Monday, November 26, 2007

Illegal immigrants not US health care burden -study

Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:00pm EST

CHICAGO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Illegal Latino immigrants do not cause a drag on the U.S. health care system as some critics have contended and in fact get less care than Latinos in the country legally, researchers said on Monday.

Such immigrants tend not to have a regular doctor or other health-care provider yet do not visit emergency rooms -- often a last resort in such cases -- with any more frequency than Latinos born in the United States, according to the report from the University of California's School of Public Health.

The finding from Alexander Ortega and colleagues at the school was based on a 2003 telephone survey of thousands of California residents, including 1,317 undocumented Mexicans, 2,851 citizens with Mexican immigrant parents, 271 undocumented Latinos from countries other than Mexico and 852 non-Mexican Latinos born in the United States.

About 8.4 million of the 10.3 million illegal aliens in the United States are Latino, of which 5.9 million are from Mexico, the report said.

"One recurrent theme in the debate over immigration has been the use of public services, including health care," Ortega's team wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Proponents of restrictive policies have argued that immigrants overuse services, placing an unreasonable burden on the public. Despite a scarcity of well-designed research ... use of resources continues to be a part of the public debate," they said.

The researchers said illegal Mexican immigrants had 1.6 fewer visits to doctors over the course of a year than people born in the country to Mexican immigrants. Other undocumented Latinos had 2.1 fewer physician visits than their U.S.-born counterparts, they said.

"Low rates of use of health-care services by Mexican immigrants and similar trends among other Latinos do not support public concern about immigrants' overuse of the health care system," the researchers wrote.

"Undocumented individuals demonstrate less use of health care than U.S.-born citizens and have more negative experiences with the health care that they have received," they said.

Illegal immigrants not US health care burden -study

Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:00pm EST

CHICAGO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Illegal Latino immigrants do not cause a drag on the U.S. health care system as some critics have contended and in fact get less care than Latinos in the country legally, researchers said on Monday.

Such immigrants tend not to have a regular doctor or other health-care provider yet do not visit emergency rooms -- often a last resort in such cases -- with any more frequency than Latinos born in the United States, according to the report from the University of California's School of Public Health.

The finding from Alexander Ortega and colleagues at the school was based on a 2003 telephone survey of thousands of California residents, including 1,317 undocumented Mexicans, 2,851 citizens with Mexican immigrant parents, 271 undocumented Latinos from countries other than Mexico and 852 non-Mexican Latinos born in the United States.

About 8.4 million of the 10.3 million illegal aliens in the United States are Latino, of which 5.9 million are from Mexico, the report said.

"One recurrent theme in the debate over immigration has been the use of public services, including health care," Ortega's team wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Proponents of restrictive policies have argued that immigrants overuse services, placing an unreasonable burden on the public. Despite a scarcity of well-designed research ... use of resources continues to be a part of the public debate," they said.

The researchers said illegal Mexican immigrants had 1.6 fewer visits to doctors over the course of a year than people born in the country to Mexican immigrants. Other undocumented Latinos had 2.1 fewer physician visits than their U.S.-born counterparts, they said.

"Low rates of use of health-care services by Mexican immigrants and similar trends among other Latinos do not support public concern about immigrants' overuse of the health care system," the researchers wrote.

"Undocumented individuals demonstrate less use of health care than U.S.-born citizens and have more negative experiences with the health care that they have received," they said.

Immigrants Pull Weight in Economy, Study Finds

The New York Times, November 26, 2007
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Immigrants contribute nearly one-fourth of the economic output of New York State, and outside of New York City, they are overrepresented in some of the most critical occupations, including higher education and health care, according to a study to be released today.

In the suburbs north and east of the city, about 4 of every 10 doctors and more than one-fourth of college professors were foreign-born, the study by the private Fiscal Policy Institute found. In upstate New York, where just 5 percent of residents are foreign-born, immigrants accounted for about one-fifth of the professors and more than one-third of the doctors, according to the study.

The study, conducted over the past year, concluded that the contributions of people born outside the country have spread far beyond the low-wage, low-skill work often associated with immigrants. Most immigrants meld into New York communities, learn to speak English and buy homes, it found. The institute is an independent research organization that focuses on public policy in New York State.

