Bishops urge care with immigrants

LINCOLN -- Nebraska’s three Catholic bishops are urging state and local lawmakers to act carefully on illegal immigration or risk causing a backlash of discrimination and intimidation.

In a joint statement, the bishops from Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island say state efforts aimed at unscrupulous employers are appropriate. But overall, they say, the state has limited authority to address illegal immigration and cities have an even narrower scope.

“State or local community actions that exceed jurisdictional boundaries invite actionable claims on constitutional, and perhaps other, legal grounds,” the statement says. “We have a greater concern that these actions could become a basis for profiling or other forms of intimidation or discrimination.”

The three bishops are Archbishop Elden Curtiss of Omaha and Bishops Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln and William Dendinger of Grand Island.

They call local efforts to require people to show they are legal residents to get housing “fundamentally unjust, vindictive and harmful.” The Fremont City Council voted down a similar proposal in July that included a provision about employment, but an effort is under way to put it on a city ballot.

The City Council will be asked at its Feb. 24 meeting to let staffers begin drafting a new ordinance that would require employers in the city to use a federal employment verification system called E-Verify.

Several immigration-related bills are being considered by state lawmakers this year, including one (LB403) introduced on behalf of Gov. Dave Heineman. It would require state and local agencies to verify the legal status of anyone trying to collect public benefits. The bill names a host of benefits, including food assistance, unemployment, public housing, welfare and retirement.

Three other bills would either require or encourage employers to verify the legal status of employees.

The bishops crafted their statement last month after sponsoring meetings with Catholics across the state and released it this month.

Nebraska is home to an estimated 35,000 to 55,000 illegal immigrants, with sharp increases in the number of immigrants through much of the 1990s and this decade, many of them drawn to the state for its meatpacking jobs.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested 1,297 workers at Swift & Co. plants in Grand Island and five other towns outside Nebraska in 2006.

In their statement, the bishops mentioned the Grand Island raid and Fremont proposals as situations that aroused strong reactions to immigration in Nebraska.

Failure of national policymakers to craft comprehensive immigration reforms has sparked frustrations that in some people “boils over into undue anger, dehumanizing rhetoric and uncivil conduct,” the bishops said in the statement.

“Regrettably, unauthorized immigrants, the vast majority of whom lack any malicious intent and whose labor is valuable to the U.S. economy, become easy targets for distrust, resentment and anger, scapegoats for policy failures and subjects for crass political opportunism,” the statement says. “What’s more, legal immigrants, and even U.S. citizens of other national origin, may experience stereotyping and the same backlash.”

A state lawmaker who co-sponsored a measure last year similar to the bill being pushed by Heineman this year said he respected the bishops’ position.

But state Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln said Monday his job is to be a steward of taxpayer dollars.

“If taxpayer dollars are being used for illegal immigrants ... that’s a matter of justice, not discrimination,” said Fulton, who is Catholic.

“The bishops have a responsibility to speak out, but that doesn’t abrogate me of my responsibility.”

Underpinning the Nebraska bishops’ statement and similar positions by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is the belief that people in poverty can’t be blamed for migrating to other countries to seek better opportunities.

The Nebraska bishops, however, said that concern about illegal immigration is understandable, given the large number of illegal immigrants in Nebraska and nationally and that “border integrity is vital to our nation.”

The bishops acknowledged that what they say may appear contradictory but is actually complementary: receiving migrants and honoring laws.

They call for national reforms in line with those supported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The national conference supports letting illegal immigrants earn legal status.

They also call for reducing the backlog of people seeking visas and an increase in the number of visas so that families can be reunified.