A presentation for the 2014 Catechetical Congress on Long Island regarding the immigration issue and the impact it has on immigrant families on Long Island. It also suggest a pastoral response to this community.

1. IMMIGRATION ISSUES
AND THE IMPACT ON
FAMILIES
Presentation for the 2014 DRVC
Catechetical Congress

2. Presentation Format
• An Immigrant Church: Catholic
Social Teaching and the Immigrant
community in America
• Our Immigrant Reality: recognizing
the immigrant community on Long
Island
• The Social Conditions Causing
Migration
• Issues of Concern:
• A Pastoral Response: Inculturation

3.  As the new millennium unfolds, the "new
immigration" from all the continents of the world
calls attention to the reality of the United States as
largely a "nation of immigrants" and to the diversity
of national and ethnic origins of all people of this
country. In this new context, the Catholic
community is rapidly re-encountering itself as an
"immigrant Church," a witness at once to the
diversity of people who make up our world and to
our unity in one humanity, destined to enjoy the
fullness of God's blessings in Jesus Christ.
– USCCB, Welcoming the Stranger, 2003
An Immigrant Church

4. AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
 The Immigrant Church in America:
 1800’s the old immigrant church.
 The National Church Model: Where the community retained a
specific culture and language, clergy and bishops from the
homeland
 The Territorial Church Model: geographical parishes which utilized
English. Specifically served a community that lived in a certain
area with little attention to a particular group.
 1930’s Latino migration and growth.
 The Integrated Church Model: Church leaders began to identify as
Americans. Cardinal Spellman no longer promoted “national
church” models for the new immigrants (Puerto Ricans). They
were instead integrated as minorities in territorial churches with a
Spanish Mass and establishing diocesan offices for these
communities.
 Result: It became more difficult for Puerto Ricans to create
cohesive communities within neighborhoods than it had been
for earlier immigrant groups

5.  2010 Census, Hispanics make up:
o 17.6% of New York State
o 14.6% of Nassau County
o 16.5% of Suffolk County
 “Puerto Ricans had begun to move to Long Island in small numbers
after World War II. Cubans joined them in the 1960s and 1970s, and
in the 1980s Dominicans, Salvadorans, and many other from Latin
America made their home on the metropolitan fringe.”
 The current immigrant community:
o Salvadorans top the chart
o Caribbean: Jamaican, Haitian and Dominicans,
o Mexico and Central Americans: Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican and
Nicaraguan
o South Americans: Peruvians, Colombians and Ecuadorians
o Central Asians: Indians, Pakistani, and Afghanis (a growing community)

7. Catholic Social Teaching:
Pope Francis and the 2014 World Day of Migrant and Refugee Message
• Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the
image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable
others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only
represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters
to be welcomed, respected and loved.
• The reality of migration, given its new dimensions in our age
of globalization, needs to be approached and managed in a
new, equitable and effective manner; more than anything, this
calls for international cooperation and a spirit of profound
solidarity and compassion. Cooperation at different levels is
critical, including the broad adoption of policies and rules
aimed at protecting and promoting the human person.

8. St. John Paul II: Veritatis Splendor
• Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which
are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God,
because they radically contradict the good of the person made
in his image.
• whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living
conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery,
prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading
conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of
profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like
are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they
contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer
injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the
Creator".

9. STRANGERS NO LONGER TOGETHER
ON THE JOURNEY OF HOPE #28
Catholic teaching has a long and rich
tradition in defending the right to
migrate. Based on the life and
teachings of Jesus, the Church's
teaching has provided the basis for
the development of basic principles
regarding the right to migrate for
those attempting to exercise their
God-given human rights. Catholic
teaching also states that the root
causes of migration–poverty,
injustice, religious intolerance, armed
conflicts–must be addressed so that
migrants can remain in their
homeland and support their families.

