Immigration Issues

People are not like tumbleweeds, coming and going across the border. They put down roots and have families, and wait to bring their families here. None of the people who came up here to work can ever go back to their home countries, because there is no living wage, no work for them, no worker’s rights, no health insurance there. The pressure of economies which have huge unemployment rates and very low standards of living make them unable to go back. Once they get a job here they have to stay, and keep sending money home for their expanding families, until they can afford to bring that family up here. The economic pressures are severe, and unremitting. They also no longer socially fit into the society there, when they have gotten used to the society here. Many of the immigrants who come cannot read or write in Spanish. They have limited vocabulary, and a 2nd or 3rd grade education. They will need several years of remedial education to equal a high school graduate here. There are huge statistical references to the inability of minimum wage earners to ever afford a home; and the children of these families are going to suffer the effects of unstable childhoods. Meanwhile, their labor threatens our high school graduates with cheaper workers, who will do jobs for less pay than will sustain a family here. We have not been able to get the Congress to raise the minimum wage.
Our society is being destabilized by the loss of jobs with benefits. Two generations ago, our grandfathers fought for health benefits, minimum wage, and a wage that would support a family; and over the years, we have gained disability benefits, maternity leave, pensions, insurance and health care support. Currently we are quickly losing that support. If anyone wants to return to the kind of lives our great-grandparents lived, without security and buffers, keep voting for the Administration’s policies. Catholic social justice policy has always (in this century) supported the rights of the poor to these buffers. It is one of the reasons those workers from abroad wish to come here.
Can we extend the American workers’ rights and standard of living to the severely disadvantaged folks who want to come here in desperation, looking for jobs? I believe we will severely weaken the polity by extending the economic benefits without the participatory democracy which won those rights and benefits. Participatory democracy depends on education!
If we care about family life, we should not be in favor of policies which bring in more immigrants, leaving whole towns fatherless in the disadvantaged countries. If we believe we owe social services and education to our own citizens first, we must have a care about the amount of charity we can give, paying attention first to the justice demanded of us.
We CAN help the people in disadvantaged countries immensely, by forcing our government to make better treaties. Treaties can enforce environmental protections and worker benefits. The treaties can demand of multi-national corporations and corporations formed within those countries that they give their workers a minimum wage, appropriate for families to live on in that economy; and that the worker’s rights are protected. By spelling out the worker’s rights in the treaty, we effectively create better laws in that country.
Attention to the common good should include building a sustainable economy and society. Most of the immigrants who come soon have children here, and the children are American citizens. We need to focus on the idea that immigration is not just about single people, but families. And the needs of families for healthcare, education and housing need to be considered in forming a just immigration policy,
martina