LCWR Calls for the Welcome and Humane Treatment of Arriving Migrants

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is deeply troubled by President Trump’s continued denigration of those fleeing untenable situations in their home countries. These are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers who have been forced from their homes by unimaginable violence and insecurity; runaway corruption; and droughts and floods linked to climate change. These are women and girls fleeing intolerable situations of domestic violence. These are young men and women who have no access to quality education and no hope of economic opportunity.

These are courageous people who have rejected cultures of corruption and exploitation. They are traveling the same road trod by our forbearers who fled tyranny and violence in search of the American dream. They are people of hope and promise who only want the opportunity to contribute their toil and talent to this nation.

We reject the president’s rhetoric of fear and policy of division that poisons our politics. We choose instead to embrace a dream for America that is filled with hope for a nation united in service of the common good. We stand with Pope Francis who calls us to “promote the dignity of all our brothers and sisters, particularly the poor and the excluded of society, those who are abandoned, immigrants and those who suffer violence and human trafficking.”

We urge the administration to manage refugee arrivals humanely and in a manner that respects their dignity and rights under US and international law and to:

• Allow migrants to approach our border and ask for protection in the United States and to be admitted for processing in a timely manner. 
• Ensure that asylum seekers have access to legal counsel and receive a fair resolution of their claim.
• Guarantee that parents and children stay together after they are apprehended. Holding families indefinitely in detention or detaining parents while releasing their children violates the values of this nation and the standards set forth in the Flores settlement.
• Eschew detention of those awaiting adjudication of their asylum petitions in favor of alternatives that are more humane and more cost efficient.
• Direct Homeland Security to cooperate with faith-based and humanitarian organizations who are prepared to assist asylum-seekers.

The United States has a long and proud history of welcoming immigrants and sheltering refugees. Women religious have been blessed to be able to accompany and serve migrant communities across this country for a very long time. We will continue to welcome them as our national history demands and our faith requires.

LCWR Objects to Trump Administration’s Public Charge Rule

LCWR has issued a strongly worded statement opposing the latest attempt by President Trump to restrict immigration and punish immigrant families.  On September 22 the Trump administration issued a proposed change to Public Charge Rule that would punish immigrants going through official immigration processes and their families for applying for or receiving benefits for themselves or their children.  This would mean the use of Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicare Part D, the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program or Public Housing, could render a family member ineligible for a green card or unable to keep their family together.  The Department of Homeland Security’s statement announcing the planned change indicates the rule will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks.

What you can do:

• Learn more about public charge and the proposed rule changes. 
  • Visit CLINIC (Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.) to read about the proposed changes to the public charge rule. 
  • Download a fact sheet from Protecting Immigrant Families, Advancing Our Future. 
  • Speak out against the rule with statements, press, and social media (#ProtectFamilies #MyImmigrantStory #OurAmericanStory). 
• Plan to submit comments on the proposed rule change. Once the rule has been published and the public comment period opens, look to CLINIC for additional analysis and materials to help you draft comments. 

Full LCWR Statement: 

The US Department of Homeland Security’s proposed changes to the public charge regulation are yet another attempt by President Trump to restrict immigration and punish immigrant families. The new regulation would force parents to make impossible choices between the well-being of their families and the prospect of future citizenship.

The rule changes would dramatically increase the barriers to lawful status for low-income immigrants and their families. It could dissuade parents from obtaining benefits for which their children qualify, out of fear that they may not be able to regularize their immigration status in the future. Lack of access to public benefits programs will increase poverty, hunger, homelessness, and disease, and decrease children’s school attendance and general well-being.

This attempt to target the most vulnerable within the immigrant community violates the tenets of our faith and threatens the values of our nation. We are called by our faith to welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable and we are challenged by our national values to promote the welfare of our children and tend the common good. If we want our communities to thrive, all families in those communities mast have access to the care and services they need and to which they are entitled. The Trump administration’s proposed changes to the public charge regulation threaten us all.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious urges all people of faith to call for protection of immigrants, especially those who are most vulnerable, and to register their objections to this unreasonable and mean-spirited proposal during the 60-day comment period.

