For the past few months, Congress has been wrestling with how to address the problems of our current immigration system. Two weeks ago, a breakthrough bi-partisan compromise gave new life to the possibility of substantive, intelligent and effective migration reform, only to collapse before senators left for spring recess.
Now, the Senate is back in session and while there will be no easy solutions, and serious concerns remain on some of the enforcement measures contemplated, there is still hope for comprehensive reforms that respond to reality rather than rhetoric, and to our legacy as a nation of immigrants.
If you think immigration isn?t an issue important to Baltimore and its future, think again. Estimates show that Maryland?s immigrant population increased 65 percent in the 1990s. In addition, more than 50 percent of all refugees arriving in Maryland settle in the Baltimore metropolitan area.
How did we get to this point in America and in our backyard? Noticeably absent is a greater understanding of the root causes of migration and the reasons why people are willing to risk their lives in the journey to the U.S., knowing that even if they make it, the “welcome” is conditional and possibility of exploitation is high.
While many agencies are working with immigrants once they are in the United States, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a Baltimore-based international aid agency, works with communities and partners throughout Latin America to support local development and employment alternatives to forced migration, as well as protection of migrants? rights within the region. However, many of the advances made at the local level are overshadowed by the larger economic forces impacting these communities.
Our efforts to help family farmers improve their incomes and living conditions in Mexico for example, have been substantially limited by the impact of international trade policy. Hundreds of thousands of family farmers throughout Mexico have been severely affected by the flood of cheap corn imports from the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement. As a result, the price of corn in Mexico has been driven below the cost of production, leaving farmers with a crop literally not worth harvesting. The Mexican government?s cuts to vital support and subsidy programs for farmers have only made matters worse. After generations of farming corn, families are giving up, abandoning their farms and heading north.
Based on this awareness, CRS, local and regional church partners and the U.S. Bishops Conference have prioritized efforts to also address the root causes of poverty and growing inequity in the region, which underlies current migration.
The long-term goal should be equitable development, with migration as a choice rather than a necessity.
Migrants should not be forced to risk their lives to fill jobs on which our economy depends. The intolerable increase in migrant deaths and the demonstrated ineffectiveness of the current policy has increased the urgency for a comprehensive approach, both in terms of responding to the pressing development needs of the region and to reform of current U.S. immigration policies.
Mary DeLorey is an analyst for the Policy and Strategic Issues Division of Catholic Relief Services. For more information on the Catholic Church?s immigration campaign, please visit www.justiceforimmigrants.org.
