Immigration Policy

John Allen's most recent column points out to one area where the Vatican and the current U.S. Administration are engaging in some constructive cooperation -- immigration policy:

Last week, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See staged a conference on migration, held at the Pontifical North American College, the American seminary in the Eternal City, which brought together a cross-section of ambassadors, Vatican officials, experts on migration issues and some of the church's leading activists on the pastoral care of migrants.

Both Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the pope's representative to the U.N. in Geneva, were on hand. U.S. Ambassador Miguel Diaz, Obama's envoy to the Vatican, convened the event.

A central aim was to broadcast the message that while migration poses obvious challenges, it also creates a wide range of benefits -- cultural, economic, even religious -- for host countries. As a result, speakers argued, generous immigration policies are in the interests of both church and state.

UST's Murphy Institute's latest "Hot Topics:  Cool Talk" program was also about immigration policy.  Pepperdine Economist Andy Yuengert and UST Director of Clinical Clinical Education and Director of the Immigration Law Clinic, Virgil Wiebe, presented a fascinating program that also addresed the challenges and benefits of migration for host countries, and placed these challenges and benefits into the context of the Catholic intellectual tradition.  You can watch it on our website, here.