "An ever more Adequate and Enlightened Pastoral Care of Families in Emigration."

[14]. Message 1986.

[15]. Pope John Paul II, «Message to the Fourth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees,» n. 2.

[16]. "Taking into account their particular needs, the State's task is to ensure that immigrant families do not lack what it ordinarily guarantees its own citizens. In particular, it is the State's duty to protect them from any attempt at marginalization or racism, promoting a culture of convinced and active solidarity. For this purpose it provides the most appropriate and concrete measures for their acceptance, together with those social services likely to foster for them too, a peaceful life and a development that respects their human dignity" (Message 1994).

[17]. Pope John Paul II, «Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 2001" n. 10, 9, and n. 8.

[18]. ibid. n. 13

[19]. The 1982 Message, "Specific Church Presence in the Structures and Organs for the Pastoral Care of Migration," concentrates on the specific purpose of ecclesial structures and organisms for the pastoral care of emigrants. Regarding the development of pastoral approaches that respect and promote the languages and cultures and ecclesial traditions of migrants, see also CCL 787 §1, 769, 518, and 214.

[20]. "The Right of Believing Migrants to Free Integration into the Church," Message 1986. See also the 1981 Message, "Respect and Increase the Cultural Identity of Migrants."

[21]. Message 1986

[22]. LE 3

[23]. "The Condition of Migrants as a Challenge to the Vocation of the Christian" (Message 1983).

[24]. See CA 8, which refers immediately to the exploitation of women and children, some of whom are migrants.

[25]. See GS 66 and PP 69.

[26]. See CA 52.

[27]. "Specific Church Presence in the Structure and Organs for the Pastoral Care of Migrations" (Message 1982).

[28]. See the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, The Church and Racism: Towards a More Fraternal Society (Vatican City 2001).

[29]. This section is based on the 1995 Message.

[30]. Pope John Paul II, «Message to the Fourth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees,» n. 2.

[31]. Population Division, Dept.Of Economic and Social Affairs, U.N. Secretariat, Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Aging Populations? (New York, 21 March 2000). Also available at www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm.

[32]. U.S. Catholic Bishops, Welcoming the Stranger Among Us: Unity in Diversity (Washington DC, USCC, 2000) p. 8.

Migration and the Social Doctrine of the Church*

1. Some specific questions about migration in the SDC

2. Some final observations on the SDC on migration

Charter of the rights of the family

Article 12

Migration
and the Social Doctrine of the Church*