11. USCCB Mission to
Central America
O In November of 2013 the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops sent a fact finding mission throughout Central America in
their concern over the growing trend of unaccompanied minors
crossing the border and eager to learn about the root causes
leading to this situation. As the report indicates the nations of
Central America (specifically, Honduras, Guatemala, and El
Salvador) are experiencing a “perfect storm” which include the
following secondary factors:
O The absence of economic opportunity,
O the lack of quality and access to education
O the inability for individuals to financially support themselves and their
families
O the desire to reunify with families already in the United States
O The principle cause to this current situation however was
recognized as the “generalized violence at the state and local levels
and a corresponding breakdown of the rule of law” which has
“created a culture of fear and hopelessness.”

12. U.S. Immigration
 1790 – Naturalization Act for “free white citizens”
 1868 – Burlingame Treaty
 1882 – Chinese exclusion Act
 1911 – Dillingham Commission (southern & Eastern Europeans are
a threat to US Culture)
◦ 1917 – Immigration Act – Literacy Test
◦ 1924 – National Origins Act – Quota System based on last names (preference
for western and Northern Europe)
 1943 – Treaty with Mexico, Bracero Program
 1965 – Immigration and Nationality Act – Eliminated racial quota
system, placed limitations on Eastern hemisphere but none on
Western hemisphere, end of Bracero Program
◦ 1976 limitations on western hemisphere (targeting Mexico)
 1980 – Refugee Act – US compliance with 1951 UN Convention
 1986 – Immigration Reform and Control Act, legalized and
established sanctions
 1996 – laws that limited habeas corpus and access to services
while promoting criminalization of the undocumented

13. The Immigration process

14. • The Right to Life
• As of May 2013 over 5,500
migrants have been recorded dead
in the United States. Approximately
500 die every year.
• There are migrant victims along the
way to the US.
• These victims are often
unidentified.
• People including children face very
real threats to their life. This is true
of Central America, the Middle
East and parts of Africa. There are
reports of deported children who
have been killed back in their home
countries.
Issues of Concern #1

15. • Broken Families
• Leaving families for
opportunities
• Remittances: Long
distance responsibilities
• New families/risks of
reunification
• Deportation, a lost
generation

16. Issue of Concern #3
• Living in the Shadows:
Impact on…
• Employment
• Housing
• Resources and Services
• Predatory Lending

17. ISSUE OF CONCERN #4: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
 Among the women who are
victims of domestic abuse,
uncounted undocumented
Latinas continue to be
unaware of their right to be
protected by the law. They
aren’t likely to report domestic
violence incidents out of fear
of being deported, of seeing
their families split, and of
enraging their partners making
violence even worse.
 Catholic Charities Services:
 Mental health clinic
 Regina Maternity Services

18. Issue #5: Farmworkers

 “When the man who feeds the
world by toiling in the fields is
himself deprived of the basic
rights of feeding, sheltering and
caring for his own family, the
whole community of man is
sick.” – Cesar Chavez
 Currently there are about
90,000 farmworkers in New
York State who are still denied
the rights that others have. On
Long Island alone there are
7,000 farmworkers working the
600 farms that exist primarily
along the East End of Long
Island’s North Fork. Many of
them work 80 hours a week
during harvest season without
overtime, the option for a day
of rest, collective bargaining or
disability insurance. The child
minimum wage continues to be
$3.45 for children as young as
twelve years old.

19. *
*DRVC Catholic Charities
Immigrant Services has
worked with over 300
survivors of human
trafficking and their
families, in both labor and
sex trafficking cases. Our
program has rescued and
restored them to freedom,
reunited them with their
families and assisted them
in their road towards self-sufficiency.
*Human Trafficking:
* The recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of
persons, by means of the threat or
use of force or other forms of
coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of
deception, of the abuse of power or
of a position of vulnerability or of
the giving or receiving of payments
or benefits to achieve the consent
of a person having control over
another person, for the purpose of
exploitation. Exploitation shall
include, at a minimum, the
exploitation of the prostitution of
others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labour or
services, slavery or practices similar
to slavery, servitude or the removal
of organs. –UN office on Drugs and
Crime

