By Catholic News Service

NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- Four leaders with a stake in the ongoing national debate about immigration took to the stage at the University of Notre Dame Oct. 8 and in a two-hour forum gave voice to many of the topic's complexities.
The discussion covered labor shortages; families separated by years-long waits for visas; overcrowded schools; deaths in the desert; unreimbursed government expenses; crime rates; changing demographics; language barriers; inadequate employment options at home; and what the Catholic Church teaches about how to respond to those issues.

The forum featured Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Mayor Louis Barletta of Hazleton, Pa. Each described the key immigration issues as they relate to their communities.

Cardinal Mahony and Barletta provided the most dramatically different perspectives on responding to immigrants.

In response to a surge in Hazleton's immigrant population, the City Council in 2006 passed ordinances which, among other restrictions, impose harsh fines on landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants; require would-be tenants to get a certificate from the city affirming their right to be in the country; and revoke the business licenses of employers who hire illegal immigrants.
The law has never been enforced because of litigation. A federal judge ruled in July that the ordinance is unconstitutional, but Barletta said the city intends to appeal.

Cardinal Mahony, the most visible U.S. prelate on the topic of immigration, said Hazleton's law is part of why the tone of national discussions about immigration have taken an inappropriately hostile, fearful turn.
Such laws create fear among all sorts of people, Cardinal Mahony said, whether they are in the country legally or not. "Everybody is being looked at with suspicion," he said.

"This is not the American way," he continued. "It's destructive and divisive and it's going to diminish the sense of unity we have as a nation."
The cardinal encouraged people to get to know immigrants personally, to watch as parents work "two, three or four jobs" to ensure their children have a better life.

"It's a very moving, enriching experience," he said.

Barletta countered with his own description of the effect of immigration on his town, describing several violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants that prompted the City Council to enact the disputed laws.

"I've seen the other side," he said. "Not everyone who's here is working hard and is a nice person."

"Not everybody is here for a job," he said, adding some are drug dealers or gang recruiters.

"If every city in this country passed the Hazleton ordinance," he said, "if employers couldn't hire illegal aliens out of fear of being put out of business, then a great many illegal aliens would go home and maybe the number would be more manageable."

Martinez, who emigrated from Cuba as a child and said he is the only immigrant in the U.S. Senate, said Barletta's suggestion that immigrants are more prone to commit crimes doesn't hold up statistically.

"Sometimes crimes are committed, but that doesn't paint the entire population," he said.

Martinez said one solution to crime by illegal immigrants is to "bring them out of the shadows." Several bills that Congress has considered but so far been unable to pass include systems for legalizing the estimated 12 million people in the country without permission.

The most recent bill taken up by the Senate this summer would have given those immigrants a path to legalization, after they paid fines and back taxes and after years worth of backlogs of applications for visas are cleared.
Supporters of such legislation, including Martinez, say legalization would eliminate the problem of wages being undercut by workers who are afraid to demand higher pay lest they be turned over to authorities, as well as end the problem of immigrants who are afraid to go to police or seek other community services they need.

Napolitano said that, in 2006, 4,000 people a day were detained by authorities for entering the country illegally in her state. More than 200 people were found dead in Arizona's desert as they tried to cross the border in remote areas.
She supports tough enforcement of immigration laws, but wants dramatic changes in how visas are processed and how many are available and in the system for temporary workers.

But she doesn't support the idea of building a wall along the Mexican border because it's simply impractical.

"Those who tell you to build a wall have never been to the border," she said. "As I'm fond of saying, you show me a 15-foot wall and I'll show you a 16-foot ladder, or a tunnel."

The forum, moderated by journalist Ray Suarez, senior correspondent of the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, was part of a multiweek course of programs on immigration at Notre Dame, including residence-hall discussions, online-course work and films. Classes were canceled during the forum to allow more students to attend.

The program also included a short video describing some of the issues; it featured a Mexican woman who was arrested in a workplace raid this summer and is awaiting deportation. The final segment of the forum featured preselected questions from students, several of whom are immigrants.

10/11/2007 4:49 PM ET