Welcoming the Stranger

"You can't live faith in the abstract."

By
42

Mark Seitz, a Catholic bishop from the Diocese of El Paso, joins Victoria to discuss his approach to immigration and response to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against a migrant house under his diocese.

The Agenda:

—Annunciation House and Paxton’s immigration lawsuit

—Policy solutions

—Addressing crime and fear of immigrations

—Is the Church for open borders?

—Biden and Trump’s recent border visits

Show Notes:

-Watch this episode on YouTube

-Bishop Mark Seitz: Statement in Support of Annunciation House

-GOP lawmakers once praised Catholic Charities. Now they want to defund the group

-Report: The mythical tie between immigration and crime

-CNN: I asked criminologists about immigration and crime in the US. Their answers may surprise you

By
Comments (42)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Slowdave1

    "We don't refer to people as illegals. They are people."

    Yes we do. There are illegal drug dealers (as opposed to pharmacists, who are legal drug dealers), etc. Typically, we don't need to use the word "illegal" because it's obvious. Don't need to say "illegal murderer" because it's clear that a murderer is illegal. But there are legal immigrants, and while I try to have an open mind and maintain civility and love for all mankind, I am really bothered by the inability to call someone who is breaking the law "illegal" or "criminal." I get that there are very good people with touching stories among this group, as there are among other criminals, but they are illegal immigrants, which is completely clear when you ask "Well, are they 'legal' immigrants?" Doesn't mean I hate them or don't want to help them. But they are very clearly illegal immigrants.

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Brianj

    Thank you for this interview! We must engage with these issues relationally before advocating for a policy. It doesn't negate data and research. It's part of the research - not all of it but a necessary component.

    To those who tuned out after he said he resisted the term "illegal," keep in mind that he sees firsthand every day what negative stereotypes of a whole group of people can produce. Reasonable people can disagree, but I don't disparage him for that position. Last week a City Council member in my city (Tulsa) began advocating to punish any agency or non-prof that assisted anyone here illegally or in the asylum process. We have a food pantry that assists several families from Afghanistan. Under his plan, we'd be in violation, even though they are doing everything asked of them.

    Furthermore, until congress makes the process of asylum-seeking illegal, IT'S NOT ILLEGAL.

    Collapse
    1. Slowdave1

      An immigrant under asylum is not an illegal, since they are within the legal process. Those who cross the border never crossing paths in any way with border control are illegal immigrants. Completely different categories. And I have no problem with asylum seekers, other than our miserable handling of their cases.

      Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Guffia

    This interview seemed overly credulous and unserious. It’s great to give the side of the story that the Bishop represents, but by listening to this interview you might think that this is all there is to it. I am pro immigrant and pro immigration, but the chaos and disorder that we are currently experiencing in this area is untenable.

    A far more effective way that Catholic Charities could care for migrants is to help spread the information that the vast majority of them are not going to qualify for asylum, are going to risk their and their children’s lives in the journey, and will eventually be sent back to their home country. Instead they encourage the trip, not just by caring for those who are among us (which is all well and good) but by framing the issue of migration as a “fundamental human right”, as the bishop did in this interview, and operating accordingly. If you tell people they have a “fundamental human right” to migrate to the US, and work to facilitate that right, you are luring a bunch of people who do not actually have any right to migrate to America to risk their lives, untimely for nothing.

    Florida’s Grand Jury recently released a report on the work of NGO’s in the immigration area. It’s worth a read for people interested in this. https://acis-api.flcourts.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/cms/case/651d8f68-f322-4cd0-831f-74dc9b0d77a8/docketentrydocuments/fa40933c-0ccf-4aeb-aa19-b3add421b90c

    Collapse
    1. Slowdave1

      Yes, and the other thing we can do to help these people is to pressure our legislators to fix the LEGAL immigration process!!! We are clearly okay with many thousands of immigrants coming into the US from Mexico each year because we've been allowing it for decades. Why do we insist on filtering down to ONLY those who are willing to break the law and only rewarding those people with the opportunities present in the US? It is a reverse reward scenario for sure, and insures that we are allowing people in who are at least willing to break a minor law.

      If we'd fix the legal immigration process and be able to instead filter to people with reasonable backgrounds and capabilities and such, it could fix the entire problem and be good for the immigrants AND for the USA. And you wouldn't be penalizing those poor people in Mexico who now appear to be suckers for trying to follow the current horrendous legal immigration path.

      Collapse
  4. Austin from Atlanta

    I agree, directionally, with the guest on this topic. As a Christian, I feel called to love the stranger in our land. I am much closer to an open-borders guy than I am to anything resembling anti-immigration. If I had a magic wand, I’d likely grant amnesty for those already here and an easy path to entry for those who are not.

