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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Driver’s license arguments in Minnesota raise questions about morality, justice

Veronica Orellana of Worthington, Minnesota, addresses a Feb. 21 news conference at the State Capitol in St. Paul about ways a legislative proposal to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses would help her family.
Veronica Orellana of Worthington, Minnesota, addresses a Feb. 21 news conference at the State Capitol in St. Paul about ways a legislative proposal to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses would help her family. Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

A complex swirl of emotions, moral and legal questions drive the nation’s debate on immigration and the presence of more than 10 million undocumented people in the United States.

More than 90,000 of those undocumented immigrants live in Minnesota.

Some people argue law-and-order: strong border control and immediate deportation of anyone in the country without the proper papers.

Others, including Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and bishops around the country, insist the nation’s immigration system is broken and needs to be reformed. The nation’s borders need to be secure, the bishops argue, but immigrants who have entered the country illegally and have lived here for years, sometimes decades, need to be given a way forward that respects their dignity and does not separate families.

Not every Catholic agrees with the bishops. Some wonder why the bishops would enter this legal debate at all. Others argue that abortion is a far more important issue, and that is where the U.S. bishops should place their energy, rather than divert attention to immigration.

Still others have been hurt by an undocumented immigrant’s crime or traffic violation, and feel strongly that the offender should not have been in this country in the first place. Those feelings exist, although studies indicate undocumented and legal immigrants commit significantly fewer crimes per capita than people born in the United States.

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Driver’s licenses for all

Such arguments came to the forefront in some of the reaction posted to The Catholic Spirit website and social media about Archbishop Hebda’s Feb. 21 advocacy at a State Capitol news conference in St. Paul for undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses, which had been allowed in Minnesota until state law changed in 2003.

The archbishop called the issue a “moral imperative” and an “important human rights test” because without driver’s licenses, unauthorized immigrants struggle to get to work, school, church and grocery stores. Everyday activities can be enormously difficult without a car, particularly in rural areas, the archbishop said, and undocumented immigrants who drive without a license fear being pulled over, separated from their families and deported.

“It is a terrible fear to impose on people and families in our community, and we must do something about it for our brothers and sisters,” the archbishop said.

He was joined at the news conference by dozens of immigrants, members of law enforcement, agriculture and hospitality industries and lawmakers who back the proposed legislation. Many argue that allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses will help keep the roads safe because licensed drivers need to be insured and know the rules of the road. Absent federal reforms in Washington, they argue, it is something Minnesotans can do to help people take care of their families and keep them out of the shadows of society.

After seeing the story in The Catholic Spirit, Maria Boecker, a member of Guardian Angels in Chaska, posted a letter to the archbishop on the newspaper’s website expressing her disappointment. U.S. laws need to be respected, she wrote, and undocumented immigrants and the businesses that hire them in Minnesota and elsewhere break those laws. Undocumented immigrants cost society in welfare, public schooling, higher taxes and the correctional system, she said.

Boecker also brought personal experience to the debate: A friend and neighbor, 90-year-old Earl Olander, was beaten to death in his home near Carver by two undocumented immigrants in 2015.

“Now you, as the leader of our Catholic diocese, come out and say it is a ‘moral’ imperative to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens,” she wrote. “Why aren’t you preaching to those same illegal aliens, that you know are in our churches, of the ‘moral’ imperative of coming to our country legally?”

Costs and benefits

Archbishop Hebda said he read the post, and he acknowledged that emotions are great in these areas. But the actions of some cannot be attributed to everyone in a given group, he said.

“That’s why it is so painful when all our priests are painted with the same brush stroke (in the Church’s clergy sexual abuse crisis) when you know most of them are great, generous priests. And you’d hate for them all to be penalized because of the bad actions of one priest or bishop,” he said.

The same can be said for the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, the archbishop said. And the reality is that people are living here illegally, many hold jobs and go to school and take care of their families. And people have a responsibility to treat everyone with dignity and compassion, including those who commit crimes, the archbishop said.

“That’s why the Church is involved in ministry in our prisons and jails,” he said. “Because we know that all people bear the image of God within them; they are created in the image and likeness of God.”

