Congress is now considering legislation to respond to thousands who seek to enter the United States to improve their lives and the lives of their families as well as those several million workers who remain in our country without legal status. As Christians, we are called to remember the Gospel mandate to extend hospitality to the stranger. As Episcopalians, we embrace a baptismal covenant which requires that we seek and serve Christ in all persons. It is primarily for these reasons that we ask the Senate to press for a just and humane immigration system and reject those measures now before it which are essentially punitive and impractical.
The Episcopal Church has adopted the following principles that we think should guide the Senate’s action on immigration legislation:
- permit the orderly entry of legal workers to the US to respond to recognized labor force needs,
- ensure that close family members be allowed to enter or be reunited with individuals legally entering the US to accept employment,
- permit undocumented migrants residing in the US at the time of the enactment of legislation to pursue legal residence and eventual citizenship if they are employed or responding to an offer of employment,
- ensure that migrants working legally in the US be granted the rights and benefits accorded US workers, including the right to change employment.
I believe that legislation which does not acknowledge the poverty which compels persons to take incredible risks to cross borders and ignores sectors of our economy that need workers is both unworkable and immoral. While there are those who would invest in higher walls and more elaborate fences or punish those whose only crime is to escape the curse of grinding poverty, we espouse a more humane and workable approach. We support a system which permits the orderly and legal movement of a significantly larger number of workers to the U.S., extending to them the opportunity to become permanent members of our communities if that is their choice.
Also as Congress debates the fate of 11 million undocumented persons who currently reside in the U.S., it is important to recognize their contributions to and investment in our communities and thus provide them with an avenue to move from the shadows into full, legal participation in our society. Criminalizing those who have honestly contributed their labor is the wrong response.
We also reject attempts to make unlawful those acts of kindness which we offer to the stranger, regardless of their immigration status, and we will encourage Episcopalians to resist all unwarranted incursions into the faith we profess and practice.
Basing national policy on fear of the stranger and a rejection of those newcomers whose gifts we need is in conflict with the teachings in the gospels. I believe that the fear that has motivated recent legislation effecting immigrants could mislead us to assume that fortresses and prisons will make us secure and that principles of justice and compassion can be discarded. To make enforcement a central provision of our immigration policy not only fails to honor our historic tradition of offering refuge to the oppressed, but also denies the call of Christ to welcome the stranger as if we were receiving Him as our guest. I urge the Senate to adopt legislation which, while respecting legitimate security concerns, affirms us as a nation which follows a generous and fair immigration policy.
The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold
Presiding Bishop and Primate
