What is it about?
The news media has extensively documented how US immigration policies affect immigrants and their families. This paper -- based on a survey of 170 Catholic faith-based organizations (FBOs) -- finds that these same policies restrict immigrants and refugees from accessing the social service, legal, health, pastoral, educational, and other programs of FBOs and interfere with the ability of FBOs to carry out their mission of serving the vulnerable and welcoming the stranger.
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Why is it important?
Immigrants and refugee are human beings that should be able to access the basic services, programs and ministries provided by FBOs, and people of faith should be able to express and live out their religious convictions through FBOs without government interference.
Perspectives
Religious freedom encompasses the religiously-motivated practices of persons of faith, reflected in the work of FBOs. In addition, the well-being of immigrants, refugees, their families and their communities depend on robust civil society institutions, including FBOs. It ought to be of broad social concern when FBOs report that government programs impede their work.
Mr Donald Kerwin
University of Notre Dame
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Faith-Based Organizations: An Analysis of the FEER Survey, Journal on Migration and Human Security, June 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2331502419854103.
You can read the full text:
Resources
As immigration policy changes, so does work of Catholic organizations
This is an article by Catholic News Service, published in Crux, covering the roll-out webinar on this paper on the impact of US immigration policies on faith-based, immigrant-serving institutions.
America Magazine article on fear in immigrant communities
This America magazine article describes the fear in immigrant communities caused by harsh and threatening rhetoric from the Trump administration.
Contributors
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