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Tremendous Injustice?

Assemblyman Questions Cardinal

By Christopher Zehnder

California is hardly a peaceful place. Citizens bristle over a number of human rights issues, from homosexual rights to partial birth abortion to physician assisted suicide. Another issue that elicits about as much fire is the question of illegal immigration. Attempts to answer what we are to do, not only about the large numbers of immigrants illegally crossing our borders, but with those who are already here, have spilled much ink; still, we are no nearer a consensus.

Last March 15 Roger Cardinal Mahony gave his answer. Representing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Nicolas A. DiMarzio held a joint news conference with John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, in which they announced that the union and the Church would work together for the amnesty of undocumented immigrant workers. In an opinion piece published in the June 8 Los Angeles Times, Cardinal Mahony listed several policies espoused by the Catholic bishops and the AFL-CIO. "The legalization of immigrant workers and their families," wrote the cardinal, "especially those who come to the United States fleeing oppression and destitution and who make significant contributions to our country; greater respect for both the civil and workplace rights of immigrant workers, regardless of their legal status; U.S. foreign and economic policies that better address the conflict, poverty and denial of human rights that pressure people to come to this country; [and] a reexamination of how immigration laws are enforced in the workplace, including the repeal of employer sanctions." As a first step to "a broad legalization," the cardinal wrote that Congress should allow immigrants who have been in the United States since 1986 to become legal, permanent residents, and "should correct a 1997 law that allows Nicaraguans and Cubans to apply for permanent residence" while leaving other groups without similar access.

Of course, not everyone agrees with the cardinal. One dissenting voice is Republican Bob Margett, state assemblyman representing Arcadia. In the June 26 Times opinion piece, Margett wrote that "as a faithful Catholic" he was not comfortable with "contradicting my prelate and the highest-ranking Catholic official west of the Mississippi." Nevertheless, wrote Margett, "I feel compelled to do so ... because I disagree with Cardinal Mahony on this issue. If accepted, his proposal would have serious consequences for our state and nation."

In his editorial, Cardinal Mahony wrote that immigrants "are particularly vulnerable to discrimination and harassment by unscrupulous employers who are willing to exploit" their labor. Illegal immigrants, especially, "are reluctant to seek legal recourse."

"I applaud Cardinal Mahony's good intentions and share his concerns about the treatment many of these people receive," wrote Margett in his article. "People have the right to fair and humane treatment regardless of their residence status." Still, "the cardinal's cure is in some ways worse than the disease because it calls on our nation to turn a blind eye to the core issue surrounding illegal immigration."

Which is?

"Illegal immigrants are here illegally. By giving these people amnesty, we essentially ignore lawlessness."

Assemblyman Margett cited St. Thomas Aquinas: "Every law is ordained to the common good," and "it is the fear of punishment that law makes use of in order to ensure obedience." To follow the cardinal's advice, Margett wrote, would be to remove the threat of punishment -- deportation -- making our laws "meaningless."

Mark Zwick of Casa Juan Diego in Houston, a Catholic Worker house that receives and helps illegal immigrants, told me he thought that, before we could answer whether or not illegal immigration brings the rule of law into question, we have to ask a prior question: are our laws just laws? "I think that's the question," said Zwick. "If it appears that the law is going to be unjust for members of the human race, then it is an unjust law. Immigrants aren't criminals; they're people trying to subsist and allow their families to keep from living on the margin of human existence. We're not talking about criminals, we're talking about the story in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables -- the poor family is allowed to take from those who have more than enough rather than see their children die. The greater good overrides people's right to closed borders." Zwick said he draws this conclusion from Pope John Paul II, who, Zwick stated, said "there has to be an openness to immigrants and refugees. He said that the nations that are better off need to open their borders."

In a conversation in early October, I asked Assemblyman Margett whether his objection to Cardinal Mahony's call for amnesty held if our immigration laws were, indeed, unjust. "We have a law that we have enacted, which is the law of the land," said the assemblyman. "This is the law we have to obey, and until we change it, then we are held with it. We have a lot of unjust laws, in my opinion, and it is a common quest of mind to be able to right those wrongs. I think partial birth abortion is a horrible thing to allow in this country, but it's allowed. And, on moral grounds, I would try to change that. Nevertheless, the law of the land today as we know allows it."

