In our current situation, migrants are too often treated like the traveler stripped of his clothes and beaten, or like a modern-day Lazarus who is left to beg for help. Providing support to the poor and caring for those who are marginalized and outcast is not merely a humanitarian gesture, but looks toward the coming Kingdom when all who are admitted will be without want and absent suffering. It provides an example to others and invites them to participate in the Kingdom that is in the process of coming to fulfillment in the world today. Catholic social teaching on migration, which is itself an outgrowth of both the Church’s ongoing engagement with Scripture and with the “signs of the times” of a particular period, provides a framework that should guide Catholics who want to understand how to engage the migration question in their particular situation. One of the key foundations on which this teaching is built is in papal teaching.
In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII emphasized the fact that “no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life.” If conditions enable individuals to build a satisfying life, they most likely will remain in their homeland and, if they leave, it is more likely by choice than by necessity. The corollary to this emphasis consists in ensuring that the conditions of a given country do not give rise to situations of forced migration. It is thus critical that we seek to offset and alleviate the root causes that compel people to migrate.

Recognizing that social and economic conditions can at times compel a person to migrate, Blessed Pope John XXIII asserted that “every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own country; and, when there are just reasons for it, the right to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there.” If you cannot safely remain in your country or are effectively prohibited from providing the necessities from your family to survive, you are not obligated to remain. This conviction was subsequently reinforced in the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, which explicitly recognized a person’s right to migrate. Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical Laborum Exercens, reaffirms the point that people should be able to migrate to find work to support themselves and their family while acknowledging that such migration signifies a loss to one’s home country.

While a person’s right to migrate as well as the right not to have to migrate are key principles, it is worth noting that political leaders also have the right to control and manage the borders of the state over which they rule. Nevertheless, such a right is not absolute; although “every state has the right to regulate migration and to enact policies dictated by the general requirements of the common good,” it must always do so “while safeguarding respect for the dignity of each human person.” Respect for the individual person must extend to a respect for migrant families, for “the family, a natural society, exists prior to the State or any other community, and possesses inherent rights which are inalienable.” Policies that weaken families or separate children from their parents must be evaluated in light of the inherent rights of families to remain together.

One of the sad realities of our contemporary situation is that of forced migration, and particularly of those who are compelled to leave their homeland because of political, religious, or other forms of persecution. For this reason, the Church recognizes the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. In his encyclical letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Saint Pope John Paul II refers to the world’s refugee crisis as “the festering of a wound.” In his 1990 Lenten message he listed the rights of refugees, including the right to be reunited with their families and the right to a dignified occupation and just wage. Two years later, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People reaffirmed that the right to asylum must never be denied when people’s lives are truly threatened in their homeland.

The dire circumstances confronting refugees and asylees has been of particular concern for Pope Francis from the beginning of his pontificate. Making a bold statement by taking his first trip as pope outside Rome to Lampedusa, Italy the Holy Father decried the “globalization of indifference” and the “throwaway culture” that disregards those fleeing persecution in order to seek a better life. It is, in this view, unacceptable for those of us in the developed world disregard their suffering or disregard their plights so that we might more easily live lives of comfort. Instead, the Holy Father has repeatedly highlighted our obligation as Catholics to nurture communities of welcome, support policies that will protect the human dignity of migrants, promote the stability of migrant families, and assist in their integration following their arrival. In his encyclical Fratelli Tutti reiterated our obligation to welcome, protect, promote and integrate migrants as a way to help them live a dignified life in their new country, for so long as they are not able to do so in their homeland.