The Catholic Church teaches that immigration reform is necessary to address a complex issue while upholding principles of human dignity. Reform policies should balance the rights of migrants, their countries of origin, and host countries through international cooperation. Most importantly, reform must be grounded in Gospel values of loving our neighbor, including the stranger, without exception.

1. “On coming into the world, man is not equipped with everything he
needs for developing his bodily and spiritual life. He needs others.
Differences appear tied to age, physical abilities, intellectual or moral
aptitudes, the benefits derived from social commerce, and the
distribution of wealth. The "talents" are not distributed equally. These
differences belong to God's plan, who wills that each receive what he
needs from others, and that those endowed with particular "talents"
share the benefits with those who need them. These differences
encourage and often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness,
and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures: I
distribute the virtues quite diversely; I do not give all of them to each
person, but some to one, some to others.... I shall give principally
charity to one; justice to another; humility to this one, a living faith to
that one.... and so I have given many gifts and graces, both spiritual
and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given everything to
one single person, so that you may be constrained to practice charity
towards one another.... I have willed that one should need another
and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts
they have received from me.” CCC 1936-1937

2. “This virtue is more than justice because, rather
than seeking a fair balance, it gives
uncalculatingly, acknowledging the incalculable
debts incurred by being nourished in networks of
giving and receiving. At the same time, it is not
more than justice, because offering such
uncalculated giving is precisely what is owed.”
Christopher Franks, He Became Poor: The Poverty
of Christ and Aquinas’ Economic Teachings, 187

3. “There exists…sinful inequalities that affect
millions of men and women. These are in open
contradiction of the Gospel: Their equal dignity as
persons demands that we strive for fairer and
more humane conditions. Excessive economic and
social disparity between individuals and peoples
of the one human race is a source of scandal and
militates against social justice, equity, human
dignity, as well as social and international peace.”
CCC 1938

4. Solidarity is “the firm and preserving
determination to commit oneself to the common
good; that is to say, to the good of all and each
individual, because we are all really responsible
for all.” Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38

5. “To love someone is to desire that person’s good
and to take effective steps to secure it” (Caritas
in Veritate, 7).

6. “Everything has its origin in God’s love, everything
is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it”
(CV 2).

7. (1) Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social
doctrine.
“Everything has its origin in God’s love,
everything is shaped by it, everything is
directed towards it” (CV 2).
CST is “the proclamation of the truth of
Christ’s love in society” (CV 5).

8. (2) Charity and Truth are necessarily connected.
-Without truth, charity devolves into
sentimentality.
-Without charity, truth becomes cold.

9. (3) Charity and Justice are necessarily connected.
READ: CV 6.2

10. (4) Charity and Justice demand a commitment to
the common good.
“To desire the common good and strive
towards it is a requirement of justice and
charity” (CV 7).
“The more we strive to secure a common
good corresponding to the real needs of our
neighbors, the more effectively we love
them” (CV 7).

11. (5) True progress must include union with God and
communion among men.
The problem facing us today is that:
“The de facto interdependence of people
and nations is not matched by ethical
interaction of consciences and minds that
would give rise to truly human
development” (CV 9).

12. “While men of the present day are drawn ever
more closely together by social, technical and
cultural bonds, it still remains for them to achieve
full unity in Christ” (LG 1).

13. “As society becomes ever more globalized, it
makes us neighbors but does not make us
brothers” (CV 19).

14. (6) The Church is about integral human
development.
Everything the Church does has the
development of man in mind.
“The whole Church, in all her being and
acting – when she proclaims, when she
celebrates, when she performs works of
charity – is engaged in promoting integral
human development” (CV 11).

15. “Authentic human development concerns the
whole of the person in every single dimension.
Without the perspective of eternal life, human
progress in this world is denied breathing-space.
Enclosed within history, it runs the risk of being
reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth” (CV
11).

16. “Such development requires a transcendent vision
of the person, it needs God; without him,
development is either denied, or entrusted
exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of
thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and
ends up promoting a dehumanized form of
development” (CV 11).

17. (7) Development includes the whole of man and
all men.
Paul VI said that authentic development
“must be integral, that is, it has to promote
the good of every man and of the whole
man” (CV 18).

18. “What we hold important is man, each man and
each group of men, and we even include the
whole of humanity” (CV 18).
“The truth of development consists of its
completeness: if it does not involve the whole
man and every man, it is not true development”
(CV 18).

