Again, I have posted the First Word article from Commonweal by Heidi Schlumpf on my WEAL site.
Immigration and the American Catholic Bishops
The article on the Commonweal site begins with "Prophetic Words." While both the conference "special statement" last year and many other statements by individual bishops and officers have been critical of government policy and actions, I doubt whether the bishops would appreciate their words and actions being labeled prophetic. I think they see themselves as doing their job as bishops.
If the Democrats win the House and Senate in November, their rebuke of administration policy on immigration will become just a part of a broader rebuke by the American people rather than the words of some dissenting or marginal prophets.
As I point out in my comments, as the public becomes more aware during the lead up to the 2028 elections that reducing immigration is reducing our population growth, one will no longer have to evoke "sympathy" or "Catholic social teaching" when it becomes evident that increasing rather than decreasing immigration is in our rational best interests as a nation. Indeed, it might become evident that immigration might make America great in the future as it has in the past. A complete repudiation of Trump.
" Indeed, it might become evident that immigration might make America great in the future as it has in the past."
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that America lacks the confidence and conviction to welcome immigrants. We have lost the plot somehow.
Instead of being optimistic and full of energy, Americans seem afraid and waiting for someone else to come along to fix whatever is ailing.
I don't know if anyone will agree with this: I think the US is "hollowed out": people don't believe what they believed when we were optimistic and full of energy - they don't believe in the things that fed our optimism and our energy.
The post-liberal Right sees only power. American military might as the quitessence of what makes America great. They see no reason that America should be on the side of what is morally right and virtuous in the world. Hence our sick-making betrayal of Ukraine, now in flight, in order to curry favor with Putin.
The Left sees the dynamism and faith that used to characterize American life as bad things that must be "fixed" in the name of "equity". The Left will never succeed in making America great.
As long as America is untethered from core values, and smolders in pessimism and fear, we won't have the optimism and confidence to welcome immigrants. We are no longer are willing to extend the hand of welcome.
“The Left sees the dynamism and faith that used to characterize American life as bad things that must be "fixed" in the name of "equity".”
DeleteThat’s a rather sweeping generalization ( accusation). Could you be more specific?
I see the left as promoting the values that our country was founded on such as “all men are created equal “. I see the right as systematically working to destroy America’s core values, using Hungary and Project 2025 as their roadmap.
That should mean working to create a society that is as equitable as we can make it, given the history of slavery and Jim Crow. It also means freedom of religion and separation of church and state which many on the far right are working to destroy. They also want to destroy freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of the press.
As far as dynamism goes, there are several countries that provide as many opportunities and support for entrepreneurship as the US does. Where did you get the idea that the left sees dynamism and faith as bad?
"I don't know if anyone will agree with this: I think the US is hollowed out: people don't believe what they believed when we were optimistic and full of energy - they don't believe in the things that fed our optimism and our energy."
DeleteIn my mother's day, there were plenty of unpaid volunteer housewives to sit on school boards, take care of the kids and grandma, work elections, raise money for the library, sew clothes, keep an eye on the neighbors, and generally participate in do-gooder-ism.
Now there aren't.
Families need two (or more incomes), and often they still can't make ends meet. That doesn't exactly feed energy and optimism.
Jean, yes, what you said. In addition a lot of people are so much online that they don't spend much time interacting with people in the real world (I mean the physical world) It all adds up to a loss of community.
DeleteI think people get online to distract and anesthetize themselves from many aspects of real life, whether it's Trump, money issues, family stress, etc.
DeleteI am not much of a people person or a hugger, but I remain struck by how much human interaction and contact meant to me in the hospital and during my in-home care period. I am hoping I can take that lesson to heart a little more in my own life.
The idea that we used to love immigrants is a fiction. Every group that has ever come here got harassed and stereotyped and barricaded out of the main stream. Ben Franklin complained about the German speakers moving into Pennsylvania in the 1700s. We passed exclusionary acts against the Chinese. Some Irish and Italians were blocked out of the mainstream and turned to political machines and crime syndicates. Out West restaurants posted "no dogs or Mexicans" signs. Japanese citizens got rounded up in concentration camps when we went to war with Japan. We weren't even decent to Africans who were forced to immigrate here.
ReplyDeleteSchools teach about melting pots and rainbows, but that's more aspirational than an accurate reflection of our attitudes.