    YET, the law is the law, and his explanation of the law was quite whitewashed. Contrary to the picture he paints, most amnesty claims are not valid & the intention has never been to let in anyone who comes to file a wrongful claim. He seemed to intentionally speak around this, which feels like dishonesty through omission.

    Likewise, the idea that referring to people who immigrate illegally as illegal immigrants is discounting their humanity is quite silly. It’s akin with saying that calling someone who steals a robber is discounting their humanity. It says more about the person making the claim than it does about the person using the accurate descriptor. Using correct, commonplace, non-derogatory descriptions is in no way mutually exclusive with love. The alternatives, such as “undocumented migrants,” are less descriptive and less accurate.

    I commend the guest on the great work he does & thank him for the powerful stories he shared. I hope in the future he will value truth, in its totality, alongside love.

    Collapse
    1. Jeff.Oster03

      I could not have put this better. One of the temptations I find that many loving and big-hearted people have, especially ones who help people as a profession, is the temptation to remove agency from the big-picture context of the people they are helping. Mark seems to favor a narrative where migrants simply find themselves in the US and in need, and any language or framing of the legal realities that suggests that they have a hand in their own situation, and might possibly be dishonest about things like asylum, strikes him as unchristian. This is understandable, but I think we should have more wisdom than that.

      This reminds me of a friend of mine who got a job helping people apply for Medicaid and other state benefits, and his political worldview very neatly evolved more and more to view people as helpless victims of circumstance, so much so that this naivety started to bleed into the way he thought about many other things in general. I gently suggested that his perspective might have been started to be corrupted by motivated reasoning, and it was clear that having such a worldview helped him have much more passion about what he did for a living. I fear that might be going on with Mark as well.

      Collapse
  5. J. R. Antunez

    Thank you for the interview. I had quite a laugh when I first read it in my local newspaper here in Texas.

    The recent lawsuit, the first of potentially many, targets what anti-illegal immigration groups deem as Immigration NGOs. These organizations allegedly receive US government funding to assist immigrants in entering the country illegally. As per their perspective, the tax deductibility of charitable donations to entities like Annunciation House should be halted.

    From the standpoint of a Catholic Bishop, the primacy of God's law is unwavering. While immigrants may be deemed illegal by US law, they are not considered as such in the eyes of God.

    Collapse
    1. Slowdave1

      Then they should rightly be convicted by US law and seen as innocent in the eyes of God.

      Even murderers can ask for forgiveness and the grace of God and be innocent in His eyes. However, that does not get them out of their prison sentence.

      Collapse
  6. Deleted Comment

    This comment has been deleted

  7. Avatar photo
    Rajeev

    Back in 2004-2006, when Juarez was among the most dangerous places one could go, we built houses with Casitas Del Rey during winter break (traveling from Colorado). Taking 50-60 college kids across the border made for a unique experience for so many of them. Many had never seen poverty like they saw when you crossed the border from El Paso.

    The people that do the work like Bishop Seitz are truly special people that fight the good fight every day. It’s such a juxtaposition when you see an indicted criminal like Ken Paxton try to attack the mission of the church & like organizations.

    Republicans as an entity have been vile and heartless on the immigration issue ever since the George W. Bush days. Sure Donald Trump will make some inroads among in particular working class male immigrants but his cruelty will put a hard cap on his support from immigrants & their communities.

    Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    JohnD

    Thanks for this excellent podcast, and a story that must be told. The underlying issue is proof that the current MAGA right wing has clearly lost its mind. So now they are going after the Catholic Church and Catholic Social Teaching. Going after Annunciation House makes Trump and Paxton, and by proxy, Trump look like mean spirited bigots. As stated pretty clearly in Matthew 25..."for I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in’. This is what practicing Catholics do. Annunciation House didn't write the immigration laws, nor did they take a pass (as Mike Johnson did) on the current Senate proposed law. I have voted conservative pretty consistently since 1980. Folks like Trump, Paxton and Abbot aren't conservative; rather they are ill-informed and ignorant morons who happen to be pretty good at scaring the American public.

    Thank you, Dispatch Podcast. Now I need to go online and donate $100 to Annunciation House.

    Collapse
    1. Packmd4

      Fascinating thing here is that this is an easy case to bring out the religious liberty argument. Feeding and clothing people is a basic historic Christian practice and inhibiting Christians from doing that is asking for a RFRA claim. It's just ironic that the same religious liberty claims that Republicans have been making for years can now get used against them. It would be fascinating to see how true their commitment to religious liberty really is.

      Collapse
  9. Pohl

    Excellent pod. Nice to hear from someone with firsthand experience of immigrant struggles and speaking from a purely charitable perspective.

    Collapse
  10. P Satter

    Thank you for this interview, as well as the more detailed information on the lack of relationship between immigration and crime, provided in the show notes.

    Collapse
Load More