20. Issue #7 Unaccompanied Minors
 Since 2011, the number of
children arriving in the
United States has risen
dramatically, 90,000
expected by September 30.
 Long Island has received
more than 2,000
unaccompanied minors
 Catholic Charities in our
diocese has served a number
of these Children by offering
free legal consultation and
placing them in the care of
family members.
 U.S. response to this crisis
will be a “test of the moral
character of our nation.”
– Bishop Mark Seitz

21. COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM
 Elements for CIR:
 Earned
Legalization:
 Future Worker
Program:
 Family‐based
Immigration
Reform:
 Restoration of Due
Process Rights:
 Addressing Root
Causes:
 Enforcement:
 The Catholic Catechism
instructs the faithful that good
government has two duties,
both of which must be carried
out and neither of which can be
ignored.
 The first duty is to welcome the
foreigner out of charity and
respect for the human person.
Persons have the right to
immigrate and thus government
must accommodate this right to
the greatest extent possible
 The second duty is to secure
one’s border and enforce the law
for the sake of the common good.
Sovereign nations have the right
to enforce their laws and all
persons must respect the
legitimate exercise of this right.

22.  Incarnation + Culture
 True inculturation is the
product of an ongoing
“dialogue” between local
cultures and the
concrete, historical
manifestation of Christ
– Pope John Paul II

23. Pope John Paul II: Redemptoris Missio #52
 The process of the Church's insertion into
peoples' cultures is a lengthy one. It is not a
matter of purely external adaptation, for
inculturation "means the intimate
transformation of authentic cultural values
through their integration in Christianity and
the insertion of Christianity in the various
human cultures.”
 Through inculturation the Church makes the
Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at
the same time introduces peoples, together
with their cultures, into her own community.
She transmits to them her own values, at the
same time taking the good elements that
already exist in them and renewing them from
within.

24. Engage with Popular
Catholicism
 U.S. Latino/a theological
reflection, then, starts from the
lived faith of the community,
which welcomes God’s
presence in its midst;
celebrates it in its popular
rituals, ceremonies, and
prayers; and witnesses to it
through the community’s
words and deeds.
 Celebrate Cultural feasts
 Promote formation programs
and Apostolic movements:
 Cursillos de Christianidad
 Charismatic Renewal
 Movimiento Familiar Cristiano
 Movimiento Juan XXIII

25.  Intensify Social Ministry:
◦ Strengthen the safety net for all people, especially women
and children suffering from domestic violence, sexual abuse,
abortion, chemical dependency, gang activity, and
alcoholism.
 Promote Small Ecclesial Communities:
◦ These small ecclesial communities promote experiences of
faith and conversion as well as concern for each person and
an evangelization process of prayer, reflection, action, and
celebration.
 Commit to Social Justice:
◦ Provide ongoing formation on Catholic social teaching and
collaboration on advocacy and public policy issues relevant to
the Church and the Hispanic community.
 USCCB: Justice for Immigrants: www.justiceforimmigrants.org
 NYSCC: Immigrants and Migrants: www.nyscatholic.org/category/issues/human-services/
immigrants-and-migrants/

26. • Legal Counseling: helping newcomers negotiate complex and ever-changing
immigration and naturalization laws. Services include
adjustments of immigration status, family reunification, work
authorizations, political asylum, visa extensions, and citizenship
applications. They also offer legal assistance to victims of human
trafficking and immigrant victims of various crimes including domestic
violence.
• Refugee Resettlement: offering full-range case management
services help these most vulnerable of newcomers to stabilize their
lives by securing food, clothing, housing, health care, English
language instruction, and employment services. Counseling and
referral are available for those facing post-traumatic stress,
displacement shock, or other anxieties.
• Anti-Trafficking Program: regional service provider for confirmed
victims of human trafficking and serve on the Long Island Anti-
Human Trafficking Task Force.
• In 2012 Catholic Charities has provided these services to 18,625
members of the immigrant community