Basically I see three things making the immigration picture worse:
1. Right-wing Christian Nationalists who make no bones about wanting only people as close to WASPs as possible, like the Afrikaners Trump is recruiting;
2. A right wing that is obsessed with the idea that somebody, somewhere, and especially foreigners, are getting a free lunch on their dime (unlikely given the way they have eroded social safety nets and jiggered wages so that families cannot make it on one income) or taking jobs away from Americans;
3. An inadequate number of immigration judges and immigration lawyers, and lack of any coherent immigration plan that supports communities that are high volume entry points for immigrants.
Increasingly, Americans who might support immigrants have empathy burn-out because their own situation is bad: pensions are a rare benefit, health insurance costs too much and doesn't cover enough, wages are not keeping up with expenses, college education is too expensive, and on and on.
As our standard of living becomes more precarious and our culture becomes more coarse and violent, the immigration "problem" will fix itself. Nobody will want to come here.
I would say that this is a pretty good analysis. The WASPs who were the first to arrive definitely did not welcome newcomers, especially Catholics of any shade of complexion, including the painfully pale Irish.
DeleteAnd I think that the attitudes and beliefs that cause the current extreme resentment towards immigrants are largely due to GOP policies. The current MAGA replacement for the GOP of earlier years don’t realize that in Reagan’s last speech he praised America’s immigrant heritage, noting that they built this country- every generation of immigrants added to our strength.
doesn’t realize….
DeleteI think the resentment of immigrants was always there; as I've mentioned before, I think Donald Trump's contribution(?) to American politics is figuring out how to build an entire coalition around that resentment (or at least, a coalition for which that resentment is a major feature) and win national elections with it.
DeleteAs we look to a post-Trump world, it seems pretty clear that JD Vance and his advisers see resentment of immigrants as a significant building block for the 2028 campaign.
We've resurrected the Know-Nothings - and figured out how Know-Nothings can win elections.
According to the NY Times:
ReplyDelete"The Trump administration cut legal immigration in half early this year with policies blocking visas for immigrants from nearly half the globe.
With the exception of the coronavirus pandemic, these cuts to legal immigration were the largest since the Hoover administration unilaterally denied visas to otherwise qualified legal immigrants during the Great Depression, according to David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, which favors increased immigration.
Immigrant visas have been most affected, but visas for students and workers declined as well, falling by 30 percent compared with a year before. Visas for tourists and business visitors were down about 25 percent in February.
Visas for seasonal agricultural workers and exchange workers remained at roughly the same levels as before, but visas for other seasonal workers in industries like hospitality and tourism declined.
Mr. Trump has also closed or narrowed other legal pathways to enter the country, sharply limiting the refugee program, blocking people at ports of entry from applying for asylum and pulling all manner of bureaucratic levers to push immigrants to leave.
Immigration experts say these changes, along with the administration’s mass deportation campaign, are part of an effort to limit immigration of all kinds. Together, they may accomplish the same goals as the sweeping anti-immigration laws passed by Congress in the early 20th century with executive action alone."
Since Trump is bringing down legal as well as illegal immigration, and we continue to do so for the next two years unless he is impeached, by the 2028 election the LACK OF IMMIGRANTS, THE DECLINING EXPANSION AND AGING OF THE U.S. POPULATION WILL BECOME SERIOUS POLITICAL PROBLEMS.
Of course, Trump hard line supporters might find it difficult to understand that what he has done has harmed them, just as the farmers seem to fail to understand how he is harming them. The best they seem to be able to do is stay home on election day in disappointment.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/18/us/trump-immigrant-visas-decline.html
DeleteAgri-biz has been lobbying pretty strenuously since 2024 to keep immigrant workers. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-farm-groups-want-trump-spare-their-workers-deportation-2024-11-25/
DeleteTrump might listen if his rich friends push to keep cheap labor.
Whether the efforts of lobbies representing biz that relies on immigrants leads to a path to permanent citizenship or simply creates a guest worker situation remains to be seen.
Trump's extreme hard-line immigration policies, especially his masked ICE police, have proven to be very unpopular - it has to be one of the major reasons his poll numbers are so low.
ReplyDeleteIf Democrats win the White House in 2028, they must not repeat the same mistake that the Biden administration made. There was no will within the Biden administration to limit immigration. Americans' perception is that a tidal wave of immigrants entered the country during his years - some illegally, and some via programs which Biden set up (and Trump has subsequently canceled).
Trump and Biden may represent the two poles (of restrictiveness and permissiveness) of what is politically possible in the US regarding immigration. A rational policy would land somewhere in the middle, between those two poles.
They were working on a bipartisan immigration bill, it was shot down in early 2024: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4459861-trump-praises-collapse-of-bipartisan-border-deal/
DeleteTrump claimed credit for its collapse (because of course he did). He wanted to gin up the issue in his campaign, and he did.
