"You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." (Isaiah 58:12)

Civil Rights for Immigrants

Almost everyone agrees that our immigration system and laws are broken. The difficulty and controversy is how we go about fixing this complex problem. The estimated 12 million undocumented persons in America is undoubtedly the most troubling aspect of the immigration issue.

Some ask, “Why can’t they just wait their turn and come legally?” Answer: “The current U.S. immigration system provides very few legal avenues for the admission of workers needed by the U.S. economy to fill less-skilled jobs, thereby creating incentives for undocumented immigration, primarily from Mexico, in response to actual labor demand”.

The persistence of undocumented immigration reflects limitations…and serious flaws in family-based...immigration channels. Moreover, the family-based system is crippled by arbitrary numerical caps and complex rules that impose enormous delays on family reunification. In the case of Mexican nationals, wait times as of January 2006 were about 7 years for the spouse of a Legal Permanent Resident and 12 years for the unmarried adult child of a U.S. citizen. Delays such as these are just as powerful in spurring undocumented migration as the dearth of employment-based avenues for entering the country.

Our faith calls us to view immigration as an act of hope in search of a life of dignity and justice.  People have an inherent dignity that must be honored and respected. When injustice and extreme poverty combine to strip people of their dignity, we recognize that they have a right to change their circumstances.  We honor the innate dignity of human beings by protecting their right to food, shelter, clothing and the opportunity to provide for their own good and the good of society.   In a world “in which global poverty and persecution are rampant, the presumption is that persons must migrate in order to support and protect themselves and that nations who are able to receive them should do so whenever possible.”

Immigrants who migrate to this country do so in order to participate in their own human development. They are searching for jobs that increase their dignity; they are searching for wages sufficient to support their families. They want to openly participate in the social fabric of the community. Instead, those without documents are forced to live in the shadows, hoping to blend into the silence rather than be leaders of the community.

ISAIAH is committed to creating a new paradigm of community where immigrants are fully embraced, and can participate fully in building our shared future. 2007 ISAIAH initiatives call for comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level that includes family reunification and a path to citizenship. At the state level, ISAIAH is calling upon our elected officials to pass the Minnesota Dream Act, to allow all Minnesota students to pay in-state tuition at our public colleges and universities.

More information on this issue at www.gamaliel.org/ISAIAH, click on Issues. Some additional resources: National Immigration Forum at www.immigrationforum.org/, Energy of a Nation: Immigration Resources, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights at www.mnadvocates.org/, and Migration Policy Institute at www.migrationpolicy.org/.