Margett said he thought it unfair to give amnesty to illegal immigrants currently working in this country. His father was an immigrant, he said, and he "waited an inordinate period of time to come here. It's kind of like somebody queuing up, and suddenly somebody is in front of the queue and gets ahead; I think that's something entirely unfair, and is unjust. To all of a sudden validate that and say, you're excused, it's okay, because we have so many cutting in front -- what about those people who have paid their just dues of wanting to do it legally? I feel this is a tremendous injustice to them."

Margett noted what he thought another difficulty -- the strain of illegal immigrants on city, state, and county infrastructures. "If we can manage the immigrants coming in" he said, "and we know we're going to have, in addition to our population increase, an X number of people coming in, I think as communities, states, cities and counties we can say, fine, we can set aside and plan for the growth. But when we have an inordinate number of people coming to our shores from Eastern Rim countries, from Europe, from Mexico -- you know we have people from all over the world coming to our country illegally."

Zwick admitted that, "in a way it's not fair" to give amnesty to those who cut to the front of the immigration line; "but," he said, "it is even more unfair to deprive those who have needs." People who cross our borders illegally, said Zwick, cannot make a living in their own countries. Besides, "those who have kept the laws will not be deprived of anything," he said. "They shouldn't hold it against those who don't have the same status to have more participation in the rights of workers."

Margett is not convinced by the argument that illegal immigrants should receive special treatment because they suffer economic necessity -- "that's what everybody comes to our shores for," he said. "My father came here because of economic necessity. So, are we favoring those who want to do it illegally over those who want to do it legally? I don't see the justification for that." Too, in his Times article, Margett also said that amnesty would "cause a flood of illegal immigrants from all over the world," which our state could not sustain.

"I think that what impacts immigration is people not having enough to eat, rather than other factors," replied Zwick. "As long as people are hungry, we're going to have immigration. It's the hunger that drives them, rather than the success of other immigrants -- because they are not very successful. They lead a very marginal kind of existence. They often live hand to mouth. The drive to immigrate comes from the poverty on the other side rather than the streets paved with gold on this side." But don't they have it better on this side? "Yes," said Zwick, "but it's not easy; it's difficult. We [at Casa Juan Diego] struggle with the issue of medical care -- if they want to discourage immigration, people need to know that there is no medical care for the undocumented."

Many have claimed that the United States has fostered policies and organizations (e.g. NAFTA, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc.) that have favored economic and political structures that lead to exploitation of the poor in the Third World and in keeping those countries poor. Mark Zwick said that he doesn't so much study this phenomenon "as live with it. We live this daily. The whole global market and the global economy just seems to thrive on a real deficit in regard to gainful employment among the poor. Same way with NAFTA. In our paper [the Houston Catholic Worker] we do mention that we have free passage at our border for goods and for middle class people to go back and forth, but human beings face barbed wire if they try to cross. We have a thriving economy, but we have a deadly unemployment; but it can't be a great economy if we have a lot of people unemployed, like in Mexico."

"I don't want to see nations' labor and natural resources exploited," said Margett. "So many of those third world countries do not have in place those regulations in regards to their natural resources, certainly in regards to the environmental hazards they have when they turn towards a smokestack industry. So many of these countries that were agrarian are now becoming industrialized countries, and I don't know if they are addressing those issues that we have addressed that are so important, in regards to the environment, in regards to the exploitation of labor -- any of those things. So many of our services are coming from less-developed third world countries; but in that process we should be helping them develop their sense of law and developing their government. If, in turn, we are lending to exploitation in some way -- I don't buy into that. I don't like to see labor exploited, and I would like to see the beauty of their countryside retained."

I asked Margett what advise he would give the federal government on immigration policy? "I think any of these codes that have been in effect for an inordinate amount of time need to be reevaluated in light of what is truly happening, in light of new circumstances. I put immigration into that category; let's make it work. If we're kidding ourselves about this, and if the federal government wants to do anything about it, I think those people who are coming to this country and are God-fearing people and are providing a source of labor for us -- they are rather special people; they are contributing to our society. But [now] we are making them really non-law-abiding citizens in the process."

Zwick thinks "we do not need to get involved with the question of immigration laws if we just work with the people who are here and help them to have just wages. The place to start would be with those who are already here; then we can leave the question of border limitations as another issue."

But, what about border limitations? Does the government ever have the right to close its borders? "They don't have the right to close borders to those whose lives are in jeopardy," said Zwick.

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