Immigration and the Process of Globalization

by Seamus Finn, OMI

The plight of migrants and issue of immigration received strong support at the recent province convocation in Albuquerque in. Migrants and undocumented people are encountered in all of the Areas in which we minister in the province.

The U.S and most European countries are seriously challenged by the desire of people to move freely across borders in search of opportunity and a place to feed, shelter and care for themselves and their families. In the context of globalization this reality presents a unique moral dilemma for the U.S. and for the church.

The process of globalization has been fundamentally about the integration of markets both capital and goods, into a global system which primarily benefits corporations and those who invest in the global economy. Evidence of this was clearly available during the Clinton administration when the Secretary of Commerce and the US Trade Representative were seen to be on a par with the secretary of State in dealing with most global issues.

We have then sought to create continent-wide, in fact, global free trade zones for goods, capital and information. However we want no such free movement of labor in these same zones. Rather we seek to suppress international migration through police actions at our border and excessive internal sanctions across the country.

Our immigration policy and in fact the immigration policy of most first world countries is predicated on securing a cheap labor force to do the menial jobs that most of us will not do: cleaning hotel rooms, washing dishes in restaurants, harvesting fruits and vegetables, processing livestock and poultry and child and elder care.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) sharply increased the budget of the border patrol and imposed new sanctions against employers who hired undocumented workers. This was followed by the highly publicized border crackdowns, first in El Paso ("Operation Hold the Line") and later in San Diego ("Operation Gatekeeper") which resulted in a new militarization of our southern border. Recently this crackdown has been significantly strengthened when Congress authorized the hiring of 1,000 additional .INS officers and 300 support personnel each year between 1996 and 2001. This effectively doubled the size of the border patrol and at the same time gave agents new powers to summarily remove undocumented persons without benefit of judicial review.

The voters in California passed Proposition #187 in 1994 by a wide margin. In this initiative they sought to bar undocumented migrants from access to public services in schools, hospitals and public assistance and attempted to enlist teachers, medical personnel and welfare case workers as enforcers. This effort was nationalized in 1996 when Congress prohibited non-citizen immigrants from receiving most means tested state and federal benefits. They also raised the income threshold required to sponsor new immigrants and enacted harsh penalties against anyone who overstayed their visas. For those who were entitled to pursue permanent resident status the act imposed a fee of $1,000 for adjusting status.

We basically want to have our cake and eat it too. We seek all the benefits that economic globalization offers: unrestricted access to goods produced in cheap labor conditions throughout the world, the free flow of our portfolio wealth across the globe into whatever investment tools will reap the most increase, rapid access to information from all corners of the world AND secure barriers at our borders and coercive internal sanctions to keep the unwanted migrants from getting in.

The biblical mandate to shelter aliens, widows and orphans which is reiterated in so many gospels stories calls us

• to give special priority to the ministry of hospitality in our communities
• to offer the moral leadership which calls others beyond the xenophobia which is operative in many corners of our societies communities
• do everything we can to change the restrictive, selfish immigration policies which are being enforced in our name

This is uniquely an Oblate mission today. More than half of our congregation lives and ministers in first world countries. Nearly half of our fellow Oblates live in countries whose citizens are denied permission to cross our borders for more than a brief stay. Our ministry of hospitality can be a powerful witness to the gospel mandate (Ex 22. 21- 24; Jer.7: 5 - 7 in local communities and our efforts to change the restrictive immigration policies can be an invitation to our respective societies to share more equitably the goods of the earth which are God’s gift to the entire human family. (Eph. 2; 18 - 20: Mt. 25: 31 - 46)