August 2007 Print


Principles Governing Immigration

IMMIGRATION: a three-part Interview with Fr. Gregory Celier

Immigration is currently so massive a reality that it is a hot topic of conversation, the object of many newspaper articles and political declarations of every stripe. It seemed useful to us to examine this reality and the ongoing debate about it from a Catholic perspective, firstly by setting forth a number of principles without which the discussion either goes astray or deteriorates into ideology.

 

Father, by tackling the theme of immigration, you are plunging into one of the most hotly contested political conflicts. Is this the proper role of a clergyman?

Let's be quite clear. I don't intend to enter the domain of practical, concrete, partisan politics. That is the purview of laymen active in politics and, in a democracy, the voters. The object of my reflection is situated above, on the level of principles, the principles of political philosophy and the principles deriving from Revelation, in order to shed some light on an often biased debate. Immigration exists; it is necessary to deal with it, but from an authentically Christian outlook.

 

Do the popes and theologians speak of this matter?

Since the Council, this has been a theme that comes up rather frequently, notably during the "Annual Migrants' Day." Contrariwise, I was surprised to discover that the popes before Vatican II seldom spoke of it. There are a few texts by Pius XII, which we shall cite, but there is almost nothing before him, while the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries saw massive emigration. Aid societies were founded, but few speeches are to be found. As for theologians, the majority of them have ignored the migrations of modern times.

 

So we have few doctrinal sources on the topic?

Yes, we do have; but it is necessary to look under different topics, concerning, among other things, property, the common good, the rights of persons, duties towards one's country, and so on. To study doctrine concerning immigration, it is necessary to do a bit of researching.

 

Where do we start?

We start by defining the word immigrant. According to the dictionary, to immigrate consists in entering a foreign country for the purpose of settling there. There is both the notion of changing countries and the notion of settlement: a tourist or visitor is not an immigrant. That being established, it is appropriate to make a few distinctions. It is often because this preliminary work is lacking that the conversation bogs down or hardens along ideological lines.

 

What distinctions?

Let's start by specifying what immigration we are talking about. It is possible for someone to arrive in a country as a result of being violently expelled from the country of which one was a citizen. This is the case of "displaced persons," a rather massive reality since WWII. This sad phenomenon is the result of specific measures. Or someone can enter a country having been sent there in a professional capacity by his employer. These are what we call "expatriates." We shall not discuss them either, for very few of them stay in the host country for a long time. They are closer to tourists than to immigrants. We are focusing our discussion on persons who, of their own choice, enter a country to find a better life and, in particular, work.

 

Should all these real immigrants be put on the same level?

I think it is necessary to make a further, threefold distinction. There are immigrants whom the host country invited to do certain work. There are other immigrants (the greater mass, today) that spontaneously enter the country. From another perspective, there are persons who immigrate for a limited time (even though this may be for the duration of their entire working life) with the intention of going home, and persons who immigrate without the intention of going back, fully intending to settle permanently. Finally, the third distinction, there are persons who immigrate while respecting the laws of the host country and others who enter without regard for the host country's laws: they are usually called "illegal aliens" or "undocumented workers."

Someone who was invited to come and who entered legally obviously must enjoy superior rights to someone who enters illegally.

You see right away the importance of these distinctions. Having established these, we can seek the principles that regulate the question of immigration. It seems to me that they are to be found in the Church's doctrine on property rights.

 

I do not quite see the relation between property and immigration.

You will understand quickly enough. The theologians unanimously teach that the earth and what it encompasses was given by the Creator to mankind in general for him to dwell in and to use for his subsistence. This universal and primitive destination of the earth remains despite all subsequent appropriations. Nevertheless, solid reasons (hard work, upkeep, order, peace, etc.) have pushed mankind to adopt private property, and not exclusively collective property (which still exists in a certain number of domains: the air we breathe, science or literature, sunshine, etc.). The appropriated good becomes "private": it belongs to such a one, and not to others. This appropriation can be the act of an individual, a family, a society (e.g., a business), but also of a city or nation that attributes to itself a definite portion of the earth (a country).

