Why Our Immigration System Doesn’t Work

When it comes to immigration in America, ‘The problem is not the people. The problem is the systems.’

Whether through the dioceses or regional Catholic Charities agencies, the Church in Michigan employs attorneys who provide low or no-cost immigration legal services to help migrants obtain work permits or apply for citizenship.

The attorneys’ firsthand knowledge of the complexities of the immigration system and the challenges it poses to their clients provide a perspective that many Americans may not have.

“I have heard a lot of people say … ‘They should just do it the right way. They should just fill out the paperwork.’ And it’s never that simple,” said Samantha Lindberg, program director of the Immigration Assistance Program for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.

For U.S. citizens who want to petition to bring a sibling here from another country, for example, Lindberg said the federal government is currently processing applications filed 25 years ago.

“For some people, going the quote-unquote legal route can take decades, and I mean literal decades,” she said.

If a 50-year-old U.S. citizen wishes to petition for his 45-year-old brother to come to the U.S., “it’s going to take 25 years for him to get here. He might be dead by then,” Lindberg said.

Whether through bureaucratic delays or quotas set on the individuals who can enter the country in any given year, the result is often years of waiting for families who live separated from one another.

Since 1997, Lesley Glennon has led the immigration law clinic for what was previously known as St. Vincent Catholic Charities, but is now Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties in the Diocese of Lansing. She has observed a perception that “we have laws and they’re good and people should follow them, and then everything will be great.”

However, she gave an example of a woman and her daughter who were recently reunited with the woman’s husband in a case she had been working on for seven years.

“They’ve been doing everything the right way, and been in a line, and doing everything correctly,” she said. “Seven years to be separated from your spouse, and for a father to be separated from his child.”

Glennon and the other immigration attorneys described their clients as individuals who are trying to do the right thing, despite the difficulties.

“People are trying. Our clients are trying. They’re in lines,” she said.

The U.S. bishops have advocated for a concerted emphasis on preserving family unity, along with increasing access to legal pathways to citizenship, as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s immigration system.

“Nobody would choose to be undocumented if they had an option to have a legal pathway,” said Nicole Iraola, director of immigration legal services for the Diocese of Grand Rapids.

Under the current system, individuals are more incentivized to cross the border illegally than they are to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops necessary to obtain legal authorization.

“It’s not just that there [are] just people who don’t want to apply or do things the right way,” Iraola said. “It’s not realistic for most people.”

Immigration attorneys and advocates say the people they serve would do anything to regularize their status. But in some situations, there’s just no legal pathway for individuals to become U.S. citizens.

“When people say, ‘Well, if people are here illegally, why don’t they fix it?’ And the answer to that is because they can’t,” said Fr. Wayne Dziekan, vicar for Hispanic ministry for the Diocese of Gaylord. “They would love to, they would, but they can’t because there’s nothing available to allow them to do that.”

“The problem is not the people. The problem is the systems,” he said.