“We just felt like there was such a deep misunderstanding about who immigrants were that the political discourse often got far afield from any factual basis of what’s really going on here,” said David D. Kallick, a senior fellow at the institute and the principal author of the study, “Working for a Better Life.”

The study included foreign-born New York residents who have lived in the country for decades, as well as new arrivals, and included legal and illegal immigrants to capture the full immigrant experience, Mr. Kallick said.

According to the study, there were 4.1 million immigrants in New York State, three million of whom lived in New York City. It estimated that about one of every six immigrants in the state — about 16 percent — were here illegally. About 535,000 of those lived in the city, the study found.

Advocates of stricter immigration policies have argued that illegal immigrants are a drain on the United States economy because they receive more in health care, education and other social services than they contribute to the economy. A recent report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform cited studies that estimated the cost of immigration — legal and illegal — at $15 billion to $20 billion a year and the benefit at no more than $10 billion a year.

Mr. Kallick said that Texas and other states had disputed the federation’s reports and determined that immigration had a positive economic effect.

Statewide, immigrants made up 21 percent of all residents and contributed 22.4 percent of the gross domestic product of the state, or a total economic output of $229 billion, in 2005, the study said. They also were overrepresented in the work force, accounting for 26 percent of the state’s residents who were working or looking for work, the study found. In New York City, the contribution of immigrants was even greater, according to the study. Immigrants, who make up 37 percent of the city’s population, earned 37 percent of all wages and salaries in the city, the study found. Although immigrants form a large majority of the city’s taxi drivers, housekeepers and home-health aides, the study found that they also made up one-fourth of the city’s chief executives.

American Xenophobes Need Mexican Immigration Facts, Not Fences

By Bill Murray

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S., the world's premier immigrant nation, has slipped into one of its periodic bouts of xenophobia, complete with single-issue presidential candidates and congressional funding for a high-tech fence along its 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border with Mexico.

This debate is as pointless as it is emotive, Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez argues in ``Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds,'' a book that traces more than 300 years of Hispanic influence on North American culture and politics.

Drawing on reams of facts, figures and forgotten history, Rodriguez, a Mexican American who grew up in Los Angeles, plants an idea that becomes difficult to dislodge: Because ``Hispanicity continues to absorb rather than exclude the cultures it encounters,'' he writes, Hispanic immigration is forcing the U.S. to reinterpret the purpose of the ``melting pot'' to include racial as well as ethnic mixing.

Integration and assimilation are fast becoming the rule, not the exception, in Hispanic immigration, Rodriguez shows. By the 1990s, 32 percent of second-generation and 57 percent of third- generation Latinos had married outside their ethnic group. In 1990, 64 percent of third-generation Mexican-American children spoke only English at home; by 2000, the figure was 71 percent.

In 1997, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo signed a law allowing migrants who became naturalized U.S. citizens to retain their Mexican nationality. Five years later, only 1.6 percent of those eligible had taken the opportunity.

Nation Survives

It's true that at least 6 million Mexicans, or about 5 percent of the country's population, today reside in the U.S. illegally. This sounds like a lot, until you realize that double that proportion -- 10 percent of all Mexicans -- lived illegally on U.S. soil between 1900 and 1930. Somehow, America survived.

Rodriguez does slip up in places. He underplays how female sexual emancipation in the 1960s contributed to intermarriage. He also fails to acknowledge -- by either massive oversight or design -- the huge difference between African-American integration (or lack thereof) and that of other non-European immigrant groups.

But he's spot on when he mocks the muddled thinking of militant-left Chicano activists who argued in the 1960s that racism lay at the heart of the American dream.

``Multiculturalism, which essentially rejects assimilation, is a critique of American society sustained by two contradictory beliefs,'' he writes. ``First, the U.S. is a racist society that won't permit Chicanos to assimilate; second, assimilation into the mainstream is an inexorable and insidious process that must be resisted at all costs.''

`Americanized' Mexico

Assimilation has not only become a fact; it is actually moving south of the border. Much of Mexico is fast becoming ``Americanized,'' Rodriguez says, thanks to the increased trade and media links between the two nations that followed the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the past 15 years, household incomes and female literacy in Mexico have risen so fast that the country's birthrate has dropped to 2.1 children per female -- the same level as in the U.S. -- from 3.3 children per female, the World Bank reports.

