The Pope’s Visit: Is Mass Immigration a Moral Imperative? (NPG Footnote)

• David Simcox
• December 1, 1995
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote) 
by David Simcox
December 1995

Pope John Paul H’s visit to the United States in October was a critical stage in the lobbying campaign for high immigration that the U.S. Catholic hierarchy has waged for three decades. The U.S. Catholic bishops have been on a special offensive since 1994 in the face of California voters’ support for Proposition 187’s curbs on illegal aliens and rising public and Congressional support for lower legal immigration.

Top Lobbyist from Rome

The Pope’s visit capped this campaign, coming during Congress’s consideration of bills cutting legal immigration, corn-bating illegal entry and abuse of political asylum, and barring immigrants’ from welfare. John Paul II made the presumed moral obligation of Americans to accept more immigration a key theme of his homilies in New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore, and in his meeting with President Clinton. He voiced the hope that “America would persevere in its own best traditions” as a ” haven for generation after generation of new arrivals.”

The House of Representatives’ proposed reductions (HR 2202) of about 25 percent in legal immigration are modest at best, falling far short of the deep cuts needed to end immigration’s accelerating effect on U.S. population growth. The cuts would roll back part of the 40 percent increase in legal immigration rushed through Congress in 1990 by a coalition of immigration advocates in which the American Bishops played a central lobbying role. The current bills in both chambers would also provide new tools to stop the annual growth of more than 300,000 in the number of illegal aliens living here.

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