I think we could come up with a rational (or at least more rational) policy, but only if he is out of the picture, and MAGA gets beat soundly in the midterms.
The campaign here is getting pretty ugly. It's a dubious privilege to be in a somewhat swingy state (seriously, Nebraska is this time, to a degree, I guess?) JD Vance will be in North Platte, NE on Thursday for a rally. I won't be there (I'd rather muck out a state park outhouse). I don't even think my Trumpy brother is going.
Not sure what Biden instituted that was dangerously "permissive," so maybe Jim can enlighten us.
DeleteI didn't get the idea that immigration was the highest thing on Biden's list of priorities. Getting through Covid was, and we did.
DeleteAccording to my friend Google Gemini, primarily citing the Cato Institute and USAFact, there were 11.5 million border encounters during the Biden Administration. ("Border encounters" is exactly what it sounds like: government border officials encountering potential immigrants at the border, whether for immigration, asylum, refugee status or some other reason). By contrast, during the 1st Trump Administration, there were 3 million border encounters.
DeleteTo keep the numbers nice and round, both administrations permitted or detained about half of the border-encountered immigrants to remain in the US, and returned / repatriated / expelled the other half.
There is another category called "gotaways": immigrants who were detected at the border (e.g. via cameras) but did not actually encounter our border enforcement personnel. Gotaways were somewhat higher under Biden than during the first Trump administration (1.7 million vs. 1.4 million).
The third major category, undetected immigrants, is not possible to count directly. There are various attempts to estimate the number; if one estimates it as a percentage of border encounters and/or gotaways, the estimate will be higher for years when the metric on which it is based is higher. Other ways to estimate it involve trying to triangulate based on such indirect data sources " interior highway checkpoints, illicit drug seizure rates, labor market data (sudden spikes in agricultural or construction employment), and school enrollment metrics."
Gemini (primarily citing PBS and the NY Times) lists several reasons that immigration would have surged during the Biden administration. Some of these reasons are "push" reasons, and some are "pull" reasons.
Delete"Push" reasons:
* authoritarian governments and economic contraction induced many Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans to migrate.
* The collapse of a functioning government and a spike in gang activity in Haiti drove may Haitians to come to the US.
* Hurricanes, drought and crop failures in Central America, especially Guatamala and Honduras.
"Pull" reasons:
* As the US economy rebounded quickly from the pandemic, labor shortages occurred in many sectors of the economy.
* The Biden Administration ended Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy.
* Human smuggling cartels (which apparently are a branch of Mexican organized crime) exploited the change in perception when Biden came into office, falsely promoting to Latin American populations that "the border is open now".
All this data about "border crossings" is complicated by the fact that some people go back and forth. Most of the Mexicans in our county are from one city in Mexico. They have been migrating here for decades and have relatives back there. Sometimes they return there for various reasons and then come back here.
DeleteMost of these people are good hard working family people. Of course, there will always be some people who are in trouble for various reasons who need to get out of Mexico. That has always been the case. My Polish grandfather came here to escape the draft around the time of the WWI. Poland was divided between Germany and Russia (one saying is that for most of time Poland has existed mainly in the minds of the Poles) and each of those governments was conscripting Poles to fight in their armies.
How many of these "encounters" are the same person who may have failed to have crossed several times, or been detected several times before finally succeeding in coming back here to a place where they have lived for many years?
The impression one gets about all these statistics is one of chaos where people are coming into the country randomly when in fact they are coming to be with relatives and friends.
"How many of these "encounters" are the same person who may have failed to have crossed several times, or been detected several times before finally succeeding in coming back here to a place where they have lived for many years?"
DeleteBoth scenarios definitely happen. As well as a border-crosser who succeeds once or several times back and forth before finally being caught. The content of the law-enforcement interviews with these multiple-times border crossers apparently forms part of the source material that analysts use in trying to estimate how many undetected crossings actually happen.
There are social impacts from an increase in immigration, although they aren't felt uniformly across the US. I've read that social services, education and health care delivery are severely strained in border communities and communities where many immigrants settle. Deliverers of these services raise voices of genuine concern when these services are strained - and some politicians hear these voices and exploit them.
