Policy & Advocacy
Talking Points on Immigration Reform, February 2013
Talking Points on Immigration Reform, February 2013
USCCB Recommendations for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
The U.S. Catholic Church—an immigrant-rooted community—views immigration reform as a moral obligation. Broken policies are dividing families, exploiting workers, and costing lives. Any reform must restore human dignity, protect family unity, and ensure fair treatment for all.
There needs to be a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants:
- Not an amnesty: applicants must pay back taxes, fines, demonstrate English proficiency, and wait their turn for permanent residency.
- Legal status alone creates a permanent underclass; full citizenship prevents second-class status and affirms equal rights.
- Preserve and enhance family-based visa categories; oppose elimination or transfer of these visas to employment categories.
- Expedite reunification by reducing backlogs, reallocating unused family visas, and treating spouses and children of legal permanent residents as immediate relatives.
- Reject policies that separate parents from U.S.-citizen children through mass deportations.
- Authorize entry for unskilled workers under a program that includes labor protections for both foreign and domestic workers.
- Offer a pathway from temporary work authorization to citizenship.
- Control labor migration, meet economic needs, and prevent deaths from unsafe border crossings.
Balanced Enforcement and Due Process
- Reject enforcement-only approaches that have spent $150 billion since 2000 without reducing undocumented populations.
- Support an electronic employment verification system only if it accompanies a citizenship pathway.
- Restore due-process rights by eliminating the one-year asylum filing deadline and the 3- and 10-year reentry bars.
- Oppose criminalizing irregular border crossings.
Address the Root Causes of Migration
- Analyze and reform U.S. trade and economic policies that drive low-skilled workers to migrate.
- Promote sustainable development and living-wage employment in sending countries so families can thrive at home.
- Recognize migrants’ right not to migrate and support their human dignity through overseas assistance.
- Allocate sufficient funding and administrative resources for timely processing of registrations and applications.
- Partner with community-based NGOs and faith organizations to conduct outreach, education, and applicant assistance.
- Ensure infrastructure and staffing are in place to manage a large-scale legalization and family-reunification program efficiently.