Tough immigration law in Italy spawns Catholic backlash, insider drama

[didymus]

NCR:

Tough immigration law in Italy spawns Catholic backlash, insider drama

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
A controversial new immigration law in Italy, which criminalizes living in a “clandestine” state and authorizes citizens to mount their own anti-immigrant patrols, has spawned both a major backlash from the Catholic church as well as a fascinating bit of insider Catholic drama.
The dynamics in Italy seem to have obvious implications for the United States, as the Catholic church gears up to make a major push in favor of immigration reform.
Adopted last Thursday by the Italian senate, the law was put forward by the far-right Northern League, an important coalition partner in the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Catholic leaders have been in the forefront of opposition to the measure, charging among other things that it could deter illegal immigrants from seeking hospital treatment or enrolling their children in school.

Probably the most barbed critique has come from Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, a veteran Vatican diplomat who has served since 2001 as the secretary, or number two official, in the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.
“This law,” Marchetto said last week, “will create a great deal of pain.” He expressed concern for its impact on human rights, and called the criminalization of clandestine immigration the law’s “original sin.”

Marchetto’s sentiments were quickly dismissed by Roberto Maroni, the Northern League politician who spearheaded the law, as “the usual litany” of Catholic complaints.

. . . .

Given that the wider Catholic world often looks to Italy, it’s no surprise that prelates from immigrant-producing nations have also expressed concern about the new Italian law.
Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of Guatemala, for example, called on Saturday for “disobedience to laws such as that introducing the crime of living in a clandestine state in Italy, a country with a Christian majority," arguing that such laws "move in the direction of closure to immigrants and to the poor.”

Bishop Nester Herrera, president of the bishops’ conference of Ecuador, charged that the new Italian law will be self-defeating. By impeding the ability of migrants to send home legally obtained earnings, he said, such laws “make even more people poor, and compel more of them to immigrate.”

Despite this Catholic drumbeat, the Vatican itself has taken a more cautious stance.
When asked for a reaction to Marchetto’s highly public criticism of the immigration measure, the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, replied that “the Vatican as such has not taken any position,” saying that the Vatican “doesn’t get into political polemics but governs the universal church.”

 

[NReily]

NCR:

I know this article is dealing with Italy, but I wish the Church didn’t get so blindsided on the issue of illegal immigration. The issue is the result of a cost benefit analysis and therefore requires the implementation of a short term and long term solution. The short term solution is to increase border security, which ups the cost of the average immigrant from trying to go across the border illegally. The long term solution is to encourage free trade with Mexico and introduce incentives and other economic measures that will increase the country’s GDP. The higher the GDP rises, the higher the average Mexican income rises, and the lower the benefit becomes for the average immigrant to attempt to illegally enter the country. Then you set forth a better framework by increasing the number of work related visas and the number of people who can immigrate into the country this year. Instead, some in the church see it as an anti-Catholic, anti-Hispanic thing that ignores the realities of the issue.

 

[Evangel]

Don’t mistake the action of some Catholics as reflective of the teachings of the Church. And don’t imagine that NCRep will accurately reflect those teachings. John Allen can be too clever by half in his choice of subject and quotations.

The Vatican is taking the more appropriate tack, but still Allen refers to “the Church” as going in the opposite direction.