In the Agora: Who Would Jesus Hire?

July 18, 2006

Who Would Jesus Hire?

Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has been a friend to all things bright and beautiful for some time. She is a regular contributor to First Things, and sits on the boards of both the Institute on Religion and Democracy and Neuhaus' Institute on Religion and Public Life. Her latest article in First Things, "Principled Immigration," is a nice sampling of her irenic style entrenced by a perspicacious mind.

Glendon suggests that the principles set forth in the 2003 Joint Pastoral Letter issued by the US and Mexican bishops are on the mark. After all, it would be difficult to disagree with what was promulgated: (1) persons have the right to find employment opportunities in their homeland; (2) when opportunities are not abailable at home, persons have the right to migrate to find work to support themselves and their families; (3) sovereign nations have the rith to control their boundaries, but economically stronger nations have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows; (4) refugees and asylum seekers fleeing wars and persecutions should be protected; and (5) the human dignity and rights of undocumented workers should be respected.

Yet there is something missing, and this something is related to the presence of "undocumented" instead of "illegal" in statement five. Glendon rightly notes that while these platitudes are all well, good, and true, there should also be some recogition that, as Christians, we are called to be responsible citizens, and this includes an intrinsic desire for an ordered society. Platonic idealism lost out to the aristotelian via media a long time ago, but our leaders, and especially those who are Christian, must remember the necessity of a respect for the law.

And Glendon also notes that without some regard for the law, platforms two and three could easily lead to our current immigration morass. She suggests, correctly, that only when these principles are understood under the premise of respect for the law can society fully function: The human dignity of immigrants will be upheld and the social ordering of the republic will contine.

The position taken by Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles on the Sensenbrenner-King Bill in 2005 is a vivid example of the antithesis of Glendon's position. But then again, Cardinal Mahoney himself is a vivid example of how liberal Catholicism is an acid not only to the Church but to American society (You'll recall that he spent millions to build what is perhaps the most architecturally repulsive cathedral in the history of Christendom after the '94 quake). Archbishop Chaput of Denver, J. Budziszewski, and Neuhaus have all suggested that it is possible to be a responsible American citizen while exhibiting a social awareness formed by Catholic moral theology.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at July 18, 2006 10:50 AM

Comments

It does seem that a fairly substantial liberalization of our immigration laws is entailed by these principles, combined with a much stricter enforcement of the rights of those who do come here illegally (i.e., no more looking the other way on behalf of employers who happily employ such immigrants to keep their labor costs illegally low).

Posted by: philosopher at July 18, 2006 11:11 AM | permalink

Without discounting the idealistic validity of the principles set forth in the 2003 Joint Pastoral Letter, it seems that when "economically stronger nations" "accommodate migration flows", the economically stronger nations have as much tendency to drown under the weight of the migrants as they have to continue their economic growth.

Something obviously is done with the land left by those migrants, and it seems safe to assume that those who will choose to leave are more likely than not better workers, students, citizens than those who stay. At what point does the right to employment opportunities trump the obligation of those in economically weaker nations to stay and promote growth in their own countries?

Doesn't the emigration of the best and brightest diminish other nations' abilities to compete and strengthen their ability to achieve or maintain a strong economy, democracy in political structure and those indigenous aspects of the country's culture that its expatriates long for no matter where they move?

Posted by: lawyerchik1 at July 18, 2006 11:59 AM | permalink

What I don't like about such letters is that they're quite one sided. Given the statement "(2) when opportunities are not abailable at home, persons have the right to migrate to find work to support themselves and their families;" this raises (to me) an important issue: is immigration the best solution to this problem?

When immigrants have been heading from south of the border to the USA for decades now, I think that's a sign that there are some real long-term (i.e. structural) issues in those countries. Immigration has not fixed those issues. I think that immigration can not fix those issues. So, I think that such letters need to address BOTH problems. It's not just enough to only talk about immigrants in this country; they need to work on making other countries more desirable to stay in.

Posted by: Nathan Mates at July 18, 2006 03:09 PM | permalink

July 18, 2006

Who Would Jesus Hire?

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