Today I have been asked to address the moral and ethical issues related to the mass deportation of undocumented persons happening in our country. It is important to state clearly, as Pope Leo reaffirmed recently, that the church recognizes that the state has a duty to keep its citizens safe and to maintain order at its borders. That has never been in question. What is in question, however, is the obligation we all have as human beings, and as a society comprised of human beings, to respect and protect the dignity of others. Keeping the nation safe and respecting human dignity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one cannot exist without the other. It is up to citizens and communities such as the church to raise their voices to insure the safety of a nation does not come at the expense of violations of human dignity.

What does it mean to respect the dignity of undocumented persons? Which violations of human dignity should disturb us?

First, it means respecting  undocumented persons for their work. It means recognizing that, for many years, those who have been living here without legal status have contributed to society by working to support their families. It means being honest about the fact they are here not by invasion but by invitation. For over many decades we as a nation have sent the clear message that we want and need their work in jobs no one else wants to take.

Respecting the dignity of undocumented workers means respecting them for their work and their contribution, particularly in the face of accusations that they are a drag on the economy or that they are taking jobs from citizens. That kind of rhetoric is both wrong and a violation of their dignity.

Statistics collected by the government estimate that undocumented workers contribute annually in excess of $100 billion dollars in taxes which fund benefit programs for which they are not eligible. The Congressional Budget Office reported last year that over the next decade undocumented workers will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenue.

Respecting their dignity also means acknowledging that most of the undocumented persons here have raised families, and have brought children into the world who are now citizens of the United States. Their dignity as parents must be taken into account before they are ripped, in full sight of their citizen children, and hauled away as criminals. What does it mean for a nation which often says it honors and promotes family values to act in this way?

The dignity of undocumented persons is also violated by unnecessarily aggressive tactics that go far beyond the task of apprehending people and are intended to cause fear, rather than fulfilling the noble calling of law enforcement. No one working in this important public service should be put in this position. By doing so, they risk violating the dignity of others and acting this way is beneath their own dignity.

The dignity of undocumented persons is also violated when government creates a narrative that they are a danger to the nation because some crimes are committed by immigrants. Statics repeatedly show that citizens are more likely to commit felonies than non-citizens.

This kind of narrative is not new. When President McKinley was assassinated in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish American, there were calls to restrict immigration from Poland and Southern Europe. We have been down that road before.

This strain of nativism has repeatedly been fueled by so-called replacement theories, which stoke fears of a conspiracy to replace a country's white, native-born population with non-white immigrants, often for political gain. The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant was one of the most influential books of the early 20th century. It claimed that descendants of our nation’s colonial founders were being out-bred by immigrant and "inferior" lower-class groups, particularly from Southern and Eastern Europe.

This sentiment gained traction with the establishment of the Dillingham Commission (1907–1911), which laid the groundwork for later anti-Slavic legislation. The commission's report concluded that "new immigrants" from Southern and Eastern Europe were racially inferior to "old immigrants" from Northern and Western Europe. It portrayed recent arrivals as unskilled, prone to crime, and a threat to American society and culture. Laws were passed favoring immigrants from Northern and Western Europe, and at the same time mandating a drastic reduction in immigration from Southern and Eastern European countries, especially Poland, slashing in 1921 the annual quota from 31,146 to just 6,524. Yet, we know the very positive impact immigrants from this part of the world have had on building our nation and especially on making Chicago the city it is today.

Yes, safety and order at our borders should be a priority, but it should be regarded alongside the priority to protect human dignity, for when we forget that obligation we become a different kind of nation and stray from the opening words of our Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.