Given this math, there's a chance too few Mexicans will sneak over the border 20 years from now to support the U.S. economy. Will anyone be left to frame a two-story house? Who will get the vegetables to America's supermarket shelves?

Current xenophobe-for-president Thomas Tancredo, a U.S. congressman from Colorado, would probably call a shortage of farm workers a sinister government conspiracy. Rodriguez may say it's the obvious consequence of a burgeoning Hispanic middle class -- and just a new chapter in a very old American story.

``Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America'' is published by Pantheon (336 pages, $26.95).

(Bill Murray writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Decency on Immigration

Apart from John McCain, it's hard to find that quality in the Republican presidential contest.

Washington Post Editorial

Saturday, November 24, 2007; Page A16

THE SPEAKER was discussing the human face of illegal immigration. "People are continuing dying in the Sonoran desert, and it's just a very sad thing to see," he said. "One 3-year-old baby died, a 16-year-old girl with a rosary in her hand. There's a side of this that grieves me terribly. These are God's children. They're not from another planet, and the whole thing . . . frankly, this whole issue saddens me a great deal."

These statements were moving, but they would not have been especially remarkable except for the fact that the person speaking is a presidential candidate -- a Republican presidential candidate, in fact -- at a time when the campaign has taken a particularly toxic tone when it comes to the issue of immigration. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters the other day, Arizona Sen. John McCain described the toll that he believes his championing of comprehensive immigration reform took on his campaign. "It was the issue of immigration that hurt my campaign," he said. "I have not encountered a domestic issue that has provoked the emotional response that this issue does with a lot of Americans."

Rudolph W. Giuliani, who as mayor protected illegal immigrants from being reported to immigration authorities when they sought police protection or hospital care, competed to see who could sound toughest.

"As governor, I opposed driver's licenses for illegals, vetoed tuition breaks for illegals and combated sanctuary city policies by authorizing the state police to enforce federal immigration law," Mr. Romney said in a statement. "As president, I will secure the border and reject sanctuary policies by cities, states or the federal government."

The Giuliani campaign shot back, in a statement by communications director Katie Levinson: "On Governor Romney's watch, the number of illegal immigrants in Massachusetts skyrocketed, aid to Massachusetts sanctuary cities went through the roof and Governor Romney even went so far as to hire illegals to work on his lawn."

Mr. Romney and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson have also taken shots at former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for allowing the children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas to qualify for in-state tuition and academic scholarships if they graduated from high school there. As Mr. Huckabee told Fox News, "the basic concept, and I know this is still an anathema to some people, I don't believe you punish the children for the crime and sins of the parents."

Illegal immigration provokes strong emotions, understandably so. But it would behoove all the candidates to engage in a little less chest-thumping and speak with more of the decency and compassion that Mr. McCain exhibited.

Friday, November 23, 2007

The Immigration Wilderness

November 23, 2007
Editorial, The New York Times

The nation certainly sounds as if it’s in an angry place on immigration.

A major Senate reform bill collapsed in rancor in June, and every effort to revive innocuous bits of it, like a bill to legalize exemplary high school graduates, has been crushed. Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York hatched a plan to let illegal immigrants earn driver’s licenses — and steamrollered into the Valley of Death. Asked if she supported Mr. Spitzer, Senator Hillary Clinton tied herself in knots looking for the safest answer.

The Republican presidential candidates, meanwhile, are doggedly out-toughing one another — even Rudolph Giuliani, who once defended but now disowns the immigrants who pulled his hard-up city out of a ditch. A freshman Democratic representative, Heath Shuler of North Carolina, has submitted an enforcement bill bristling with border fencing and punishments. Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, for whom restricting immigration is the first, last and only issue, says he will not run again when his term expires next year. I have done all I can, he says, like some weary gunslinger covered in blood and dust.

The natural allies of immigrants have been cowed into mumbling or silent avoidance. The Democrats’ chief strategist, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, went so far as to declare immigration the latest “third rail of American politics.” This profile in squeamishness was on full display at the Democratic presidential debate last week in Las Vegas, when Wolf Blitzer pressed the candidates for yes-or-no answers on driver’s licenses and Mrs. Clinton, to her great discredit, said no.

