The Catholic Case for Mass Deportations

Cardinal McElroy and the Catholic Church are undermining their own teachings and credibility at the same time by aiding and abetting the invasion of the United States.

America has been importing over a million people into the country every year for decades. The results have been disastrous and the illegal immigration problem during the Biden administration is the worst in our history. In 1965 — and even in 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed — America had more room to afford stupid policies. Not anymore. Mass immigration is the issue in America today, from an economic and labor perspective, from a crime perspective, from a culture perspective, and from a legal perspective. Now, our political authorities must exercise their regnative prudence to chart a path forward after the Church has distracted us and clouded our moral clarity on the issue.

The Church has a long history of standing up for the dignity and rights of the marginalized and those least well off in society. However, where is their outcry for the American people, who have been gravely abused by the impact of foreign immigration and labor? President Trump won the Catholic vote — and they were a critical part of his victory. The Church has long decried lawlessness, and has followed St. Paul’s injunction in Romans 13: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

As Congress was meeting to certify the 2024 election results and officially make Donald Trump the president-elect on January 6th, Pope Francis named Robert Cardinal McElroy to be the head of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Notably outspoken on immigration issues and a proponent of amnesty for illegal aliens (among other liberal policies), in his opening online press conference McElroy declared that “indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” With respect, the prelate is wrong. Not only is Catholic teaching compatible with “massive deportations,” but considering the political and economic straits of America today, it is imperative to conduct mass deportations.

Cardinal McElroy and the Catholic Church are undermining their own teachings and credibility at the same time by aiding and abetting the invasion of the United States, and doing immense damage to both the Church Militant and America. Their disregard for their American flock is the greatest shame of all. McElroy was a tone-deaf mistake which will risk dividing the Church between the Catholics who care about their country, and the bishops who care about political scoring.

Later, McElroy did affirm the right of nations to control their own borders, but it seems largely for show, given his prior statements. His full remarks on the issue read:

The Catholic Church teaches that a country has a right to control its borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort. But at the same time, we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus, plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic teaching. So we will have to see what emerges in the [Trump] administration.

That said, his statement is indicative of a larger pattern of doublespeak on immigration from within the Catholic Church, from both the USCCB and Pope Francis.

Pope Francis’ statements on immigration are as radical as Cardinal McElroy. Prior to the 2024 elections, he said, “It must be said clearly: There are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants. To repel migrants. And this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin. Let us not forget what the Bible tells us: ‘You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him.’” He also compared Trump’s deportation policy as being equivalent to Kamala Harris’ staunch support for abortion, calling both “against life.” In those same comments, he affirmed that migration is a human right.

More formally, the USCCB statements on immigration and the movement of peoples, as well as their 2000 Welcoming the Stranger Among Us: Unity in Diversity pastoral document obfuscates and confuses the discussion on an already fraught topic. Most pressingly, the USCCB conflates “migrants” and “refugees,” which are not the same thing in either law or political science. Refugees, as defined by the 1951 Geneva Convention, “is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” Migrants, however, are under no such compulsion.

Individuals migrate for different reasons, some familial, others economic, and even ecological reasons. So while any Christian nation should, within the bounds of prudence and reason, have a humane and charitable refugee policy (as possible, given the capacity and balancing between the needs and rights of genuine refugees and the citizens by whom and for whom countries exist), migration is a different question, one that cannot be simply lumped together as materially or morally the same as the plight of refugees. Migrants, contrary to popular depiction, have agency, and make choices about their interests and their goals, with the requisite means to act on them.

These Church statements also erode citizenship almost entirely. The pastoral document states that, “the native does not have superior rights over the immigrant. Before God all are equal ... When a person cannot achieve a meaningful life in his or her own land, that person has the right to move.” This claim is subsequently qualified by stating the right of nations to refuse some people who wish to come to America. Much is also made of the challenges and damage done to the community losing people to migration. In the spirit is more of the same obfuscation: “people do not naturally want to leave, so if they did leave, they must have needed to.”

To mediate between the rights of migrants and the rights of nations, a third principle is adopted in Catholic social teaching: “a country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.” While innocuous-sounding enough, the common good as described by the Church here is the right of families to live together, meaning not family deportation but family reunification, also known as “chain migration,” of which represents the lion’s share of legal immigration into the United States every year. Given the wrongly decided Wong Kim Ark v. United States decision, which grants birthright citizenship on jus soli grounds in the United States, the notion of family reunification is a sure way of meaning “let them all in.”

Regarding “undocumented” immigrants, the Church’s pastoral documents demand all of the legal rights of anyone else: no special treatment for citizens even though citizens are the ones being harmed by illegal and mass legal immigration alike. Since undocumented immigrants are “particularly vulnerable to exploitation by employers,” we must not turn a blind eye to them, and our Final Judgment is predicated on how we treat such vulnerable people. Moreover, criminalizing immigration is immoral, as is depriving the means of achieving legal status.