Up here in the suburbs of Chicago, about half of the people we serve in our Outreach ministry are immigrants. Some are Spanish-speakers from Mexico or points farther south. Others are Russians, Ukrainians and other eastern Europeans. We don't have any idea, nor do we ever ask, what their legal status is. My daughter, who teaches third grade in a local suburban school, tells us that her classrooms each year have similar immigrant diversity. English as a second language teachers are in demand around here. I don't doubt there are politicians around here who would like to exploit anti-immigrant feeling, but they're not very successful. Trump and his rhetoric of fear and loathing get no traction in this area.
I see most of this as an "us" problem--failure to have sensible policies that adjudicate, vet, and distribute immigrants where they're needed--than a "them" problem--too many who don't look or talk like us.
Delete"I see most of this as an "us" problem--failure to have sensible policies that adjudicate, vet, and distribute immigrants where they're needed"
DeleteI think this is right. I also think that sensible limits (whatever they may be) would be part of a rational policy. I also probably can get behind policies that give preference to immigrants who possess certain skill sets that may be in demand, although it seems to me that we don't really have a labor surplus in many jobs or professions these days.
New Zealand used to have, maybe still does, a quiz you could take that assigned desirability points based on yr age, amount if money you would arrive with, skills, and whether you were willing to live in the boondocks.
DeleteIceland took in a number of Syrian refugees. One of that country's concerns is losing its native language, and refugees with children had to agree to support their learning Icelandic. Icelandic is a very difficult language, but little kids picked it up no problem.
It might make sense for states to have their own depts of immigration that identified labor needs and areas where immigrants could help.
Michigan lost a lot of health care professionals after covid. Many of my helpers at the hospital were immigrants who started out as nurses' aides and obtained creds as nurses, anesthetists, respiratory therapists, occupational therapists, lab techs, etc.
Yes - many health care workers in this area are immigrants. There are also shortages of truck drivers, some construction trades, skilled manufacturing jobs and many other job categories which immigrants could fill immediately or with some training.
DeleteUnrelated, much is being made of unrest and rioting in France. But street riots seem to be an old French tradition. Word was that one great-great grand-pere on my dad's side had participated in one of those street riots, back in the day. Don't know if that had anything to do with the family coming to the states in the 1840s. One family source said, though, "Nah. That was about his father in law losing the family fortune playing baccarat at Monte Carlo." Pretty sure they didn't dot their i's and cross their t's to make it legal (if there was such a thing as legal immigration back then).
ReplyDeleteI read today that, if the current French government is perceived by the French populace as being ineffective in controlling the rioters and maintaining law and order, it could easily open the door in the next election to the hard right party or, probably less likely, a hard-left party.
DeleteKatherine is right. The French are very prone to protests. It happened frequently when I was a student there. But those protests didn’t get out of hand the way these protests have. Katherine, in the 1840s people coming to,America, including my Irish ancestors, just had to have money for passage, a minimal amount of cash and pass a TB exam and they were in. In 1917 they started making it harder and in 1924 it was solidified in this Act. The Casino in Monte Carlo wasn’t built until 1858 so that bit of family history might be suspect.😉
ReplyDeletehttps://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
" I doubt whether the bishops would appreciate their words and actions being labeled prophetic. I think they see themselves as doing their job as bishops."
ReplyDeleteI think, if we consider a prophet to be one who speaks God's word and calls listeners to conversion, then it's accurate to consider these bishops such as Cupich, Pham and Rozansky as prophetic.
For some good news, I just read this update:
ReplyDelete"The Holy See Press Office has confirmed that Pope Leo XIV’s doctors report the tumor removed in October was a localized lung adenocarcinoma and that “no further treatment is necessary."
I was very happy to hear that good news about Pope Leo’s health. I have a lot of emotional investment in him. And, surely, if modern medical science can keep a bloated 80yo libertine like Trump alive, it can do it for our Pope. He definitely has the voice. I wish he’d explicitly condemn Israel for its sadistic genocide but I’m not sure that would move the soporific mass of American Catholics anyway.
DeleteI was very glad to hear he won't have to do chemo or radiation. But he still had a piece of lung removed, so I hope he gives it a chance to heal and stays away from any respiratory bugs for awhile. Don't know how you do that if you're out in public all the time though.
DeleteDidn’t Francis have part of a lung removed when still quite young ?
DeleteYes, Francis did have a lobe of his long removed. He always spoke with a little breathlessness.. Another connection between the two popes.
DeleteKatherine led off a comment with, "Unrelated, much is being made of unrest and rioting in France."
ReplyDeleteThe riots in France could very easily have an immigration-related component to them.
