What Finding Common Ground Can Look Like

This week? St. Mary's University Center for Catholic Studies hosted an hour-and-a-half discussion titled?Finding Consensus on Immigration Reform, with panelists

that included former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, U.S. Congressman Tony Gonzales, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley Sister Norma Pimentel, and St. Mary's Clinical Professor of Law Erica B. Schommer.?

Each panelist represented a facet of challenges facing our immigration system weighed down by a host of both complex and contentious issues, both past and present, including the economics of necessity and concern, national security, human rights, administrative backlogs and processing times, political polarization along with public perceptions and xenophobia.

Amid these divisions, Tuesday's event intended to shape the conversation around immigration to help bridge credible and pragmatic solutions in the form of humane and secure policies that represent our ideals as a welcoming nation to all, regardless of origin or circumstance.

The conversation was intimate, weaving spiritual, political, economic, and legal perspectives that help shed light on decades-long issues that the U.S. has failed to fully confront while subsequently serving to elevate the divisiveness we see in our current state of domestic affairs.

Further, there was consensus that evening that our broken and flailing immigration system has collapsed due to decades of political neglect and has only served to fray American ideals of opportunity, equity, and freedom. So on one end of the immigration process is a system bandaged together by a hodgepodge of state and federal immigration policies tethered more often to local authority and political climate.

On the other end are the fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters that leave on a perilous journey to migrate to the U.S. and confront a hazardous journey often marked by exploitation and abuse by human traffickers and smugglers, violence, death, and persecution while also lacking the necessities such as access to water, food, and shelter.

Amid the multitude of challenges, migrants know they will face in their journey to the U.S. – they leave their home countries, families, and social networks, aspiring for a better life that is safer and free of violence, economic distress, and political persecution. And despite popular opinion, gaining U.S. legal status is not linear. A lucky few may form families and gain legal status after waiting many years and investing a lot of money in legal and governmental fees. Others may attempt to do the same but face disappointing roadblocks that prevent them from obtaining legal status.

The hopes and dreams of a better life remain just that as the immigration status of individuals and families remains in limbo, and that results in mixed-status or no-status families – forcing them to live in the shadows of an economy that exploits their hard work and skills and places many in a continual state of financial insecurity and duress.

And despite all these challenges, there was agreement by the panelists on the need to build pathways for migrants to find work that supports their economic livelihood. Our nation’s demographic shift in age and race/ethnicity lays forth the foundational need for workers at all skill levels to ensure economic growth.

There was also agreement that at its core, we must remove labels, negative stereotypes, and unfounded rhetoric that dehumanizes migrants and replace it with a collective consensus centered around dignity and respect for individuals who risk it all to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

Immigration reform is considered by many to be an age-old conundrum plagued by rising sentiment that fears change and are continually corroborated by politicians that play upon unfounded fears of displacement and loss, whether in terms of jobs, status, or political power. Not surprisingly, the response to immigration is grounded in the adage that the ends justify the means, so we send in more troops and everything else we can build or place in the way of someone trying to find a better life. In response, Sister Pimentel, who is a first-hand witness to the daily plight of migrants she provides care for at her center in McAllen, Texas, conveyed to her audience.

Indeed, the key to reshaping immigration policies that do not persecute but instead enable and support begins by listening and speaking to each other to encourage compromise and a better understanding of one another. On a Tuesday evening, the invited panelists conveyed what common ground and compromise can look like.

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