Washington -- Arizona's new anti-immigration law sparked wide condemnation by U.S. Catholic bishops and other faith groups, along with new calls for long-overdue national immigration reform.
Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration, April 30 called the newly introduced Senate framework on immigration reform "an important first step" to enacting reform.
"Our immigration system is badly broken and is in need of immediate repair," he said.
Three days earlier Wester joined with the Catholic bishops of Arizona and New Mexico in decrying Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's April 23 signing of the new state law, SB1070, innocuously titled the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."
The law says an illegal immigrant found on Arizona land, public or private, is guilty of trespassing -- a misdemeanor on first offense and a felony on second offense or if the person is found in possession of certain illegal drugs or a dangerous weapon. It also authorizes citizens to sue law enforcement authorities if they do not enforce the law, once it takes effect in 90 days.
Wester called the new law "symptomatic of the absence of federal leadership on the issue of immigration" and urged Congress and the Obama administration to "work in a bipartisan manner to enact comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible."
The new Arizona law is expected to face several court challenges to its constitutionality.
Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., said April 26 that he was asking the USCCB Office of the General Counsel to study the law and find an appropriate point to join in challenging it as a "friend of the court."
Kicanas is also vice president of the USCCB and his diocese, which covers the entire Arizona-Mexico border, is the most affected by illegal immigration.
In his weekly online "Monday Memo" he warned that the new act "does not address the critical need for border security to confront drug smuggling, weapons smuggling and human trafficking."
Instead, he said, it sends the wrong message about the state's regard for civil rights, risks splitting families and makes criminals of migrant children and teens "who had no choice but to accompany their parents here in their search for a better life."
It also distracts law enforcement authorities from the primary role of public safety, depletes their resources and discourages persons without papers from reporting crimes committed against them, he said.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, in a blog April 18 called the newly passed legislation, then still awaiting the governor's signature, "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigrant law."
"What led the Arizona legislature to pass such a law is so obvious to all of us who have been working for federal comprehensive immigration reform: the present immigration system is completely incapable of balancing our nation's need for labor and the supply of that labor," Mahony wrote.
"We have built a huge wall along our southern border, and have posted in effect two signs next to each other," he added. "One reads, 'No Trespassing,' and the other reads 'Help Wanted.' The ill-conceived Arizona law does nothing to balance our labor needs."
In a blog April 27, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, a historian, linked the Arizona law to "periodic spasms of 'anti-immigrant' fever in our nation's history."
He cited the Nativists of the 1840s, the Know-Nothings of the 1850s, the American Protective Association of the 1880s and 1890s, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, the "eugenics movement" of the 1920s and 1930s and the Protestants and Other Americans United movement of the 1950s -- all movements that were directed primarily or at least partially against Catholic immigrants.
"Here we go again," he said of the Arizona law, calling it "a mean-spirited bill of doubtful constitutionality."
"What history teaches us, of course, is that not only are such narrow-minded moves unfair and usually unconstitutional, but they are counterproductive and harmful," he said.
He added, however, that "the anti-immigrant strain in our American heritage, however strong, is not dominant."
Wester urged Congress to take up the new Senate framework on immigration reform -- developed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D.-NY, and endorsed by the Senate leadership -- with a goal of passing reform legislation by the end of this year.
Noting that the bishops have long pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, he said that they "support the general direction of the framework" but see flaws that need fixing.
The bishops support proposals for "a legalization of the undocumented and improvements to our employment and family-based immigration systems," he said, but "we strongly oppose marriage-like immigration benefits to same-sex relationships."
He said the bishops are concerned about proposed further increases in funding for enforcement and instead would like to see more attention paid to "the 'push' factors that compel migrants to come to the United States" because of lack of economic opportunities in their own countries.
[Jerry Filteau is NCR Washington correspondent.]
