Support Refugees and Prevent Trafficking

U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking (USCSAHT) invites you to join us in honoring refugees. On June 20, World Refugee Day, we commemorate the strength, courage, and resilience of refugees. Today, an unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.1 Every 15 minutes a family is forced to flee their homeland.

We know that there is a strong link between forced migration and human trafficking. Men, women, and children are made vulnerable to human trafficking by the mass displacement caused by violence, extreme poverty, humanitarian crises, climate change, natural disasters, and conflict. Impoverished, vulnerable families are targeted by traffickers who promise to provide education and opportunity only to exploit them through forced labor, sexual exploitation, enslavement, or organ theft.

Stand in solidarity #WithRefugees and #StopRefugeeTrafficking on World Refugee Day, Thursday, June 20, 2019. Join us in calling our Representative and Senators and urging them to support two pro-refugee bills:

1. H.R.2146 / S.1088 GRACE Act
2. H.R. 2214 / S.1123 NO BAN Act

Visit our website to learn about our 2019 World Refugee Campaign and discover more ways that you can support refugees on June 20 and throughout year. You’ll find backgrounders, resources for prayer, stories of trafficked immigrants and  asylum seekers, sample social media posts and more.

If you would prefer to download and print the 2019 World Refugee Toolkit, you’ll find a PDF file HERE.

Join us and Stand in Solidarity #WithRefugees and #StopRefugeeTrafficking on World Refugee Day, Thursday, June 20! 

Support Refugee Resettlement

Refugee admissions to the US are at an all-time low. Congress must hold the State Department accountable to resettling 30,000 refugees this year (the goal set by the administration) and admitting a minimum of 75,000 refugees next year.

• The GRACE Act would set a minimum refugee admissions goal of 95,000 people each year, which was the yearly average admission quota between 1980 and 2017.
• The NO BAN Act would repeal the Muslim bans, refugee bans, and asylum ban. It would also prevent the administration from setting bans that discriminate against a religion or nationality in the future. 

Click here to tell your representatives to hold the administration accountable to this year's resettlement goals and support pro-refugee legislation.

Deep in the Heart(break) of Texas

(from the Marianist Social Justice Collaborative)

Mary Vanderhoof, our former MSJC Asst. Director, recently traveled to the US/Mexico border to work with refugees and asylum-seekers entering this country. I encourage you to read her powerful, truly moving story of working with these people in their need and what one person was able to do to respond.

"I have recently returned from a week of service at the Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC) in McAllen, Texas... HRC offers food, shelter, and basic services to refugee families from Central America who have been released from detention by ICE to await an asylum hearing. In the past, I've served in Trenton NJ, Appalachia, and Uganda, but this was the hardest week of service I have ever experienced. It left my heart broken, but as Rumi once wrote, "The wound is where the light enters." 

I returned from Texas filled with the light of love and compassion for the refugee families, yearning to share that light and help others understand that these are not "bad hombres." They are fathers and mothers fleeing from gang violence, domestic violence, organized crime, human traffickers, and extreme poverty (e.g., starvation due to climate-change-provoked crop failures) who come to the US desperately seeking safety, security and a chance to support their family. 

(Read more...)

Mary ends her reflections this way:
What can I do now? I know I can't just go back to life here in New Jersey and not be changed by this experience. Whether it's advocacy with legislators, or sending cases of supplies to the Respite Center, or recruiting more volunteers to come with me when I return to McAllen in the fall, I must do something. If you feel the same, I'll be happy to send you ways you can help.

You can reach Mary at mary.vanderhoof@gmail.com

USCCB Statement on U.S. Immigration Reform Plan

President of U.S. Bishops and Chairman of Migration Issue Statement on President’s Proposed Immigration Reform Plan

May 17, 2019

WASHINGTON— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Texas, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Bishop Joe S. Vásquez of Austin, Texas, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration, issued the following statement in response to the President’s remarks today on his proposed immigration reform plan.  Full statement follows:

“While we appreciate that the President is looking to address problems in our immigration system, we oppose proposals that seek to curtail family-based immigration and create a largely “merit-based” immigration system. Families are the foundation of our faith, our society, our history, and our immigration system. As Pope Francis notes: “Family is the place in which we are formed as persons. Each family is a brick that builds society.

"We also are deeply troubled that this proposal does not seem to address Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status holders, nor provide them a path to citizenship to ensure their full integration into American life. Lastly, securing our borders and ensuring our safety is of the utmost importance, but this will not be achieved by heightening human misery and restricting access to lawful protection in an attempt to deter vulnerable asylum-seeking families and children. Instead, we must confront the root causes of migration and look to humane and pragmatic solutions, such as improving our immigration courts, expanding alternatives to detention, and eradicating criminal networks. We urge lawmakers to put aside differences and engage in meaningful action on humane and just comprehensive immigration reform.”

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Keywords: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, Bishop Joe Vasquez, President Trump, Pope Francis, immigration, reform, merit-based system, immigration reform plan

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Media Contact:

Judy Keane

202-541-3200

Emily Risley

Public Affairs Associate

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Phone: 202-541-3471

Fax: 202-541-3173

erisley@usccb.org

Rejecting the Mindset of the Forever War

The Incarnate Word Congregation has committed itself to exploring the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. Let us consider and discuss this article: 

"The Forever War is not just in the Middle East. It is in Korea, where US troops still stand to post along the DMZ. It is in Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of children have been born with spina bifida, neural tube problems, missing limbs, missing vertebrae, autoimmune disorders and more, four decades after the US finished hosing that nation down with Agent Orange. And yes, the Forever War is also in Iraq, which practically glows at night from all the depleted uranium the US has detonated there since 1991.

This is why we find ourselves today talking about torture the way other people talk about their sandwich order, and why powerful voices see fit to accuse torture survivors of treason. We have been thoroughly debased by all this war, all this violence, all this death for so many years. The most popular video games come with body counts. Neighbors with massive arsenals are the norm, and massacres flicker by like dandelion seeds.

We are a crumbling nation not just in a moral sense, but in a literal one. The trillions of dollars spent on the Forever War have turned our economy into a shaky shell game, and deprived us of the opportunity to make education, infrastructure, genuine health care and artistic achievement the cornerstones of our culture. When capitalism sits at the table with democracy, sooner or later all the plates are empty save for a golden few. The United States did not invent the concept of using war to plunder the treasury. It simply perfected the practice." 

Read more https://truthout.org/articles/rejecting-the-mindset-of-the-forever-war/