Seeing Christ in the Immigrant

“The Catholic Church changed my life.”

Carmen’s reflection on her life intertwined with the Church is one many Catholics may relate with.

She met her husband Cesar at church. Together, they previously worked for their local diocese and alongside religious sisters to serve the poor in their community. The couple and their two young boys are now parishioners at Gesu Catholic Church in Detroit, where Carmen volunteers as a Spanish tutor and Cesar is employed as the information technology specialist.

The Church was also there for Carmen and Cesar when they arrived in Michigan as immigrants from El Salvador. Besides the material support they received from their brothers and sisters in Christ, Carmen also found a sense of familiarity through the Church’s liturgical life.

“When we come here and everything is new, I think [one of] the first things you feel like at home is going to the Mass,” she said.

Carmen and Cesar would not have left El Salvador if they did not have to, but like so many others, it was what was best for their family. Run-ins with the local gangs, and Carmen becoming pregnant, led to the couple applying for a tourist visa to visit Cesar’s family in the U.S.

“This was not about money for us,” Carmen said about their reason for leaving. “It was really unsafe for us.”

The topic of immigration in this country is as complex as it is contentious. How should Catholics think about immigration and the migrants who land here? The people of God should let the truth of the faith guide their values and perspectives, rather than secular, political, or ideological sources.

This edition of Focus will share the Church’s perspective on immigration, which is guided by the fundamental Catholic social doctrines of upholding human dignity and caring for the poor and vulnerable. These teachings are a call to the faithful to remember the God-given dignity migrants possess regardless of their legal status, and to acknowledge the challenging circumstances that force migrants from their homelands.

“The migrant Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family.”

The Catholic approach to immigration flows directly from Our Lord, who identifies Himself among the “least brothers of mine.” Jesus includes “welcoming the stranger” as a work of mercy He asks us to perform for the poor and the vulnerable — and in turn, for Him.

“It’s a basic thing about solidarity,” said Susana Chapa Vargas, coordinator for Hispanic ministry for the Diocese of Lansing and an immigrant from Mexico herself. “When we don’t show solidarity towards our brothers and sisters, that shows … the moral values that we really have. Are we really embracing the Catholic values, or not?”

Human dignity is not conditional on a person’s individual circumstances. All persons, including immigrants, possess God-given dignity regardless of their legal status within a country.

In recognizing the human dignity of the migrant, the Church is not offering support for illegal immigration. Rather, the Church calls on Catholics, and all people of goodwill, to respond to the needs of the individual person regardless of how he or she arrived. This is reflected in the Church’s work through its charitable agencies — including those in Michigan — to meet the humanitarian needs of migrants.

It also is important to recognize that immigrants and refugees are among the most vulnerable members of society, and that Catholic social doctrine places emphasis on caring for the most vulnerable.

“In the case of pregnancy, who’s the most vulnerable? Well, the pregnant woman is vulnerable, and her unborn child even more vulnerable,” said Fr. Wayne Dziekan, vicar for Hispanic ministry for the Diocese of Gaylord. “Okay, so we look at immigration, who’s the vulnerable? … The vulnerable is going to be the immigrant, the person who is seeking to come in or has come in.”

“Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance.”

In Dignitas Infinita, a recent Vatican document on human dignity, it is noted that migrants “are among the first victims of multiple forms of poverty,” as their dignity is first “denied in their home countries.” The Church teaches that individuals have a natural right to migrate when the conditions for dignified living are absent in their place of origin. For Carmen and her family, their lives were at risk. For many others, poor economic conditions make it impossible to support themselves. In either case, many migrants have no choice but to find refuge elsewhere.

“They’ve come to the United States, not because they thought, ‘Oh, this is something I’ve always wanted to do.’ They were forced out of the place where they lived,” said Lesley Glennon, who since 1997 has led the immigration law clinic for Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties within the Diocese of Lansing. “If they had the chance — everything being equal — of course they would stay where they grew up.”

Daris, who migrated here with her two daughters from Guatemala, listed several factors for why she had to leave. Not only did she escape from a domestic violence situation that was threatening her family, but the poor economic conditions also made it challenging to lead a stable life, exacerbated by the medical expenses incurred by one of her daughters, who suffers from Rickets disease.

Since coming to the U.S., Daris’ daughter has undergone one surgery and is awaiting a second procedure. Because of that, the authorities have allowed Daris and her family to stay in Detroit, where she lives and works. Her initial request for asylum was denied and she at one point was facing deportation.

