Category Archives: immigrant

immigrant, liberation, poverty, power

Colbert’s Logic for Focusing on Immigration Reform

I’m sure you all saw the tape of Colbert addressing the congressional hearing on immigration. However, what seems less known is the answer Colbert gives for why he is focusing on the issue of immigrant workers. His answer is obviously not from the character that he has constructed. This is Colbert without the mask, and his answer is excellent. Here is something I can rarely say of public figures, much less celebrities: I’m proud of Colbert and his work to live out his identification with Jesus.

COLBERT: [Takes a pause of two or three beats to think before answering, dropping character] I like talking about people who don’t have any power, and it seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come in and do our work, but don’t have any rights as a result. And yet, we still ask them to come here, and at the same time, ask them to leave. And that’s an interesting contradiction to me, and um… You know, “whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers,” and these seemed like the least of my brothers, right now. A lot of people are “least brothers” right now, with the economy so hard, and I don’t want to take anyone’s hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that. But migrant workers suffer, and have no rights.

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encyclical, immigrant, Paul VI

Pope Paul VI on Immigration

Right to Emigrate
17. We are thinking also of the precarious situation of a great number of emigrant workers whose condition as foreigners makes it all the more difficult for them to make any sort of social vindication, in spite of their real participation in the economic effort of the country that receives them. It is urgently necessary for people to go beyond a narrowly nationalist attitude in their regard and to give them a charter which will assure them a right to emigrate, favor their integration, facilitate their professional advancement, and give them access to decent housing where, if such is the case, their families can join them.

Linked to this category are the people who, to find work, or to escape a disaster or a hostile climate, leave their regions and find themselves without roots among other people.

It is everyone’s duty, but especially that of Christians, to work with energy for the establishment of universal brotherhood, the indispensable basis for authentic justice and the condition for enduring peace: “We cannot in truthfulness call upon that God who is the Father of all if we refuse to act in a brotherly way toward certain men, created to God’s image. A man’s relationship with God the Father and hist relationship with his brother men are so linked together that scripture says: ‘He who does not love does not know God’ (John 4:8).”

Octogesima Adveniens, Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage

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