In 1848 John Galway arrived in Baltimore and wrote home to his family sending ten pounds and reporting that “I might get a chance before a month…[to send for all].”(1) Today the immigration flow continues but the Irish, Germans and Italians have been replaced by Bosnians, Latinos and especially Mexicans. But some things remain the same: they still send money home and they still hope for the American dream.

Despite all the dangers – the illegal dashes across the desert and past the U.S Border Patrol, the crammed trips in windowless vans traveling up America’s interstates, they keep coming. They come because their families are desperate, because there is not enough food, and not enough clean water. They come because there are no doctors for their children and because they want a better life for their family.

Mexico accounts for most of the illegal immigration into the United States. Over 1.1 million Mexicans were apprehended in 2004, dwarfing the numbers from other countries. This includes any alien illegally in the United States, regardless of whether the alien entered the country by fraud or misrepresentation or entered legally but subsequently lost legal status. Grinding poverty spurs much of this illegal immigration. According to the World Bank, Mexico has made progress since 1995 in reducing poverty. But extreme poverty, measured as subsisting on $1 a day or less, still plagues 27.9% of rural Mexicans.(2)

Extreme poverty overrides the natural instinct to prefer the familiar surrounded by family and friends. It is the same desperation that drove past waves of immigration: the German Catholics fleeing persecution, the Irish a terrible famine, the Vietnamese the ravages of war.

But as the 2006 election draws near, the rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration is intensifying. Illegal aliens make easy political targets for politicians looking for extra votes who can argue, “They have broken the law and our grandparents and great-grandparents entered the country legally.”

Yet political rhetoric has a way of overlooking inconvenient facts. Prior to 1921, with the major exception of non-whites, the immigration doors were wide open. The only restrictions were qualitative in nature, barring entry to criminals, prostitutes, anarchists and similar categories deemed a threat to the nation. The Irish and Germans who came to America in the 19th century faced many problems but no national quota restriction.

National quotas were not established until the 1920s and responded especially to the rising tide of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe – Russian Jews, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Greeks and others with cultural and religious traditions very different from native born Americans or even the earlier Irish and German immigrants. The new quota system, according to historian Howard Zinn, “favored Anglo-Saxons, kept out black and yellow people, limited severely the coming of Latins, Slavs, Jews.”(3)

Understanding the often racist backdrop of past immigration policy can enable American citizens to better appreciate the deep feelings held by Mexican Americans and others when the term “illegal alien” is employed to stir up voter unease toward immigrants, as if Martians are invading America in the War of the Worlds.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that the steady flow of illegal immigrants into the United States coupled with defective immigration policies is harming people on both sides of the border.

Honest employers in this country who hire only American citizens or those with valid work visas take umbrage at businesses that hire undocumented workers at low wages for competitive advantage. American workers worry that undocumented immigrants are taking their jobs away.

Immigrants are victims, too. Many are paid meager wages, offered no worker’s compensation and yet are sent into hazardous working conditions that no legitimate employer would allow and federal law prohibits. But unscrupulous employers take their chances knowing that their illegal employees don’t dare report them for fear of being deported.

Clearly, U.S. immigration policy is in shambles and needs major repair, but whether Congress can put aside political posturing long enough to enact comprehensive reform before the 2006 election is very much in doubt.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill long on border enforcement but short on vision of how to address the root causes of immigration, like the grinding poverty in Mexico. The House wants to make felons of undocumented immigrants and those who help them, including Catholic agencies that assist undocumented immigrants with emergency housing and food.

The U.S. Senate, while proposing a 370 mile triple layer fence along the Mexican border, has generally taken a more compassionate and common sense approach. The Senate has dropped the felony provisions in the House bill and proposed a process whereby undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for five years and have no criminal record can apply for citizenship if they pay back taxes and agree to learn English.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have opposed the House approach and voiced support for many provisions of the Senate legislation. The bishops have made three broad recommendations to Congress:

• Adopt policies that address the root causes of immigration by assisting poor nations to develop their economies so migrants can remain at home and earn a decent living;

• Reform immigration laws, including a process whereby many undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a reasonable period of time and acted responsibly can take steps to become U.S. citizens; and,

• Ensure due process rights where immigrants have their “day in court” consistent with American values.(4)

This summer conferees from the U.S. House and Senate will try to work out the differences between the two chambers. Meanwhile, plenty of heated discussion among citizens will also occur over how the country can best address the issue of illegal immigration.

To obtain some historical perspective, Catholic citizens may want to dust off those old family albums and letters and consider their own immigrant past. To put their family’s story into a broader picture, they might want to read University of Missouri Professor Kerby Miller’s book Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America.(5) Miller’s book, which was a 1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist, serves as an uncomfortable reminder that the advancement of past immigrants was neither swift nor easy. In fact, their story can sound a lot like the story of today’s immigrants.

In another book which Miller co-authored with Paul Wagner, he states: “Most Irish Catholic immigrants, especially in the 19th century, were poor and unskilled and had to begin life anew at the very bottom of the American socioeconomic ladder. Further, most Irish newcomers, particularly the large majority who were Catholic, did not receive friendly welcomes from native-born American Protestants. The society that these Irish encountered in the United States was not initially or automatically tolerant and pluralistic: the Irish had to make it so, through strength of numbers and determined efforts, often against bitter opposition. On both sides, but especially for the immigrants themselves, the period of mutual adjustment was long and painful.”(6)

The Mexicans who have recently entered the country and roof our homes, bus our tables at restaurants and harvest our fruits and vegetables find themselves in much the same position. But like John Galway, who dreamed of re-uniting his family in better circumstances, they hope for better times, if not for themselves, then for their children.

References

1) Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1985) page 129.

2) United States Department of Homeland Security. Yearbook of Immigration Statistic: 2004, www.dhs.gov/immigrationstatistics. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2006; World Bank, Income Generation and Social Protection for the Poor as quoted from http://usinfo.state.gov/wh/Archive/2005/Aug/26-39137.html.

3) Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (New York, New York: Perennial Classics, 2001) page 382

4) Statement of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, March 1, 2006

5) Kerby Miller, Emmigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. (New York: Oxford UP, 1985)

6) Kerby Miller and Paul Wagner. Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Emigration to America. Washington, D.C.: Elliott and Clark Publishing, 1994.