National Migration Week:
A Missioner’s Reflection and a Four-Point Challenge

By Father Steve Pawelk

The U.S. Catholic Bishops have called on all U.S. Catholics to celebrate National Migration Week Jan. 7–13, 2007, under the theme “Welcoming Christ in the Migrant,” based on Matt 25. As a Glenmary Home Missioner, I have had a great deal of experience working with immigrants and helping them negotiate the maze of documents for receiving and maintaining legal status.

In the missions, my work with immigrants included Vietnamese refugees, professionals from the Philippines and Costa Rica, families from Mexico and Central America, and religious workers from Colombia. As Glenmary’s vocation director, I have assisted men from Mexico, Nigeria and Kenya to receive religious worker visas. Through all of these experiences, I have gained some familiarity with immigrants and our immigration system.

As soon as we hear the word immigration we often have an emotional reaction and our opinion has been set. Yet, maybe a moment of reflection can help all of us move forward in understanding the complexity of this problem. First of all, we need to better understand the process that a potential immigrant must go through. Second, we need to take steps  to address our current situation.

Current Process for Entering the United States

As an American citizen it is very easy for me to travel. If I go to Mexico or Kenya or Italy, I present my passport at the airport and get my travel visa. To go to some other countries—e.g., Russia, Nigeria or China—a more complex system is in place. Yet, typically, once I send the appropriate documents to a visa assistance agency, I will eventually receive my visa to these countries as well.

These are not the experiences for most immigrants and migrants coming to the United States.

Normally, they need to have money in the bank, present many identification documents, make an appointment with the U.S. embassy (sometimes involving a wait of many months) and then stand in line for many hours. Usually they need to speak some English to obtain the visa. (How many of us speak Spanish, Chinese, Italian or Kisawili—or the native language of other countries we have visited?) They also need to know what type of visa they desire: “immigrant” (coming to stay) or “non-immigrant” (staying for a short period, but will return to his/her country). In the non-immigrant category, there are 23 to 24 types of visas, each with sub-categories. More people are turned down for a visa to come to this country than receive one.

Our visa system, in addition to being extremely complex, is not family-friendly and is sometimes even arbitrary. I know of cases where parents in Nigeria were denied a visa to attend their son’s ordination in the United States; where relatives in Mexico were denied visas to attend the funeral of family members in the United States. And in some cases, some family members were granted visas but not other members.

Last year Glenmary Home Missioners applied for visas for three men from three different countries who wanted to join us in formation. We requested “religious-worker visas” since neither these men nor Glenmary can be certain if they will complete formation with us. They have little or no experience of the home missions in the United States but truly wish to explore it. If they continue in formation, we will arrange to move them from a non-immigrant visa (R-1) to an immigrant visa (popularly known as the “green card”). If they do not stay with us, the expectation is that they will return to their respective countries.

All three of these men—from Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria—had similar qualifications, had been screened and voted on by the Glenmary admissions committee and had their legal work done by the same lawyer. The man from Kenya received a five-year religious worker visa (the maximum under the law). The man from Mexico received a one-year visa. And the man from Nigeria was denied any visa because he was not a priest—which the other two are not either and which is not required by the law.

Each case was handled by a different U.S. immigration agent, and each agent interprets the law differently. Some people pray that they will get a kind agent; others pray that the agent will be having a good day and not have experienced any deep suffering that will make them less understanding. Despite all the expensive preparation and the paperwork the applicant holds in his hands, each visa applicant’s fate and dreams rest in the hands of an agent who conducts a three-minute interview—or less!

Now, if you think this is already too complicated, let me add one more level. It is the  State Department which issues visas in an applicant’s home country, but once he lands in the United States, he is now in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security which issues a I-94 card that states how long he can remain in the United States. The length of time on the I-94 is often not the same as the time granted by the visa. The Homeland Security officials see no previous paper work and usually have a long line of folks waiting. They ask two to three questions and make a decision. So, for instance, a man’s visa may be good for five years, but Homeland Security says he can stay only two years. And the decision of Homeland Security overrides that of the State Department.

What We Can Do to Make Positive Changes

I have just explained the legal system of obtaining a visa, but I have not touched on the motivations of those wanting to travel to the United States nor the challenge of undocumented workers and why they are here. Let me offer two suggestions.

First, please take the time to read what the Catholic Church says regarding immigration. Such information can be found at www.justiceforimmigrants.org or in the excellent joint letter of our U.S. bishops with the Mexican bishops written January 22, 2003, entitled “Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope.”

Second, consider my personal four-point solution to the challenge of immigration reform. Most of the ideas for immigration reform that are being talked about are rooted in politics and not in the reality of people’s lives. My four-points are rooted in a reality that I know only too well.

1. Instead of building walls or hiring more border patrol, we need to hire more agents to process visa applications. If a citizen wishes to bring their children, spouse or sibling to the United States, it can be one, five or 10 years before the application is processed. Men often come to the United States with documents to work for a year or longer but their families are not granted documents. How many of you would live that long away from your wife or children? What would you do to reunite your family?

2. We need to adjust the laws so temporary worker visas can be granted within six months of application. Many companies engaged in agriculture, construction, landscaping and meat processing depend on immigrant labor. Yet, the application for workers is not easy and not guaranteed. If both employers and their immigrant employees could have confidence that their applications would be processed within a six-month period, the company could apply and the worker could wait. This would resolve a great deal of our current illegal immigration.

3. We need to create a path to citizenship for the many undocumented already here. Some of these folks came as children with their parents. They may have been only infants when they arrived and for, perhaps,18 years this has been the only country they have known. Now there is absolutely no path for them to become citizens as adults. Some say they should go back to their native country, but they do not know it or its language. Some of these folks are “A” students and valedictorians, but they cannot enter college since they do not have a Social Security card and no permission to stay in our country. Yet this is due to no fault of their own.

4. Finally, we need to become more involved in resolving the issues of poverty and violence in other countries. This is a great Christian responsibility. Folks normally migrate for two reasons: safety or economics. Once here, then family reunification becomes the most important goal.

A good example of an economy contributing to out-migration is Mexico. Several years ago, I visited a Toyota plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The workers received $30 American dollars for a week of five and a half days. If your children are living in a small house without running water and they have mostly beans and rice to eat, wouldn’t you look for a better opportunity? You can work in the United States at a similar Toyota plant and make maybe $60 a day! What would you do to provide a better living for your children? What risks would you take? Or if you live in a country with civil unrest or in the midst of a war, what would you do to protect your family? In short, illegal immigration is often an act of desperation spurred by very unselfish motives.

We will never solve the challenges of immigration until we are willing as Christian people to work hard to make this a more just world.

And we can begin by reforming our immigration system so it treats people as fair and as reasonable as most countries treat us. Isn’t that the Golden Rule—to treat others as we wish to be treated? For those who daily work with immigrants, both documented and undocumented, that really is all we are saying.

Or maybe just a little more: to welcome every immigrant as you would welcome Christ!—the theme of National Migration Week. Remember Matt 25: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.…