Catholic Church's policies on migration a source of pride for Diocesan Government Liaison Rowland

Intermountain Catholic

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Dee Rowland, government liaison for the Diocese of Salt Lake City, discusses some of the myths surrounding migrants in a presentation on immigration Jan. 10 at St. Ambrose Church. Rowland's presentation was part of the parish's observance of National Migration Week. IC photo by Barbara S. Lee

SALT LAKE CITY — The crowd of people, notebooks and pens in hand, who gathered in the social hall of St. Ambrose Church Jan. 10 were more people than Diocesan Government Liaison Dee Rowland is used to seeing at her presentations of the Catholic Church’s policies on immigration, migration, and refugees, she said. She greeted each person with a welcoming smile and encouraged them to ask questions.

"The Catholic Church’s comprehensive and consistent policies on immigration, migration, and refugees makes me so proud to be a Catholic," Rowland said. "Although the Catholic Church has a lot to say about how immigrants, migrants, and refugees should be treated, it always begins with suggestions for solving the economic problems in the sending countries."

The United States’ own economy, especially in agricultural states, depends on immigrant and migrant labor, "and Utah couldn’t have put on the 2002 Olympics without immigrants," she said.

Rowland gave participants a simple test of their understanding of the immigration policies of the church, the myths surrounding immigration, and prevailing attitudes about immigrants, migrants, and refugees. Some of the answers surprised people, including one clarifying illegal immigration as a civil offense in this country, not a criminal offense.

Also enlightening was Rowland’s explanation that United States immigration laws are relatively recent.

"Our immigration laws were not established until long after most of our grandparents immigrated," she said. "So those people who are comparing the legalities of their grandparents’ immigration experiences and the experiences of immigrants today are comparing two different things..."

"The primary principles of Catholic social teaching on immigration are welcoming Christ in the migrant and that migration serves the common good," Rowland said.

The central piece of Rowland’s presentation, a film titled "Dying to Live: A Migrant’s Journey," produced by the Center for Latino Culture at the University of Notre Dame is not for the fainthearted. The documentary film traces the route taken by many immigrants and migrants from points in Mexico and Central and South America, along "The Devil’s Highway," the blisteringly hot route through the desert between Mexico and California, Arizona, and Texas where temperatures in the shade reach 115-120 degrees.

The first part of the film, "The Face of the Migrant," illustrates the abject poverty in which many of the people taking The Devil’s Highway are forced to live in their home countries. The film shows in powerful detail the migrants deciding to risk their lives for the sake of a future for their children.

So often, Americans see immigrants and migrants as nameless and faceless or not at all, the film pointed out. "But need is driving them. They are leaving everything and everyone they know because they’ve reached a point in their lives at which they have to ask themselves, ‘what’s left for me?’"

The films shows migrants from several countries meeting for the first time at Casa del Migrante in Tijuana, Mexico, the starting place for many people’s terrible journeys across the desert. At Casa del Migrante the migrants were told just how hard the journey is going to be, that only the strong will survive the desert, and those who do survive may be caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and sent back. It is at Casa that viewers met a 4-year-old girl who, with her parents, would be taking the long walk, "the descent into hell," for the second time.

"God is going to help me," the child said, her faith unshaken.

In "Push, Pull, and Politics," the film revealed the reasons why people choose to leave their homes and travel north looking for work. It told about the collapse of agricultural markets in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and other countries; the outsourcing of jobs to Asia; and a world of technology that shows pictures of a better life in the United States.

"Migration is not their first choice," a Catholic priest who is an expert on immigration says in the film. "And since Sept. 11, 2001, we have confused immigrants with terrorists."

The perilous passage along The Devil’s Highway revealed many hastily dug graves of migrants who have tried and failed. Bodies left unburied showed scant items of identification, drivers’ licences, family Bibles, letters from families, and photographs. Those who continue on the walk face vigilante patrols, snakes, and bandits. The journey is dangerous.

Some choose to ride the rails north, hanging onto the sides of fast-moving trains regardless of how tired their arms and legs become. Some fall to their deaths. Others survive the falls, but lose limbs run over by the train’s wheels.

"We are seeing more and more children making the trip," a volunteer worker at Casa del Migrante said. "They are not prepared. The desert is unforgiving."

Often migrants are deserted by their "coyote" guides. Death is part of the landscape.

Migrants make the journey again and again with the same mixture of hope and fear. They face frigid desert nights and days of indescribable heat. Any water they get they must carry, adding more than 30 pounds to their simple loads of personal belongings. Humane Borders, a volunteer group, has been setting up water stations in the desert since 2000, "to take death out of immigration."

For those lucky enough to survive, the journey to the border takes up to four days. Often they are met by members of the border patrol. One border patrol officer revealed they see an average of 15 deaths a month on The Devil’s Highway. A priest who ministers to migrants said, "the way of the immigrant is the way of the cross."

Rowland said our government must change immigration policies and quotas to account for the negative effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

"There is a solution out there," she said. "But, is there the will to address these issues?"

For further information on the Catholic Church’s position and statements on immigration, migration, and refugees, go to: www.justiceforimmigrants.org.