SALT LAKE CITY - A speech in Rome last month and a proposed postcard campaign next month are two of the most recent efforts that the Most Rev. John C. Wester, bishop of Salt Lake City, has undertaken in his immigration reform efforts.
Bishop Wester, who is chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, spoke on Nov. 11 in Rome during the four-day VI World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees.
About 300 people from all over the world, including a number of the Vatican curia, attended the congress, Bishop Wester said.
He was assigned the topic of his speech, "Pastoral Care of Migrants in Detention." In researching the topic, he learned a lot, he said, including that the U.S. government detains more than 280,000 people a year, more than triple that detained nine years ago, and the cost is $1.2 billion a year.
"In many cases, even children are detained for long periods of time, despite laws which require that they be placed in the least restrictive setting," Bishop Wester said in his speech, adding that "detainees in the United States do not have adequate opportunity to worship in detention facilities and do not have access to religious literature, such as the Bible or Koran. They normally do not have access to a religious leader of their own faith to comfort them, as well. Priests have sometimes been forbidden from saying Mass -- in one case, the use of wine was objected to, with the excuse that the detainees could get access to a large quantity of wine."
In an interview after his return to Utah, Bishop Wester said the difficulties of providing pastoral care to detainees in the U.S. is "emblematic, in my view, of the broken system we have. This is one more symptom of the broken system. Immigration reform is so necessary that we don't have a system that can take care of our immigrants, frankly, so that's the problem we have."
Attending the congress and listening to the other speakers, as well as meeting in small groups to discuss individual issues and provided networking opportunities, he said. "It helps us get to know people. This is a very frustrating work. We keep hitting our heads against the wall, so it's kind of nice to see this many people of the same mind who are working hard in the same kind of direction we're going. It gives you encouragement."
The congress also reaffirmed his belief that reform is needed, he said. "We need to re-double our efforts on immigration reform. We've got human beings that are being herded into these awful circumstances, children being put into detention, in very severe and scary circumstances. I don't care what you do to a detention center, you've got people in uniform and strangers and bars and big walls. Kids are going to be scared. I mean, I would be scared."
As part of those efforts, the Diocese of Salt Lake City will have a postcard campaign during the first week of January, which is National Migration Week. Each parish in the diocese will make postcards available to parishioners to mail to members of Congress, asking them to support immigration reform, said Dee Rowland, the diocese's government liaison.
In 2007, Utah was home to 215,757 immigrants, 33.2 percent of whom were naturalized U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote, according to the Immigration Policy Center, which also gives statistics showing that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from the Beehive State, Utah would lose $2.3 billion in expenditures, $1 billion in economic output and about 14,219 jobs.
"So there's no denying the contributions immigrants... make and the important role they will play in Utah's political and economic future," Bishop Wester said. "The postcard campaign for us in Utah is very important. If [parishioners] could participate, it would make a huge difference, especially with our legislators here."
He also asked parishioners to pray. "We need the power of prayer in this," he said. "The reason we want immigration reform is because it's the right thing to do, because it's what Christ calls us to do, to reach out to those in need."
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