CCVI JPIC Office Statement re: Muslim Ban

The CCVI Office of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation joins with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in expressing our deep concern about the recent SCOTUS decision to uphold President Trump's 'Muslim Ban.'  Since the Congregation's founding in 1869 we have both served with and served people of many different faiths. Currently in our sponsored ministries we have employees and students of many faiths.  

Together with the other member congregations of LCWR, we will continue to stand with the Muslim community and all who are subjected to the deeply troubling discriminatory policies of this administration. We call on Congress to exercise its power to challenge the President’s offensive and dangerous policy and ensure that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are upheld.


Read the full Statement by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious: 

The Leadership Conference of Woman Religious is deeply troubled by the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of President Donald J. Trump v. State of Hawaii that challenged the legality of the Trump Administration’s third attempt at a Muslim ban. The court’s flawed ruling adds to the climate of fear and anti-Muslim sentiment in this country and threatens the values upon which our national community is built. 

As women of faith, as Catholic sisters, we believe that all people are created in God’s image, all are worthy of respect, and all are entitled to the protection of their human rights and religious liberty. We strongly object to President Trump’s continued attempts to use his authority to create policy by fiat, particularly when that policy is used to deny access to our Muslim sisters and brothers because of their religion. Such discrimination violates our deeply held faith beliefs and is inimical to the principles upon which this nation was founded.

LCWR joined other faith-based groups in filing amicus briefs in this case challenging the government-imposed anti-Muslim discrimination. When religious-based discrimination is permitted, especially when sanctioned by those at the highest levels of government, the free-exercise of religion by members of all faiths is threatened.

We will stand with the Muslim community and all who are subjected to the deeply troubling discriminatory policies of this administration. We call on Congress to exercise its power to challenge the President’s offensive and dangerous policy and ensure that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are upheld.

Statement in Response to National Guard Deployment to the US/Mexico Border

The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word stand with our Bishops (US Statement and Mexico Statement) and other people of faith (Pax Christi statement) in expressing deep concern about the decision of the U.S. Government to send U.S. National Guard troops to the southern border with Mexico.
Our faith requires us to welcome the stranger and give aid to those in need.  We recognize there is a crisis at our borders.  However, it is a humanitarian crisis for those fleeing violence and persecution, not one that requires military intervention.  We denounce the rhetoric that seeks to dehumanize those who cross the border and deny them their human dignity and human rights.  
We are a Congregation that serves in both the United States and Mexico.  Grounded in the expansive love of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, we will continue to welcome, support, and advocate for the rights of all who choose to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

US and Mexican Bishops Express Concern about Border Militarization

FOR THE DIGNITY OF MIGRANTS

STATEMENT OF THE BISHOPS OF MEXICO’S NORTHERN FRONTIER
AND OF THE COUNCIL PRESIDENCY OF THE MEXICAN EPISCOPATE CONFERENCE

APRIL 7, 2018


To all Mexicans on national territory and beyond our borders
To all believers and non-believers in Jesus Christ in Mexico and the United States
To the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump
To the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto


1. For the first time in the history of the Catholic Church in Mexico, the undersigned Bishops are addressing to all the inhabitants of Mexico and the United States, regardless of their religious convictions, and in a very special way and with great respect, to the Presidents of our respective countries, for the reason of the deployment of troops of the National American Guard at the frontiers that delimits our territories.

2. The Catholic Church in fidelity in the faith to Jesus Christ, cannot ignore the suffering of our migrant brothers who are looking for better living conditions crossing the border to work and contributing to the common good, not only for their families but also for the brother country that receives them.

3. We know that the present and future migratory flows will require a renewed regulation by both nations. Moreover, we are not oblivious to the fact that a constitutive dimension of a prosperous and peaceful society is the effective exercise of the Rule of Law. However, not all rule, nor all political or military decision, by the simple act of promulgating or defining it, is just and consistent with human rights.