19. (8) Life Ethics and Social Ethics are necessarily
linked.

20. (9) The view of development has economic, social,
and political implications.
Economic activity, social interaction, and
political structures and participation must
all be rooted in a commitment to the
common good.

21. (10) International Peace is connected to Economic
Justice
“Excessive economic and social disparity
between individuals and peoples of the one
human race is a source of scandal and
militates against social justice, equity,
human dignity, as well as social and
international peace” (CCC 1938).

22. “Injustice, excessive economic or social
inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging
among men and nations constantly threaten peace
and cause wars. Everything done to overcome
these disorders contributes to building up peace
and avoiding war” (CCC 2317).

23. “The problem of food insecurity needs to be
addressed within a long-term perspective,
eliminating the structural causes that give rise to
it and promoting the agricultural development of
poorer countries” (CV 27).

24. (11) “Openness to life is at the center of true
development” (CV 28).

25. (12) Building a Culture of Life is essential to
fostering authentic development.
READ: CV 28.4

26. (13) The need for Religious Liberty
“God is the guarantor of man’s true development,
inasmuch as, having created him in his image, he also
establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women
and feeds their innate yearning to ‘be more.’ Man is not a
lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature,
whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and
whom he has always loved. If man were merely the fruit of
either change or necessity, or if he had to lower his
aspirations to the limited horizon of the world in which he
lives, if all reality were merely history and culture, and
man did not possess a nature destined to transcend itself
in a supernatural life, the one could speak of growth, or
evolution, but not development” (CV 29).

27. (14) Care for the Environment as an Ethical
Imperative.
“The environment is God’s gift to everyone,
and in our use of it we have a responsibility
towards the poor, towards future
generations and towards humanity as a
whole” (CV 48).

28. “It should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic
development to view nature as something more important
than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of
neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation
cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely
naturalistic sense. This having been said, it is also
necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at
total technical dominion over nature, because the natural
environment is more than raw material to be manipulated
at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator
containing a ‘grammar’ which sets forth ends and criteria
for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation” (CV 48).

29. (15) The need to address the issue of immigration.

30. “Immigration laws badly in need of reform are
used today as an excuse not to welcome the
stranger… It is true that a nation has the right to
enact laws that regulate immigration but those
laws are always subject to the greater laws of
God. They must be just and must preserve the
dignity of each human person.” [The Virtue of
Love – Part One: Welcoming the Stranger]

31. “No man-made law, no circumstance, no custom
can excuse us from the obligation to love our
neighbor, whether the neighbor is a Samaritan or a
Hispanic, whether he speaks our language or not.
The demands of Christ’s call to love our neighbor
are great indeed.” [The Virtue of Love – Part One:
Welcoming the Stranger]

32. 1. Reform is necessary.
Pope Benedict XVI says that immigration is an extremely important
issue that “requires bold, forward-thinking policies of international
cooperation if it is to be handled effectively.” [Caritas in Veritate, 62]
2. Reform must be based upon the Gospel call to love our neighbor.
Vatican II stated: “Everyone must consider his every neighbor without
exception as another self, taking into account first of all his life and
the means necessary to living it with dignity.” [Gaudium et Spes, 27]
3. Reform must consider the rights of all involved.
“Such policies should set out from close collaboration between the
migrants’ counties of origin and their countries of destination; it
should be accompanied by adequate international norms able to
coordinate different legislative systems with a view to safeguarding
the needs and rights of individual migrants and their families, and at
the same time, those of the host countries. [Caritas in Veritate, 62]

33. Guiding Principles for Immigration Reform
1. The Root Causes of Migration
2. Family-Based Immigration Reform
3. Provide Pathways to Legalization
4. Establish a Guest Worker Program
5. Create Humane Immigration Enforcement
Visit: www.justiceforimmigrants.org

34. “In the Church no one is a stranger, and the
Church is not foreign to anyone, anywhere. As a
sacrament of unity and thus a sign and a binding
force for the whole human race, the Church is the
place where illegal immigrants are also recognized
and accepted as brothers and sisters. It is the task
of the various Dioceses actively to ensure that
these people, who are obliged to live outside the
safety net of civil society, may find a sense of
brotherhood in the Christian community. Solidarity
means taking responsibility for those in trouble.”
[World Migration Day – 1995]