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Bishop: Heading Border Diocese 'a Powerful Learning Experience'
By Mark Pattison
Source: Catholic News Service
Published: Tuesday, November 03, 2009
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U.S. Border Patrol Agent opens a gate leading to a dirt road as he searches for illegal immigrants.
WASHINGTON (CNS)—Being the bishop of a border diocese has proven "a powerful learning experience," said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz.

Although, during his time in Chicago as a priest and auxiliary bishop, he had awareness of and contact with immigrant populations, being on the border has given Bishop Kicanas the opportunity to see "the struggle of migrants to realize their dreams, to be aware of their fears, their aspirations," he said.

Bishop Kicanas, vice president of the U.S. bishops, made his remarks in an interview with Catholic News Service prior to his address at a Jesuit Refugee Service-sponsored conference, "Crisis at Our Borders: The Human Reality Behind the Immigration Debate," held Oct. 29 at Georgetown University in Washington.

"A migrant is a person possessed by a dream -- just like us," Bishop Kicanas said at the conference, co-hosted by the Institute for the Study of International Migration, Woodstock Theological Center and the university's Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service.

"You've probably heard people say on television, 'What is it about "illegal" that you don't understand?', or, 'Those people are criminals—felons! They're taking our jobs.' But the reality is so much more complex," the bishop said.

"Migration is a problem that calls for international solutions," Bishop Kicanas added, noting that migration is an issue with "every country in the world," because of war, torture, weather, refugees and the economy.

"They're trying to improve their lives, live their lives with some dignity, with some semblance of value and meaning," Bishop Kicanas said.

He quoted from Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth") when he said, "We may not fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family" and that doing so calls for people to "share this earthly city in unity and peace."
Bishop Kicanas said it was unjust that "we use the sweat equity and the taxes of the immigrant community without giving them membership, without giving them the protection of laws."

Immigrants, he said, "have fundamental and inalienable rights that must be respected by every person in every situation."

One reason for the apparent breakdown in U.S. immigration policy is that there is "no line" that immigrants can join to get on a path to citizenship, according to Frank Sherry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigrant advocacy organization.

There are only 5,000 visas for permanent residency for every 500,000 immigrants who make it each year into the United States, he said. There are an estimated 12 million immigrants "living in the shadows" with no way to gain U.S. citizenship under current law, he said. Meanwhile, Sherry noted, 5 million minors, all of them U.S. citizens, are the children of immigrants unable to apply for citizenship.

"We're in the 21st century and we have a set of 1950s policies," he said.

Immigration policy focuses on deporting those who have no legal status to stay in the country, said Jesuit Father Sean Carroll, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative, a binational organization that provides aid to immigrants.

For many, deportation means a father leaves his children and their mother behind; spouses are separated from each other, usually sent to different cities; and children who have the right to remain in the United States often go with their parents back to their native country, where there is no work to be found and a debt still to be paid to the people who smuggled them into the United States.

The immigrant-smuggling industry would largely vanish, Sherry suggested, if there were a way for people from other nations to enter the U.S. legally.

Deaths from dehydration and malnutrition also would be sharply reduced on the U.S. side of the border, where an estimated 5,000 deaths have been recorded since 1994, as well as on the Mexican side of the border, where drug and gang activity has made the journey more perilous.

The Rev. Delle McCormick, a United Church of Christ minister, talked about the four years she was in mission ministry in Chiapas state in southern Mexico under Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, then the bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas. She recalled a Mass she attended in 2003 near the end of her mission assignment.

During the Mass, a Mexican priest took the stole from around his shoulders and draped it around hers. She said the priest told her, "You came here to be a missionary to our people. Now you are called to be a missionary to your own."

"It's the hardest charge I've ever had," said Rev. McCormick, now executive director of BorderLinks, another immigrant advocacy group working near the U.S.-Mexico border.

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