4. If there has been a historical lesson that we as society have learned based on the experience of the global conflicts during the XX Century, this is, what’s legal needs to be legitimate; that the inalienable dignity of the human person is the true source of law; that the pain of the most vulnerable must be understood as a supreme law and fundamental criterion for the development of the peoples and the building of a future with peace. That is the profound origin of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That is the universal foundation of a fraternal coexisting among nations.

5. For these reasons, Mexican Bishops wish to repeat what we said one year ago: “the cry of the migrants is our cry.” Their pain is our pain! Each migrant that gets hurt in his/her dignity and in his/her rights, Jesus Christ is once again crucified!

6. Mexican past and present governments have a grave responsibility for not having created enough development opportunities for our poor and marginalized people. For this reason, our incipient democracy has an enormous challenge in the near future: choose the people that must lead honestly, without corruption and impunity, a historic change that will help the people of Mexico to be the principal agent of his or her development, this, with peace, justice, and full respect of human rights. A road that involves, not to close, but to be open to the dynamic of the new global world, increasingly interdependent and needed of solidarity and cooperation.

7. However, the unfulfilled needs that Mexican people have cannot be justified to promote the antagonism between peoples that are called to be friends and brothers. It is not conforming to human dignity, and the best reasons and arguments thought of by men like Abraham Lincon or Bartholomew de las Casas, to build up barriers to divide us or implement actions to violate us. Migrants are not criminals, but vulnerable human beings that have the right to their personal and community development.

8.From there the defense that the Church makes on a universal level, and in a special way through the work done between the brotherly peoples: Mexico and the U.S.A., with Central America, the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada, in this necessary attention to our migrant brothers.

9. There is only one future in the promotion and defense of the equal dignity and of the equal freedom among human beings. The frontier between Mexico and the United States “it is not a war zone,” said by our Bishop brothers of the United States. On the contrary, this zone has been called to be an example of linkage and co-responsibility. The only possible future for our region is the future built with bridges of confidence and shared development, not with indignity and violence walls. Furthermore, Pope Francis has said to all of us: “A person that only thinks in building walls, wherever they may be, and not to build bridges, is not a Christian. This is not the Gospel”.

10. For the dignity of migrants and the dignity of all inhabitants of our countries, we propose to consume all our energies in the development of other types of solutions. By this we mean, solutions that can sow the seeds of fraternity and mutual enrichment in the humanitarian, cultural and social order.

11.That the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the True God for whom we live and Patroness of our Freedom, may bless those who govern us, and our peoples. May She sustains us in the effort of improving our nations, and of all our region, a space of fraternal reconciliation, integral development, and service of solidarity to the poorest that will inspire the whole world.

By the Bishops of the Presidency Council (see full list of signers HERE)  

U.S. Catholic bishops of U.S./Mexico border respond to U.S. National Guard deployment

In response to announcements regarding deploying the United States National Guard to the U.S./Mexico Border, the U.S. Catholic Bishops of the U.S./Mexico Border issued a statement.

We are deeply concerned by the announcement that the National Guard will be deployed on the U.S./Mexico Border. The continued militarization of the U.S./Mexico Border distorts the reality of life on the border; this is not a war zone but instead is comprised of many peaceful and law-abiding communities that are also generous in their response to human suffering. We recognize the right of nations to control and secure their borders; we also recognize the need of nations to respect the rule of law. Current law in the United States rightly provides that those arriving to our country fleeing persecution are entitled to due-process as their claims are reviewed. Seeking refuge from persecution and violence in search of a peaceful life for oneself and one’s family is not a crime. Our faith calls us to respond with compassion to those who suffer, and to live in a spirit of solidarity with all human beings. We remain hopeful that our local, state and federal officials will work collaboratively and prudently in the implementation of this deployment, ensuring that the presence of the National Guard is measured and not disruptive to community life. We are also deeply concerned that at this time divisive rhetoric often promotes the dehumanization of immigrants, as if all were threats and criminals. We urge Catholics and people of good will to look past the dehumanizing rhetoric regarding immigrants and remember that they are a vulnerable population, our neighbors, and our sisters and brothers in Christ.

(See full list of signers HERE)