As a gardener, how are you on ridding your lawn of dandelions by cutting them off at the surface? As an American mad about immigrants entering illegally, how are you on building higher walls, whether of bricks or of laws? Not too smart, you say? For those attentive to the teachings of John Paul II, a visit to the remote reasons so many literally die to enter our great nation is instructive about why methods to block and shun desperate “illegals” are shortsighted.
In 1987, Pope John Paul in his Sollicitudo rei socialis (On Social Concerns) 15, said, “It should be noted in today’s world, among other rights, the right of economic initiative is often suppressed. Yet it is a right which is important not only for the individual but also for the common good. Experience show us that denial of this right, or its limitation in the name of an alleged ‘equality’ of everyone in society, diminishes, or in practice absolutely destroys the spirit of initiative, that is to say, the creative subjectivity of the citizen. . . . This provokes a sense of frustration or desperation and predisposes people to opt out of national life, impelling many to emigrate. . . .”
Latin American people leave the countries in which they were born, the countries where they speak the language, the countries they love because they are too poor to stay there. This must be obvious to all Americans on either side of the spectrum. Some might respond that they should stop being so lazy and get a job. Others might counter that we should give them cash with which to live. The answer lies between these polarities.
“Economic initiative” is the civil right which persons and nations have despite the frequent denial of it. It means persons and nations have the right to start businesses to earn a livelihood. In Third World countries it is frequently stifled by powerful economic entities in alliance with political figures to protect a monopoly. This of course hurts the individual. But it also eventually hurts the whole society because healthy competition is crushed as a growing poverty class arises. Frustration and desperation move many literally to opt out of that native country and to find a new home with more opportunities.
They emigrate, and usually to our nation of opportunity.
While both sides of the spectrum are Christian enough to feel sorry for these people, are we Christian enough to go out of our way to take small corrective steps to buy fair trade coffee or chocolate or other products not run by monopolies? Some of these cost the same as do the products of the offending monopolies, giving us further motive.
It comes as news to most of us that the majority of these “illegals,” let alone the legals, positively aim to leave here and return to their native lands once they have made enough money with which to live comfortably. They do not wish to remain here, much less to greedily gobble up all the free hand-outs many Americans wrongly believe are readily available to documented and undocumented immigrants. It is not as though they are unappreciative of the land where they worked as stoop laborers or as construction workers or as domestics. It is a quite natural preference to return to the place where their hearts are. More than half of the 4.5 million Italian immigrants between 1880 and 1924 returned to Italy once they made their fortunes here, as planned. Even more would have if their children had not objected.
When those Italian immigrants a century ago left impoverished southern Italy, they took the songs popular at the time. One of them was “Santa Lucia,” St. Lucy. How many of us Italian Americans know the sadness of the song? As the ship of emigrants left Naples for the New World, the last thing they saw was the St. Lucy section of the city. As Philadelphians and New Yorkers do, they named city sections by the parishes there. They grieved to go, wishing they were returning.
Latinos are people just like us Anglos. They add at least as much to the melting pot as did my ancestors. They do the jobs most refuse to do. We profit from their unjustly low salaries and their near complete lack of job benefits. We salivate at the thought of blueberries and tomatoes which all started at ground level before they made it to our air-conditioned supermarkets. A little appreciation would help.
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