IMAGE: CNS photo/Mike Blake, Reuters
By
WASHINGTON (CNS) — As the
nation made preparations to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, the president of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops expressed gratitude for “the gift of immigrants and refugees
to the country,” but also appealed for their protection.
“As we do every year, we
will pause this coming Thursday to thank God for the many blessings we enjoy in
the United States,” Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston said in a
statement Nov. 20, a week after the U.S. bishops opened their annual fall
assembly.
The longest and most
passionate discussion on the first day of the fall assembly of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops Nov. 13 focused on immigrants, on how to help
them but also how to drive home the point that they, too, are our brothers and
sisters and should not be demonized.
Cardinal DiNardo said his
Thanksgiving Day statement was prompted by the bishops urging he “speak out on
their behalf.”
He referenced that floor
discussion, noting that he and his brother bishops “were attentive in a special
way to those who are often excluded from this (nation’s) great abundance — the
poor, the sick, the addicted, the unborn, the unemployed and especially
migrants and refugees.”
The bishops “expressed a
shared and ever-greater sense of alarm — and urgency to act — in the face of
policies that seemed unthinkable only a short time ago,” he said.
Those policies, Cardinal
DiNardo said, include the deportation of “Dreamers,” the beneficiaries of the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. These are “young
hard-working people who should be the lowest priority for deportation,” he
said.
President Donald Trump in
September ended the Obama-era program and directed Congress to pass a
legislative solution.
Cardinal DiNardo also
described “the anxiety and uncertainty of those with Temporary Protected Status
from countries like Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras, which are still
recovering from natural disasters and remain ill-equipped to humanely receive
and integrate them.”
The Trump administration in early November announced an end to TPS for 2,500 Nicaraguans who have been living in
the United States for nearly 20 years. A decision on TPS for 57,000 Hondurans has
been delayed for six months, and decisions are due in several
weeks from the Department of Homeland Security on that status for people from
El Salvador and Haiti.
Cardinal DiNardo also
lamented that the number of refugees the country will admit over the next year has been capped at 45,000.
He called it “an
unprecedented reduction in the number of people we will welcome this year into
our country who seek refuge from the ravages of war and religious persecution
in their countries of origin.”
“One common feature of
all these developments is their tendency to tear apart the family, the
fundamental building block of our, or any, society,” Cardinal DiNardo said. “These
threats to so many vulnerable immigrant and refugee families must end now.
“My brothers have urged
me to speak out on their behalf to urge the immediate passage — and signature
— of legislation that would alleviate these immediate threats to these
families,” he said.
Policies that threaten
immigrant and refugee families also are “symptoms of an immigration system that
is profoundly broken and requires comprehensive reform.”
“This is a longer-term
goal, one that the bishops have advocated for decades to achieve, and one that
must never be overlooked,” he continued. “Only by complete reform will we have
the hope of achieving the common goals of welcoming the most vulnerable,
ensuring due process and humane treatment, protecting national security, and
respecting the rule of law. We are committed to such reforms and will continue
to call for them.”
He repeated his gratitude
“for the gift and contributions of immigrants and refugees to our great nation”
and prayed “that next year, families now under threat will not be broken and
dispersed, but instead will be united in joy around their tables, giving thanks
for all the blessings our nation has to offer. Have a Happy Thanksgiving all!”
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