Immigrants of all kinds work hard, deserve respect

The director of the Catholic Committee for Immigration Reform of the Diocese of San Jose wrote this opinion piece. Read the whole thing, please. DP

By Jon Pedigo

Mercury News.com: In our daily work with immigrants through legal services, social services, education, health care and pastoral care, we see too many immigrant workers who labor without sufficient rights or protections while the children and families they seek to feed and protect become the primary scapegoats of the broken immigration system.

We understand the fundamental reasons why people leave their country of origin -- survival, safety, freedom, work and hope for a better life for their families.

Yet the inherent dignity of migrants, regardless of their immigration status, is not respected. We see the degradation of immigrants through the daily border deaths, divided families, and decadelong waits for legal residency and citizenship -- like the Filipino veteran of World War II who is still waiting after 20 years for the federal government to let his family join him in America, or the woman from El Salvador, still seeking asylum after 13 years, who saw her family killed and raped in front of her.

We also see the devastation wrought on families living in the shadows: isolation, low literacy levels, low wages, domestic abuse, lack of access to health care, substandard housing and poverty.

Yet these same immigrants work hard, pay taxes, fill needed jobs and help create jobs. During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses and contribute to a thriving economy.

As Alan Greenspan pointed out, 70 percent of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven't spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our Social Security system over the next 20 years.
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