In response to the President’s order temporarily halting all immigration into the United States, several US Bishops issued a statement condemning his decision.  This is not the first time that the Bishops have come to loggerheads with the President over his immigration policies, and rightfully so at times, but this particular statement leaves Catholics wondering whether the shepherds might be moonlighting as lobbyists for the Democratic Party.

To be clear, the problem is not that they are aligning themselves with the Democratic Party’s position regarding immigration, but that they so closely aligning themselves with a political party at all.  Trapped in what has been called the “left-right fallacy”, American political parties have succumbed to either/or thinking.  The Church on the other hand, is animated by both/and type thinking, especially with respect to her social doctrine.  When a group of prelates comes out with a statement that sounds like it was drawn up by a Party member, you can almost always be sure that they are failing to embrace and teach the full Catholic understanding of the issue.

The Church on Immigration

With respect to immigration, the Church’s teaching is quite clear that there is a right to emigrate “when there are just reasons in favor of it” (Pacem in Terris, 25).  The right is not absolute, conditioned not only to just reasons on the part of the emigrant, but also depending upon the Common Good of the nation they seek to enter.  A State must accept immigrants “so far as the good of their own community, rightly understood, permits” (ibid, 106).  As custodian of the “good of the community” or the Common Good, the State must exercise its office by enacting policies that first and foremost look to the Common Good and only then to the good of the individual immigrants.

This precedence of the Common Good over the right of the individual is not merely evidence of, as the Bishops insist, “the indifference of a throw-away mentality” but instead flows from the right to emigrate.  The immigrant has an obligation to contribute to the Common Good if he is to become a member of the society in which he seeks to emigrate.  From this responsibility flows the right to emigrate.  If he does harm to the Common Good, then the right disappears. 

There is a flip side to this as well, one that is not often discussed, but his highlighted by Cardinal Robert Sarah in his book The Night is Far Spent.  The Cardinal says that “without a precise plan for their integration, it is criminal to offer hospitality to migrants.”  The Cardinal speaks of the necessity of a welcoming State to have a “precise plan for giving them all the guarantees of dignified life.”  This “dignified life” means not just that they have food and housing, but that they have the means for securing these things themselves.  To come to another country and live off of the host is not dignified at all, but instead actually does great harm to both the individual person and the Common Good.

Democratic Party Talking Points?

It seems that the US Bishops have ignored the convergence of these very important principles and instead decided to regurgitate Democratic Party talking points.  With 30 million Americans currently unemployed, it would be contrary to the Common Good to allow more people into the country and create additional competition for work.  The Bishops obviously have fallen into the “immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do” fallacy.  Immigrants don’t do jobs Americans won’t do, they do jobs at far lower wages than Americans will do them.  They drive down wages for lower-skilled jobs by flooding the market with more workers.  In a 2016 article in Politico, George J. Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, reported that,

[W]hen the supply of workers goes up, the price that firms have to pay to hire workers goes down. Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent. Even after the economy has fully adjusted, those skill groups that received the most immigrants will still offer lower pay relative to those that received fewer immigrants.

Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.

Contrary to the Bishops’ insistence that “There is little evidence that immigrants take away jobs from citizens,” it is clear Americans do lose jobs as a result of the influx of immigrants.  This Democratic Party taking point, on the lips of Catholic Bishops ought to concern all of us, especially because there are two especially relevant Catholic principles upon which they are silent. 

If you search “just wage” “immigration” on the USCCB website, you will find a single mention of just wage in the context of immigration (and that is a 2003 document quoting John Paul II).  Why are the Bishops not defending this clear abuse of immigrant workers?  The Church has long insisted that the dignity of the human person demands that he receive a just wage that is “sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children” (Rerum Novarum, 46).  Of course, neither the Democrats or the Republicans ever speak of just wage either (and no “minimum wage” is not the same thing as a just wage).

The reason that politicians never speak of it is because immigration is a hidden way in which a redistribution of wealth occurs.  Thus, the Bishops make the unsubstantiated claim that “Immigrants and citizens together are partners in reviving the nation’s economy.”  A closer examination however reveals the exact opposite to be the case.  Returning to Professor Borjas’ article, he pointed out that

somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer…I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year.

Thus we can see how indiscriminately allowing immigrants into the country, even to fill jobs supposedly “Americans won’t do” can do great harm to the Common Good.

There is nothing in the President’s order that is contrary to the Church’s teaching on immigration and thus they have nothing to add to the conversation as Catholic prelates.  Their personal opinions, even when stamped with an imprimatur, only serve to damage their credibility as teachers of the truth.  Given the great moral crisis we are facing, especially in the United States, it would be great if Catholic Bishops would not waste their moral capital taking what are clearly political positions.