The Catholic Church’s both/and approach to immigration

Over the years, I have come to appreciate the Catholic “both/and” approach to many complex doctrinal and moral issues. Instead of taking an “either/or” approach that stresses one position to the exclusion of all others, the Church frequently emphasizes that seemingly contradictory truths can be held together in harmony, revealing a more complete understanding of the truth on any given issue.

Take faith and reason for example. Some fundamentalist Christians take the position that faith alone is the only way to understand the truth about God and the world, whereas secular atheists maintain that reason is the sole path toward understanding all reality. The Catholic Church, however, recognizes that God has given us both faith and reason to arrive at the fullness of truth about God, human beings, and the world. 

The Catholic Church’s both/and approach can be found in many other areas of Christian life: Jesus Christ is both fully divine and fully human. God communicates to us through both Scripture and Tradition. Human salvation is accomplished in us by both divine grace and human freedom. Our moral decision-making must be guided by both magisterial authority and individual judgments of conscience. The list could go on and on. The Church’s both/and approach reflects the depth, nuance, and balance of Catholic thinking that rejects overly simplistic answers to complex questions.

Immigration has been a controversial issue in the United States for decades. Some people favor more open borders, while others desire greater restrictions on immigrants entering our country. People also hold differing opinions about how best to deal with immigrants here illegally, especially when it comes to those who are fleeing desperate circumstances or have lived in our country for a long time.

The Catholic Church has a both/and approach to immigration expressed in two basic principles. On the one hand, the Church teaches that every person has a natural right to emigrate from his or her homeland and move to a new country for a better and more secure life (CCC 2211, 2241). On the other hand, the Church teaches that governments have an obligation to protect their own citizens and foster the common good by establishing and enforcing laws regulating and limiting the entry of immigrants into their territories (CCC 2241). And yet, enforcement of these laws must always respect the innate dignity of the immigrant and their basic human rights. In other words, the Church recognizes both an individual’s right to immigrate to another country in pursuit of a better life and the right of a nation to protect its own citizens by regulating immigrants who enter their homeland. 

While applying these principles to our country’s immigration situation is no easy task, the Church opposes absolutist positions on either side of the debate that would either advocate for open borders without any restrictions at all or those that would reject the natural right of migrants fleeing poverty and oppression in their home countries to seek a better life in another country. 

The Catholic both/and approach to immigration can be situated within the wider context of the Church’s teaching on the universal destination of goods and the right to private property (CCC 2401-2406). The universal destination of goods refers to the fact that from the beginning God created the world and everything in it for the benefit of the whole human race. Even so, God willed that the earth be divided up among individuals to ensure the security of their lives, so that by owning private property people can meet their own needs and those of their dependents.

Our right to private property does not do away with the more primordial principle of the universal destination of goods that requires us to be generous to others. As many saints remind us, there is a sense in which our excess “belongs” to the poor. St. John Chrysostom, for example, preached in a famous homily, “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5, cited in the CCC 2446). Likewise, Pope St. Gregory the Great taught “When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice” (Regula Pastoralis 3,21, cited in CCC 2446). While we have the right to private property, we also have a moral duty to share our goods with others in need to the extent we can.

The interplay between the right to private property and the universal destination of goods has implications for how Catholics ought to approach the issue of immigration. Just as every individual person has the right to own private property, nations have the right to maintain their own borders, regulate immigration, and restrict who can enter their country. At the same time, the land and goods of a wealthy nation are not meant solely for itself but are destined to be shared with others, especially the poor. 

The Catholic both/and approach to immigration hit home for me about a year ago when I visited the Texas/Mexican border for a dialogue on immigration. At a shelter for legal immigrants seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries, I met a family who had fled Venezuela to cross the border into the United States. Through an interpreter, I learned that the father had been an election official, and the socialist government had demanded he gather 10 votes per child for each of his four children for the ruling party, or else the children would “disappear.” The man and his wife knew this was no idle threat and fled the country. As a father of six, I fought back tears listening to this family’s heart-wrenching story, knowing I would have done the same thing. Later in the visit, however, we all learned the horrifying news about a 12-year-old girl in Houston who had been sexually assaulted and murdered by two immigrants here illegally from Venezuela. Both men had entered the country illegally and were caught by U.S. Border Patrol but then released pending a court appearance. At the time, I felt deep anger at the lack of enforcement of our borders that had become our nation’s standard policy at that time.

While there are no easy answers to the problem of immigration, the Catholic both/and principles are clear: We must have an attitude of openness and generosity to immigrants in great need who seek to enter our country in pursuit of a better life, while at the same time vigorous in enforcing our laws and vetting those who enter our country to protect our own citizens. Let us pray for wisdom for our leaders and keep both principles in mind as we make decisions as a nation on how best to resolve our immigration crisis.