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Statement Calling for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (June 2011)
We Racine Dominican Sisters join with other faith-based leaders and organizations in their call to our elected officials to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation that affirms the right of every person to earn a livelihood and live as a family through a safe and humane immigration system consistent with our Christian values.
We acknowledge and support the U.S. and Mexican Catholic Bishops, as they, too, call for comprehensive reform of current immigrant policies in their pastoral letter on migrants, “Strangers No Longer: Together on a Journey of Hope.”
As faith-based people, we call attention to the moral dimensions of public policy and the need to pursue policies that uphold human dignity.
We believe that immigration reform must include a system that facilitates legal status and family unity in the interest of serving the God-given dignity and rights of every individual. Our diverse faith traditions teach us to welcome our brothers and sisters with love and compassion.
We affirm the need for elected officials to enact legislation that includes:
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An opportunity for hard-working immigrants who are already contributing to this country to regularize their status upon satisfaction of reasonable criteria, and, over time, pursue an option to become lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens, if so desired;
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Reforms in our family-based immigration system to significantly reduce waiting times for separated families who currently wait many years to be reunited;
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The creation of legal avenues for workers and their families who wish to migrate to the U.S. to enter our country and work in a safe, legal, and orderly manner with their rights fully protected; and
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Border protection policies that are consistent with humanitarian values and with the need to treat all individuals with respect, while allowing the authorities to carry out the critical task of identifying and preventing entry of terrorists and dangerous criminals, as well as pursuing the legitimate task of implementing American immigration policy.
We acknowledge the right of our government to enforce the law and protect our national security, but we also recognize that our existing complex and unworkable immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed! Most immigrants in the United States are here to support their families; they hope to reunite with their loved ones, but current immigration policies prevent that from happening. We urge our elected officials to conduct the immigration reform debate in a civil and respectful manner, taking care not to blame the immigrants for our social and economic problems. It is our hope that the legislative process will produce a just immigration system of which our nation of immigrants can be proud.
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