We wrote specifically on this subject in a letter of December 24, 1948 to the American Bishops:
You know indeed how preoccupied we have been and with what anxiety we have followed those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands.
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.
Informed of our intentions, you recently strove for legislation to allow many refugees to enter your land. Through your persistence, a provident law was enacted, a law that we hope will be followed by others of broader scope. In addition, you have, with the aid of chosen men, cared for the emigrants as they left their homes and as they arrived in your land, thus admirably putting into practice the precept of priestly charity: “The priest is to injure no one; he will desire rather to aid all.” (St. Ambrose, “De Officiis ministrorum,” lib. 3, c. IX).
But no one who has heard our words, whether in our Christmas Address of 1945,116 or in our allocution of February 20, 1946 to the newly created cardinals, and in our address on the 25th of February to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, certainly, no one can be unaware of the grave concern gripping the heart of the worried father of all the faithful.
In these addresses and in our radio talks, we have condemned severely the ideas of the totalitarian and the imperialistic state, as well as that of exaggerated nationalism. On one hand, in fact they arbitrarily restrict the natural rights of people to migrate or to colonize while on the other hand, they compel entire populations to migrate into other lands, deporting inhabitants against their wills, disgracefully tearing individuals from their families, their homes and their countries.
In that address to the Diplomatic Corps, in the presence of a solemn gathering, we again affirmed our desire, often previously expressed, for a just and lasting peace. We pointed out another way of attaining this peace, a way that promotes friendly relations between nations; that is, to allow exiles and refugess to return finally to their homes and to allow those in need, whose own lands lack the necessities of life, to emigrate to other countries.
In our allocution to the cardinals on the feast of our patron, St. Eugene, on July 1, 1946, we again called upon the nations with more extensive territory and less numerous populations to open their borders to people from over-crowded countries. Of the latter, as is well known, Japan today happens to be the most overpopulated one.
We expressed the same view in our Christmas Address of 1948. It is better, we said, to facilitate the migration of families into those countries able to provide them with the essentials of life, than to send foodstuffs at great expense to refugee camps.
Therefore, when Senators from the United States, who were members of a Committee on Immigration, visited Rome a few years ago, we again urged them to try to administer as liberally as possible the overly restrictive provisions of their immigration laws.
