Thou shalt read the first Fides Dossier on the Question of Immigration in the United States of America (posted on Enerpub.com) .  The Vatican statement opens with an oveview of the

… socio-economic situation in the country which have encouraged immigration since the first settlements and an analysis of the policies employed over the years to regulate a vast movement of people, will precede the examination of a far more complex situation today, with the country facing enormous migratory challenges of the new millennium, lacking the necessary legislation, and in the grip of serious economic crisis and widespread social malcontent.

With regard to tougher measures taken in recent years to regulate the migratory immigration, an emblematic case is the situation on the US-Mexico border, where the latest strategies of closure culminated in the approval by the US Congress of a proposal to build a 700 mile wall along the border.

Some highlights of the Church document:

• … it is necessary to distinguish between measures to be taken straight away and long-term solutions. The fundamental solution is that there should no longer be any need to emigrate because there are sufficient jobs in the homeland, a self-sufficient social fabric, so that there is no longer any need to emigrate … short-term … it is very important to help families in particular.

• Immigration is a constitutive element in the United States of America, a country of continual change and rich in economic and social contents still globally decisive. Always a desired destination, for the past four centuries the United States has represented a pole of attraction for peoples in crisis, men and women who decided to abandon their homeland for various reasons, including political persecution, religious intolerance, or the natural desire to survive or to improve one’s destiny.

• The multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural society of America today cannot and must not forget that she is the result of a process of nation building which was far from easy…while Mexico was defeated in a war with the United States (1846-1848)… the people never became really integrated…  Mexicans, for the WASP, were second class whites, not fully “civilised”, and therefore liable to discrimination and abuse…  which still continues today, with alternate vicissitudes – with a movement which makes headlines in news reports on illegal immigration, injustice, abuse and violation of the human rights of migrants.

• . … the institution of a free-trade area sanctioned by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in force since 1 January 1994, to regulate goods and capital, said [no]thing about the circulation of persons, or did anything to find a solution to the problem of migrants. Indeed, precisely in the 1990s, the competition of multinational companies and a capitalistic agriculture, inflicted a severe blow on Mexico’s economy, causing a rise in the unemployment rate, a substantial drop in industry wage levels and economic growth at minimum terms. The NAFTA, intended to bridle these tendencies, on the contrary, encouraged them.

AMEN to that!