Some Catholics aren't so sure about the bishops' push for comprehensive immigration reform, but this Catholic activist says it's time for the entire church to stick up for immigrants.

Ask any priest or nun working with Latino immigrants in the United States, and they will tell you that many of their parishioners are living in a state of terror. Then ask them what the larger Catholic community is doing about it, and the answer will likely be: "Damn little!"

Immigration reform died an ugly death in 2007. The professional pushers of addictive resentment and fear-such as Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs-created a toxic anti-immigrant smog that spread over our nation. Bullies rule the land, and decent people are silent.

The result is a shameful regimen of racial profiling, paramilitary abuse of force by out-of-control Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and the denial of due process to the unlucky immigrants caught up in the backlash against undocumented migrants.

Most important to Catholics is the destruction of families through deportations. In 2008 ICE deported 267,000 undocumented immigrants. The overwhelming majority were simply workers building a life with their families in this land. Our nation has not seen as shameful a spasm of immigrant abuse since "Operation Wetback" deported a million Mexican laborers abruptly deemed redundant after World War II.

While President Obama has thankfully initiated a moratorium on workplace raids, even under his administration the misery continues. The ICE website brags that deportations are up 18 percent nationally over 2008 levels. This despite Obama's oft-stated position that current immigration laws are broken and that a practical, comprehensive reform package is necessary.

Immigration reform is only fair to the thousands of immigrant families who have been whipsawed by our historically capricious treatment of undocumented workers. For decades the United States turned a blind eye to the illegal immigration of Mexican workers across our southern border. Their cheap labor was convenient to powerful farmers, to poultry and meatpacking industries, to restaurant owners, and to all of us who enjoy cheap vegetables.

Now a souring economy means that the "illegal" workers are surplus laborers, and national security demands that we know who is living in our nation.
But rhetorical or real clampdowns on undocumented workers are all show. The owners of the meatpacking companies, farmers, restaurants, manufacturers, or other small businesses that rely on this workforce are rarely prosecuted. And even at a greatly accelerated pace of deportations, it would take some 48 years to deport the estimated 12 million undocumented workers currently in the United States-assuming no one else ever crosses the border.

How well has the U.S. church responded to this cultural and actual assault against undocumented workers? The honest answer would have to be "mixed."
The official position of church leadership has been superb. The U.S. and Mexican bishops jointly issued the pastoral letter Strangers No Longer seven years ago, calling for family unification and a broad legalization program.

As early as 2003 the bishops saw the increasingly ugly tone of the debate: "Alarmingly, migrants often are treated as criminals. Misperceptions and xenophobic and racist attitudes in both the United States and Mexico contribute to an atmosphere in which undocumented persons are discriminated against and abused."

Grounded in scripture and Catholic social teaching, the pastoral declares that "the human dignity and human rights of undocumented immigrants should be respected."

Since then, the church also has launched the Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform (justiceforimmigrants.org) to mobilize its institutions and people in the struggle for justice for undocumented migrants.