Educational Resource
MRS Background on Immigration (2018)
MRS Background on Immigration, February 2018
The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops supports legislation and administrative policies that protect the human dignity of migrants, support family unity, and provide humanitarian protections for people who are trying to escape violence in their homeland. The Church remains committed to accompanying immigrants and refugees from their point of origin, through their period of transit, and following their arrival at their destination point. Unfortunately, there has been a notable shift toward immigration restriction, which has proven very challenging to protecting and assisting immigrants and refugees.
The Administration has sought to significantly expand immigration enforcement efforts, including an increase in immigrant detention, a commitment to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, an increase in family separation, restrictions on asylum, and an expansion in internal enforcement. Additionally, legislative efforts have been endorsed by the White House that would reduce annual legal immigration by up to 50%, and shift to a merit based admissions system at the expense of the family-based immigration system that is currently in place. All of these measures require Congressional approval in the form of passage of legislation or appropriating of funds.
Alongside these attempted efforts, the President has successfully imposed significant reductions in the number of refugees admitted into the United States which has resulted in the weakening of the refugee resettlement system that has had widespread, bipartisan support for more than three decades. Additionally, the Administration recently terminated the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which provided refugee and humanitarian protection to children fleeing persecution and violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
On September 5, 2017, President Trump announced that he was rescinding the DACA program, established several years earlier. This program allowed nearly 800,000 young migrants who were brought into the country illegally the opportunity to work and go to school in the U.S. without having to fear being deported. It is incumbent that Congress acts expeditiously to help individuals who are set to lose DACA protections.