February 8, 2008

The Church position on immigration reform

The Catholic Church does not support illegal immigration. The Church respects the right of nations to control its borders, and the legitimate need for the state to have reasonable requirements for citizenship and its privileges.

The Church evaluates public policy issues in light of sacred Scripture, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and from principles derived from its experience of trying to live and apply those teachings for many centuries.

The Church’s consistent life ethic, the belief that all human beings, from conception to natural death, have inherent dignity given to them by God himself, is applied to public policy.

The unborn, the elderly, the Death Row inmate, the poor, the handicapped and the undocumented immigrant are all human beings deserving respect and dignity. The Church approaches the undocumented immigrant not from a legal perspective, but from a moral one.

In Scripture, God calls upon his people to care for the alien. “So, you, too, must befriend the alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt” (Dt 10:17-19).

And in Chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus identifies with the ­marginalized and commands us to respond when he said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35).†

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