The NY Times writers Frank Bruni (centrist and compassionate, from what I've gleaned from his writing over the years) and Brett Stephens
(principled non-Trumpy conservative) write a joint column each week called The Conversation. In today's installment, they take up the unrest in France and elsewhere in Europe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/opinion/france-riots-belgium-immigration-protests.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20261022&instance_id=183938&nl=opinion-today®i_id=87407961&segment_id=228507&user_id=7bba122dbc8acf5289c69a5c9f2867a2
Both journalists were posted in Europe a quarter-century or so ago, Stephens in Belgium and Bruni in Italy, when the EU was still in its early days. They recall the feelings of optimism and hope. And so, watching what is happening today in Western and Central Europe strikes personal chords with them.
They point to two sets of problems besetting the continent:
* Unassimilated immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa. The lack of assimilation has led to twin problems: the immigrant communities can breed radicalization; and in reaction, right-wing nationalism has had new life breathed into it.
* A loss of hope, optimism and energy among Europeans, especially young Europeans. Rather than take responsibility for social ills and trying to work together to solve the problems, they are reacting with rage, unrest and violence.
FWIW - here in the US, I don't think assimilation (or its lack) of immigrants is as much of a problem. But I think the loss of responsibility and agency, especially among the young, is a big problem.
I'm sure France's problems do have an immigrant- related problem, and they have other problems too. Their immigrant problems are different from ours, in that many of the immigrants are coming from places they directly colonized, back in the old days. I don't know if they have a commonwealth system similar to the UK.
DeleteSeems like the problem of ennui among the young is a lot related to the internet, and the reality that AI already has eliminated many entry level jobs for recent college graduates. We have opened a Pandora's box.
Rage, unrest, and violence. I'd say a lot of that is born of sheer impotence and frustration.
DeleteHow does youth help solve a problem like Elon Musk, who has so much wealth that he pretty much functions as a first-world country all by himself? Bake sales and 5K runs?
Musk seems poised to turn the tide of the war in Ukraine just by turning off Star Link. Then, when Russia gets 20 percent of Ukraine that it now occupies, Musk (or his tool Trump) can call in favors from any number of world leaders and get more money and power.
Lots of young people, and a few of us oldies, are cynical and reject old norms from the Golden Age That Never Was (church going, taking orders, cutting your grass very week, and keeping a shine on your shoes and a song in your heart) cuz the old norms brought us rampant consumerism, global warming, etc etc.
"(church going, taking orders, cutting your grass very week, and keeping a shine on your shoes and a song in your heart)"
DeleteAw,. c'mon, those are 90% of my principles for good living! Well, except for the shoe-shining; that is a lot of work, and unless I go to the airport, I can't find anyone to do it for me.
We have some young folks running for office here in Michigan that *are* trying to solve problems. I've had umpteen calls from young people about how I should vote next month, so many are working for candidates and causes. Lots of young workers have also tried to unionize to make their crappy jobs less crappy.
DeleteSo the notion that young people are just nihilistic brats looting stuff and throwing brick bats when people aren't coddling them strikes me as facile.
I think both portraits of young people can be true. There could be some who are virtuously and energetically trying to effect change within the system, and others who want to throw rocks and set buildings on fire. I don't know if you were able to read the NY Times piece by Bruni and Stephens, but they note that the lack of assimilation of immigrant populations in France and elsewhere also has been marked by inequality between the immigrants and the native-born. Inequality, especially if one believes that the system is stacked against one, is a sure-fire way to feed rage.
DeleteNo, I could not access the NYT piece.
DeleteOf course both is true of Our Young People. I don't think people change in essentials after puberty, they just learn more finesse (or not). So there are a wide variety of young people like all people.
I think it's a mistake to look at assimilation strictly in terms of immigrants, though maybe they have the most visibility as outsiders.
But I'd suggest that we have many groups in the US, whose families may go back several generations, who have not assimilated because they're prevented from it or because they prefer not to. And, yah, they'll lash out. Some by voting for Trump and other populist candidates promising to give them their due.
The NYT now gives in,imited free gift links. This is the story Jim linked to
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/opinion/france-riots-belgium-immigration-protests.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K1E.RvmU.aCdXiF0OP2m6&smid=nytcore-ios-share
Thanks. I still have to log in to read it, and am not inclined to do so after getting as far as their pearl-clutching about the End of Civilization.
DeleteRe: pearl-clutching: I'm definitely struggling to understand whether this is just another instance of the French being the French (who at one time were known to riot after an opera premiere), or if there is something more significant about the current unrest.
DeleteYah, right-wingers don't like to see criminal activity in the streets. They prefer it be sanitized and euphemized in an office or board room where it doesn't hold up traffic and make a mess.
Delete