“We go every year and have to sign papers with immigration so that they’ll let us stay for another year,” she said through a translator.

The uncertainty that Daris lives with is one reason why the Church’s support of providing immigration legal services has a charitable dimension to it.

“They’re here trying to survive, and one of the things that helps them to survive is to assist them to at least know that whatever else may be going on with employment [or] schooling for their kids, they don’t have to worry about, ‘Am I going to have to leave next month and be shipped back where I came from, where people want to kill me?” Glennon said.

Imagine having to flee to another country to protect your family and trying to establish a new life…

While migrants attest to the better conditions they find in the U.S., the challenges they face do not end upon arrival. Dignitas Infinita notes that in their new home, migrants’ lives are “put at risk because they no longer have the means to start a family, to work, or to feed themselves.”

Undocumented individuals are among the most vulnerable of society, often forced to live in the shadows because of the fear of deportation and having to return to the dangers or hardships they were trying to escape.

“We do have a lot of people coming here for safety reasons, so they’d rather live in a country with nothing, and no documents, and no way to get legal employment … than staying in their country where they could potentially come across harm or death,” said Samantha Lindberg, program director of the Immigration Assistance Program for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.

This is not something most Americans can fathom, though imagine having to flee to another country to protect your family and trying to establish a new life — finding housing, a job to afford food and necessities, schooling and healthcare for children — without knowing the language or the laws. This is where the Church, through the members of the Body of Christ, has proved crucial in the lives of immigrants who needed the help of others to find their footing here.

“I think it’s really important to have the Church help because we come without knowing our rights, without knowing the laws, and really without knowing where to turn,” Daris said.

One example of the Church’s support for migrants is through the work of Strangers No Longer, a Catholic-affiliated group in Michigan that helps immigrants through its “circles of support” that form in parishes and other communities.

“Man has the right to leave his native land for various motives—and also the right to return—in order to seek better conditions of life in another country”

For Daris, the group has connected her with legal resources, provided transportation to her daughter’s medical appointments, and found her a psychologist to work through the various traumas she’s faced.

Carmen attributes Strangers No Longer — named for the joint pastoral letter authored by the U.S. and Mexican bishops in 2003 — for helping her family plug into their parish and finding an apartment for them.

“It’s really nice to have these circles of support, because it’s people who are organized and are [helping] someone in need,” she said.

Another individual who has benefited from the group’s assistance is Felipe, who left Mexico to escape the violence of the cartels and to seek better healthcare after his wife suffered a miscarriage.

Felipe found work in Michigan, but was injured on the job, leaving him unable to support himself for several months. To make matters worse, his wife’s tourist visa expired, forcing her return to Mexico and leaving him alone in Michigan as he awaits surgery.

“I reached a point where I hit bottom and I didn’t know what to do,” he said through a translator. He eventually found Strangers No Longer, which is trying to get his surgery arranged in addition to connecting him to their community of support.

“Thanks to Strangers No Longer, I’ve been able to survive all this,” he said.

“Ideally, unnecessary migration ought to be avoided; this entails creating in countries of origin the conditions needed for a dignified life and integral development. Yet until substantial progress is made in achieving this goal, we are obliged to respect the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families, and where they can find personal fulfillment.”

By encouraging care for migrants, the Church is not calling on Catholics to support illegal immigration or open borders. Church teaching has been clear for decades that nations have the right to regulate migration, and that migrants should obey the laws of the country they enter.

As with any other cultural or public policy issue, the call to the faithful is to form their consciences and beliefs based on the social teachings of Christ.

“Our opinions … as Catholics should not be based on political ideology,” Fr. Dziekan said. “It should be based on our faith. It should be based on finding Christ in the other.”

The job of the people of faith is to lift others up, Fr. Dziekan said. Believers are called to first recognize “Christ in front of me” rather than labeling immigrants based on their status, and that starts within each individual’s heart.

“If we’re serious about seeing Christ in our neighbor, if we really believe that, but we find that we are angry at a person who does not have legal status … then we don’t know Jesus Christ,” Fr. Dziekan said.

The experiences of migrants forced to leave their homes to find refuge here is an invitation to Catholics — particularly amidst the national dialogue around immigration — to first empathize with their migrant brothers and sisters.

“The people we serve, they’re just like you,” Glennon said of her immigrant clients. “The things that you want in your life, it’s the same thing, what they want … so it’s not some ‘other.’ It’s us.”