That is how you get back to the question of immigration: that nation can accept or refuse the entrance on its territory of foreigners.

Exactly. As the proprietor of the land it occupies, a nation can agree to share it or not with others. This is the principle of private property: I allow into my home whomever I wish. Of course, every immigration is preceded by an emigration: an immigrant is someone who has left his own country, his own nation, his family, his culture, and often his own language. For a small number of them, it involves men with a taste for adventure. But for the majority, it involves people who are constrained to leave their own country because of poverty. It is in this context that on July 23, 1957, Pope Pius XII spoke of "the abnormal situation" of emigrants. Their misery is principally caused by a lack of natural resources, climactic catastrophes or the like, war and corrupt governments. Because of this, the immigrant's case involves what the theologians call a "state of necessity."

 

What do they mean by this "state of necessity"?

The state of necessity arises from the lack of something. For example, I need to get from Paris to Chartres for an urgent appointment. The train schedule doesn't match, and I don't own an automobile. I am in a certain state of necessity. My neighbor owns a car; he is not using it that day but he refuses to lend it or rent it to me. May I take his car against his will, considering that I am in need, and that before the existence of private property, the goods of the earth were given for the use of all men?

 

If such reasoning were commonly followed, it would be anarchy!

You see the problem: cases of a state of necessity are numerous, and if everyone suspended the laws of private property, the latter would disappear, together with all its benefits for the common good. The theologians have clarified this notion. They tell us that only a case of extreme necessity, that is, danger of imminent death, justifies the taking of one's neighbor's property insofar as it is necessary to save one's own or another's life (for example, a mother for her child). In this precise instance, earthly goods exceptionally reacquire their original status of being at the disposition of any man.

 

So, a man dying of hunger can help himself in a store without committing theft, strictly speaking. But who defines the state of extreme necessity?

The theologians explain that it is not question of a common necessity, nor even of a simply grave necessity, but of an extreme necessity, that is, of peril of imminent death or of equally serious harm (loss of a limb, etc.). The same theologians underscore that in a case of extreme necessity, one may take what is necessary for survival, but no more: the cessation of private property is uniquely relative to this state of extreme necessity. In the other cases, private property must imperatively be respected for grave reasons of the common good; otherwise, public security and confidence would be jeopardized, which would constitute significant social harm. Of course, the same theologians reiterate the duties of charity in the usage of private property: the possessors are seriously liable before God. Still, charity is not owed in justice. It would undoubtedly be an act of charity were my neighbor to lend me his car, but I cannot require him to.

 

But what happens if the one from whom one wishes to take something is also in a state of extreme necessity?

You are right to bring up such a question insofar as extreme necessity is often a social condition: for example, during a famine, everyone is hungry. In that case, the right of the actual possessor takes precedence. If only one bit of bread remains, and with it only one person can be fed and saved, the owner of the bread can keep it, even if another dies by his side. For no one is obliged to let himself die to save another. And if the other person wants to take the bread from him, the owner possesses the right of legitimate defense to preserve his life and his possession.

 

You apply these principles of property to the question of immigration?

I add another principle, which is not to be found in ordinary treatises of moral theology, but which has been put in practice by all governments, even by the popes in their temporal domain. We have said that private property is one of the means chosen by mankind to assure the common good. But it can happen in certain cases that the principle of private property can work against the common good: for example, an immense property legitimately possessed that is not being put to use by the proprietor, to the grave detriment of the surrounding populations. In this case, the public authority, which is responsible for the common good, can restrict the rights of private property in order, for example, to oblige the proprietor to concede the right to farm the land to sharecroppers in exchange for a just remittance. Such laws existed in the Roman Empire (both pagan and Christian), and even in the Papal States. Similarly, in the case of a natural catastrophe, everyone can understand that it is legitimate for the public authority to proceed with requisitions, and hence provisionally to limit the right of property.

