After a week of rising tensions within Europe amid a surge in migrant arrivals, with some countries, including France, taking measures against asylum-seekers, Pope Francis in Marseille Saturday challenged “alarmist propaganda” over immigration and advocated for a unified equitable reception policy.
Since Pope Francis in July 2013 first visited the small Italian island of Lampedusa, a primary destination for migrants seeking entry in Europe, the issue of migration has been a cornerstone of his papacy.
Countries around the world must get serious about reforming their immigration policies to respect the rights of migrants and refugees and establish orderly procedures for welcoming newcomers, Pope Francis said.
When Antonio Guzman-Diaz meets with senators on Capitol Hill about migration on Wednesday, April 27, he’ll anchor his appeal for change on the realities migrants face: His own, as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, and those in his community, forced to flee dire circumstances in their home countries.
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso considers the process temporary religious worker visa recipients endure to maintain lawful status a “race against time” with federal processing backlogs making it difficult to satisfy different permissions and expiration dates.
Recently, the border situation in Texas has prompted a number of lawsuits against the Diocese of Brownsville and its Catholic Charities.
The lack of will by politicians to move forward on immigration reform is affecting the lives of 11 million people in the country and something must be done, said the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration committee.
When President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso remembers that regardless of other policy disagreements the nation’s bishops were confident that immigration was an issue the two sides could work together to solve.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas submitted a lengthy document Oct. 29 that he hopes will lead to the eventual end of a policy designed to keep asylum-seekers to the U.S. on the Mexico side of the southern border until their cases are heard.
A group of Black Catholic administrators is calling on “Catholic leaders to do something, to say something” about undertones of racism they say is playing out in the treatment of Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border.