Not only does the country have to pay for illegal immigrants and their basic needs when we are already so bad at caring for our own citizens, but we cannot even solve the problem with a badly-needed immigration moratorium, they claim. Instead, we must give amnesty to illegal aliens. If they break our laws and our customs by hopping the border and taking jobs, housing, and resources without assimilating, we should reward them. To do otherwise is a sin according to the USCCB.

Making sense of these purposefully messy guidelines is most helped by borrowing from Christopher Caldwell’s description of the IRCA: “The parts of the law that encouraged immigration — the amnesty, the processing of working papers — were unpopular, but their introduction went smoothly. They were real. The parts that retarded immigration — the border controls, the employer sanctions — were popular, but they proved impossible to enforce. They were fake.” In other words, all of the policies that erode borders and barriers and cheapen citizenship should be applauded. All of the restrictive policies and proposals, while formally being compatible with Catholic teaching, are to be opposed and denounced.

Another problem with the USCCB’s rhetoric is that it undervalues the political common good that a nation considers in policymaking. All are equal in the eyes of God, and all belong to the Mystical Body of Christ and are citizens of the City of God. Be that as it may, there are distinct cultures, customs, languages, habits, and opinions — Tocqueville called them “mores” — in different countries. The various customs are locally determined and shaped by the experiences of peoples over and across generations. This is in part why migration is such a problem: these customs are ripped from their roots and threatened, even forgotten. Yet, the problem is greater than even this: people in movement means more in movement.

Where foreign mores enter, there are great challenges. Misunderstandings and mistrust take place. More often, chaos can ensue as practices taken for granted in one country are verboten in another. Cultural cohesion and homonoia, or civic friendship, are compromised. William Julius Wilson and Richard N. Taub’s There Goes the Neighborhood explains this process with great clarity and insight, but the point can be summarized thus: people and peoples are tribal and compete over resources. Membership in the Body of Christ will overcome tribalism in the Next Life, and call us in this life to treat all with human dignity, but contrary to Cardinal McElroy’s insinuations, treating others with human dignity does not mean dissolving those differences; doing so in political life is anti-political and suicidal to a nation.

On top of this rhetoric, the USCCB has spent over twenty years actively aiding and abetting mass immigration — legal and illegal — with propaganda, resources for aliens, and migrants. As Professor Peter Skerry has pointed out, Catholic organizations and churches have helped migrants by distributing resources, shelter, information about migration and migrant rights along migration routes, thus materially encouraging migration, including illegal migration. As he has described it: “when Pope Francis celebrated Mass along the U.S.-Mexico border in February 2016, it was hardly a one-off event. For many Catholics, as well as their religious and secular allies, that mass was an unmistakable symbol of the Church’s rejection of the legitimacy of claims by sovereign nations to determine membership in their political communities.”

Moreover, Justice for Immigrants, a USCCB-sponsored organization, promotes propaganda to give positive views of migrants and condemn fears of natives. In 2013, the USCCB announced that it had spent more than $3.5 million through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) related to mobilizing “grassroots organizations” devoted to promoting comprehensive immigration reform. In 2017, the USCCB gave $2.3 million dollars to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., (CLINIC), which trains and pairs legal services for immigrants regardless of legal status. As of writing, their website includes an advocacy section that describes their work as, in part, “combatting enforcement at the state and local levels that hurts our communities.”

While Cardinal McElroy’s comments were about deportations, which only applies to illegal immigrants and criminal legal aliens, the duties of nations can only be fully understood when also describing the consequences of legal immigration as well. Since 1965, America has admitted some 65 million immigrants from all sorts of different cultures, creeds, religions, education levels, languages, habits, customs, and opinions. From a cultural perspective, cultural cohesion has been lost, and assimilation in both economic and linguistic terms.

Labor competition between Americans and immigrant workers has caused a two percent decline in a native-born worker’s wages on average, which seems small but speaks volumes in the larger conversation about wage stagnation and its effects in America. It also causes a massive transfer of wealth between labor and capital, nearly $500 billion dollars, as immigration and labor economist George Borjas has shown. Therefore, mass deportations must and will happen. It is a moral imperative.

Immigration aside, we have economic crises regarding deindustrialization, a staggering contingent of prime-age workers, inflation, exorbitant and often unfair housing markets, overwhelming levels of debt with no end in sight, an overvalued dollar, a low savings rate, and an overstressed social safety net, just to name a few things, and to say nothing of the social, political, and moral crises. In the end, legal immigration is the real problem.

Taken collectively, these metrics paint a dark picture: America is a nation on the brink. Replacement-level migration and untrammeled illegal immigration is not and was never the answer to our problems, and no Catholics and Americans can be at fault for putting the good of their country first.

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Editor’s Note (Jan. 22, 2025): Tom Sarrouf and Shri Thakur were recently awarded The American Postliberal’s inaugural “Vox Populi Award" for their exemplary writing and contributions to the magazine.

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