 

Let's try to summarize your remarks. In the beginning, the earth was given to all mankind for its use. In practice, for reasons of the common good, the earth was in part subject to the regime of private property. However, the proprietors must use it in accordance with charity (which in any particular case cannot be exacted) and, at least fundamentally, in the framework of the common good. In a case of extreme necessity, everyone is entitled to set limits to private property by taking what is needed for one's survival. However, if the owner is also in a state of extreme necessity, he can legitimately defend himself to assure his own survival against what would be in this case an unjust aggression.

That's right. To better grasp the last case (two people in danger of death fighting over a means of survival), it is enough to imagine a lifeboat designed to hold ten people after a shipwreck. If there are only five of us in the boat, we would have a serious duty to pick up other victims to save them. If we refused to do it, they would be entitled to force their way on board (a case of extreme necessity). But when the lifeboat is packed, anyone else coming aboard would sink the boat, causing the other shipwreck victims to perish as well as the occupants of the boat. In this case, the occupants have the right to defend themselves by force against the other shipwreck survivors, even though the latter are also in danger of death.

 

Can you apply the principles we have just summarized to the question of immigration?

Let's say that they can serve as a framework for reflection. But I would like to clarify two points, the first by remarking that immigration is not purely and simply "free." Today the earth is not without a master; the nations legitimately possess their territory and can, within the limits of justice and charity, allow in whomever they want to. In our country today there is a veritable "immigrationist" ideology, curiously shared by extreme capitalists (in order to profit from docile, cheap labor) and by post-Marxian utopianists who act as if the earth were a vast, unowned region which must be freely shared by the most cosmopolitan, uprooted mankind possible. In both cases, it is tantamount to denying to human beings the need and the right to legitimate roots; it is to favor a shameful exploitation of unfortunates overwhelmed by misery.

 

This union of vile exploiters and a cosmopolitan revolution [or, deracinated globalists] is rather strange.

The second clarification concerns the welcome every nation must afford immigrants. Certainly, every nation is the proprietor of its territory, but it must not too readily close its borders to those who reasonably ask to enter. Pope Pius XII, and the Apostolic See in general, has insisted on this point. The reason for this insistence is that ordinarily the nations do not have superiors. Thus only a moral authority can call upon them to take into consideration not only their own immediate common good but also a share of the common good of the human race, as we said about requisitions in the case of a natural disaster. It was in these terms that, on August 1, 1952, Pius XII called for international legislation concerning immigration.

 

What were Pius XII's arguments?

The Pope first points out that the natural resources of a certain number of countries enable them to receive immigrants. On October 22, 1949, he addressed the Americans:

Is the policy concerning immigration as liberal as the natural resources of a country so abundantly blessed by the Creator would allow and as the needs of other countries seem to require?

To the Argentinians he said on December 2, 1956:

How all this speaks of a providential abundance, of incalculable possibilities accorded by the Creator! How all that would express what might be called the maternal vocation of a people enlarging its heart to make room for all!

In the Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia Nazarethana of August 1, 1952 (a text devoted to emigration and immigration), the Pope reiterates what he calls "the general principles of the natural law." He speaks of "the right of people to migrate, which right is founded in the very nature of land," and quotes his radio address of June 1, 1951, for the 60th anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum:

Our planet...is not, at the same time, without habitable regions and living spaces now abandoned to wild natural vegetation and well suited to be cultivated by man to satisfy his needs....

Then, according to the teaching of Rerum Novarum, the right of the family to a living space is recognized. When this happens, migration attains its natural scope as experience often shows. We mean, the more favorable distribution of men on the earth's surface suitable to colonies of agricultural workers; that surface which God created and prepared for the use of all.

The Pope then quotes his letter to the American Bishops of December 24, 1948, on the general principles of natural law:

The natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people. For the Creator of the universe made all good things primarily for the good of all. Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.

 

 

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Fideliter (Jan.-Feb. 2007, pp.5-10), with slight abridgments by Mr. James Vogel. Fr. Celier was ordained in 1986. His first assignment was to St. Michael's School in France, where he taught for 12 years. In 1994, while still teaching, he was appointed editor of the Society of Saint Pius X's French District's monthly magazine Fideliter. He is also the editor of the French District's publishing house, Clovis Publishing.