Many immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, add great life, strong faith and needed labor to society and to the Church, and to businesses, farms and ranches, often taking jobs that Americans don’t want to do, the archbishop said. Those comments were echoed in separate interviews with The Catholic Spirit by Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese, and Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which advocates for the Church in public policy.

One fact to note is that undocumented immigrants with jobs pay Social Security taxes, but will not reap those benefits, the archbishop said.

And the business and agriculture industries favor immigration because they rely on those workers, Bishop Cozzens and Adkins said.

“We have a job market that depends on immigrants,” Bishop Cozzens said. “But we haven’t been writing our laws to allow people to come here legally. This is the irony of the whole situation. They are not generally taking jobs from Americans. They are taking jobs many Americans don’t want, but that need to be done.”

“There are a lot of reasons people are here,” Adkins said, but many are compelled by desperate need, such as fleeing violence in their home countries and finding work to take care of their families.

At the same time, U.S. businesses, the agriculture industry and others want cheap labor, Adkins said. Better border security that was supposed to be part of a 1986 immigration reform bill signed by then-President Ronald Reagan never happened, Adkins said, “and with a wink and a nod, we welcomed more immigrants into this country.”

Immigration reform

The Catholic Church is not encouraging individuals and businesses to break the law, Archbishop Hebda said. It is seeking to have laws changed that will make them more just and acknowledge the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants in the country by granting them access to driver’s licenses in Minnesota and forging broader, national immigration reform.

National reforms could require undocumented immigrants to pay fines for having broken immigration laws, take civics lessons and learn the English language, Adkins said.

“Proposals like this have passed,” he said. “There was one that passed under the U.S. Senate a few years ago, but was stalled in the House.

“So we believe in comprehensive reform at the federal level. But, as we well know, as Congress keeps kicking this can down the road, the immigration crisis deepens and the immigration debate gets harder and the challenges become more acute.

“The reality, though, is that beyond the debate and beyond the rhetoric there are real people who experience real challenges and our immigrant brothers and sisters living in our midst need a solution,” Adkins said.

Allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses is a matter of prudence, or right judgment, Adkins said. Catholics can disagree with such proposals, but the bishops’ teachings should not be ignored, he said.

“Catholics should not simply set aside the prudential judgments of bishops,” he said. “Those policy judgments should be given appropriate consideration and deference.”

Bishop Cozzens said the bishops feel there is little doubt about the right the thing to do when it comes to the driver’s license issue.

“We believe it is very clear where Catholic principles take you in this decision,” he said.

In addition, more than prudence undergirds the policy proposal, the bishop said. “It is an intrinsic, moral obligation to provide safety and refuge and a stable way of life for people who don’t have those, if you can.”

Life and human dignity

The U.S. bishops cannot ignore the pain and suffering of people in foreign lands who seek jobs, safety and security in the United States, Adkins said. Nor can they ignore immigrants’ needs in their own dioceses.

“For a bishop to see the challenges and struggles and, in some cases, injustices that the immigrant population in our communities face and to not speak about it would undermine the moral authority of the bishops as credible witnesses of the Gospel, just like it would if they didn’t speak out against threats to the sanctity of life,” Adkins said.

Justice and care for the immigrant is part of seeking recognition of everyone’s right to life and human dignity, Bishop Cozzens and Archbishop Hebda said.

“The right to life is the highest of all goods, and the Church will speak most strongly around the right to life,” such as opposing abortion, Bishop Cozzens said. “But many times immigration is also a life issue, particularly where people are fleeing for their lives, especially when their home country is so dangerous. We must speak strongly about that, because it is a life issue.”

Archbishop Hebda said advocating for the rights of immigrants is consistent with arguing for the right to life of the unborn.

“We see that it’s so closely related to the question of dignity of human life and the importance of the family,” he said. “We realize all those issues are related one to the other. Part of our strong defense of life and in protesting and fighting abortion has to be that same sense of the dignity of human life that would lead us to advocate for those undocumented neighbors of ours who are already here.”

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