Bishop sees education as part of effort to craft immigration reform
By Barbara Stinson Lee (Catholic News Service)
SALT LAKE CITY (CNS) -- Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City said he doesn't expect any comprehensive immigration reform to occur in the United States until after the 2008 presidential election and not even for some time after that.
"It takes time to educate people about the challenges and complicated issues that surround immigration, migration and refugee needs," he told the Intermountain Catholic, his diocese's newspaper.
"We need to develop ways ... to help immigrants who are facing life and death situations. And we have to find ways to approach and eliminate the organized criminal aspects that make migration even more dangerous than it is," he said.
Bishop Wester made the comments in an interview about his participation in a June 16-18 meeting of bishops from the United States, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. They met in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. The other U.S. bishop who attended was Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif.
This year's meeting included bishops from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Cuba; it was the first time other Latin American countries, besides Mexico, participated.
During the meeting all the bishops urged the U.S. and Mexican governments to better protect the rights of undocumented migrants heading north in search of better economic opportunities.
"The conference was designed to represent countries that send refugees to other countries, those countries that have refugees traveling through them, and the countries that receive refugees from the sending countries," said Bishop Wester, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration.
Bishop Soto told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview that "the presence of the Central American countries added to the richness in what we were able to discuss."
Mexico is the largest sending country, Bishop Wester said.
"But it is also the country most migrants pass through to get to the United States. Migrants from Cuba are coming through Mexico, and the Mexican government is advocating for fair treatment of migrants," he said.
In addition to the ordinary trials of migrants -- walking long distances in inclement weather, being apprehended by border patrols, and being sent back to the sending country or simply left on the southern side of the Mexican border -- migrants have faced violence, human trafficking and sexual assaults, the bishop said.
"The deportation process is confusing," Bishop Wester said, "especially if the migrants aren't returned to their home country.
"The conference made it very clear that migrants being deported should be sent back to their home country; that migrants should receive support while they're in transit; and that the bishops' conferences will advocate for immigration reform," he said.
The United States should enact immigration reform that does more to help people who need to migrate, the bishop said, and the bishops' conferences of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean must work together to make safe migration a priority.
The U.S. bishops have been working for comprehensive immigration reform without border fences and without a large waste of money, Bishop Wester said.
"A fence is not a solution at all," he told the Intermountain Catholic.
"People who are migrating to the United States are facing dire consequences at home, and they want to help us by filling jobs Americans don't want to do, like some agricultural jobs," he said. "They have very limited resources in their native countries."
Bishop Soto told CNS that "oppressive poverty will continue to be the driver of immigration."
The bishops toured the border together as a part of their meeting. They also heard presentations from religious and lay leaders, the Mexican government, watchdog groups and human rights workers.
The bishops concelebrated Mass at the Casa del Migrante, a Tijuana migrant shelter.
Bishop Wester said he would like to think the governments of all the countries represented at the meeting are listening to the voices of the bishops, and that more influential political voices will soon be heard.
"Those people who are conducting polls and running elections need to hear the voices from the church," he said.
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Contributing to this story was Geoffrey A. Brooke Jr. in Washington.
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Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops