BISHOP WENSKI'S LETTER TO SENETOR BILL NELSON

March 15, 2006

Honorable Bill Nelson
United States Senate
Washington DC

Dear Senator Nelson:

A most urgent matter is coming before the Senate this month.  The right version of immigration reform would benefit all of society, as millions of workers could come out of the shadows, Florida’s major industries could more readily find legal labor, and our border security could focus on real threats to our nation. The wrong version of reform would expand the injustices and irrationalities of the current system while doing nothing to enhance our security.

I write to ask you to do two things: 1) oppose efforts by Senate leadership to rush passage of an enforcement-focused bill, and 2) stand up for a truly comprehensive immigration reform package that would include an opportunity for nearly a million Floridians to earn their way to a legal status.

As former chair of the Committee on Migration of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, I know well that immigration is an extremely complex policy matter. It is just as clearly a compelling moral concern.  As a moral society, we should not ignore the abuses and violence that occur because immigrant workers fear to protect themselves. As a moral society, we should not be content when the people who build our homes, clean up after our hurricanes, and put food on our tables are unable to enjoy the freedoms and promise of America.

As bishop of Orlando, I am all too familiar with the realities of an immigration system at once broken and cruel: Haitian teens indefinitely imprisoned in Miami as they await asylum hearings; sixty-six hardworking men rounded up last spring as they built a federal building in downtown Orlando; parents who asked Sarasota sheriffs to help find their missing twelve-year-old daughter and then found themselves deported. 

We have a right and a duty to defend our borders and our security, but we are not a freer people when millions of our neighbors live in fear of a “knock on the door” in the middle of the night.   Spending so many resources chasing brick layers, housekeepers, and waiters who are merely seeking a better life for their families should no longer be an acceptable application of our security resources in a post 9/11 world. There are after all real criminals, drug dealers and terrorists to apprehend.

To fix the system, we must address both the future flow of immigrants into the United States as well as the undocumented workers who already live here. The so-called “illegals” are so, not because they wish to defy the law; but, because the law does not provide them with any channels to regularize their status in our country – which needs their labor.

As I have told the people of my diocese, the immigrants are not breaking the law, the law is breaking them.  If the parties in Congress put aside narrow partisan interests and truly work for the common good, we can achieve reform that protects the interests of all workers, both immigrant and U.S. born.

Florida is a better place because of its immigrant communities. Please stand up for their rights when you come to vote on immigration legislation this month. Offer them the opportunity to earn legal status. Help create a just guest-worker program with paths to future residency and strong protections for both American and foreign workers. And give all immigrants, but especially those vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers, full and appropriate due process to make their case and defend their very lives.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Thomas G. Wenski
Bishop of Orlando