This year’s federal failure will not be undone until 2009 at the earliest, while states and local governments will continue doing their own thing, creating a mishmash of immigration policies, most of them harsh and shortsighted. But the wilderness of anger into which Mr. Tancredo helped lead America is not where the country has to be on this vitally important issue, nor where it truly is.

Mrs. Clinton was closer to being right the first time, when she haltingly defended Mr. Spitzer’s reasoning. Fixing immigration is not a yes-or-no question. It’s yes and no. Or if you prefer, no and yes — no to more illegal immigration, to uncontrolled borders and to a flourishing underground economy where employer greed feeds off worker desperation. Yes to extending the blanket of law over the anonymous, undocumented population — through fines and other penalties for breaking the nation’s laws and an orderly path to legal status and citizenship to those who qualify.

These are the ingredients of a realistic approach to a complicated problem. It’s called comprehensive reform, and it rests on the idea that having an undocumented underclass does the country more harm than good. This is not “open-borders amnesty,” a false label stuck on by those who want enforcement and nothing else. It’s tough on the border and on those who sneaked across it. It’s tough but fair to employers who need immigrant workers. It recognizes that American citizens should not have to compete for jobs with a desperate population frightened into accepting rock-bottom wages and working conditions. It makes a serious effort to fix legal immigration by creating an orderly future flow of legal workers.

Americans accept this approach. The National Immigration Forum has compiled nearly two dozen polls from 2007 alone that show Americans consistently favoring a combination of tough enforcement and earned legalization over just enforcement. Elections confirm this. Straight-talking moderates like Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico thrive in the immigration crucible along the southern border. Those who obsess about immigration as single-issue hard-liners, like the Arizonans J. D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, have disappeared, booted by voters. Voters in Virginia this month rejected similar candidates and handed control of the State Senate to Democrats.

It may not be “amnesty” that gets Americans worked up as much as inaction. They seem to sense the weakness and futility in the enforcement-only strategy, the idea of tightening the screws on an informal apartheid system until it is so frightening and hopeless that millions of poor people pack up and leave.

That is the attrition argument, the only answer the anti-amnesty crowd has to comprehensive reform. It is, of course, a passive amnesty that rewards only the most furtive and wily illegal immigrants and the bottom-feeding employers who hire them. It will drive some people out of the country, but will push millions of others — families with members of mixed immigration status, lots of citizen children and practically a nation’s worth of decent, hard workers — further into hiding.

We are already seeing what a full-bore enforcement-only strategy will bring. Bias crimes against Hispanic people are up, hate groups are on the march. Legal immigration remains a mess. Applications for citizenship are up, and the federal citizenship agency, which steeply raised its fees to increase efficiency, is drowning in paperwork and delays. American citizens are being caught up in house-to-house raids by immigration agents.

America is waiting for a leader to risk saying that the best answer is not the simplest one. As John Edwards said at the last debate, “When is our party going to show a little backbone and strength and courage and speak up for those people who have been left behind?”

He was talking about the poor and people without health insurance, but he could — and should — have included a host of others: Business owners who want to hire legal workers. Americans who don’t want their opportunities undermined by the off-the-books economy. Children whose dreams of education and advancement are thwarted by their parents’ hopeless immigration status. And the immigrants, here and abroad, who want to find their place in a society that once welcomed their honest labor, but can’t find a way to do it anymore.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Richardson appeals for civil debate on immigration

Ruben Navarrette Jr., The San Diego Union-Tribune

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

What can I say? Bill Richardson rocks.

While John Edwards and Barack Obama were taking shots at Hillary Clinton during the recent CNN Democratic debate in Las Vegas, the New Mexico governor was focusing on his own candidacy and delivering one of the best performances of the night.

Even those who believe that Richardson is really auditioning for a vice presidential nomination would have to concede that the audition is going well.

Just think about the novel way in which Richardson, in answering a question from the audience about the tone of the immigration debate, did something that is practically unheard of in the dizzying pander-monium of the 2008 campaign: He scolded the audience and told them that not only do we have a dysfunctional border that is being breached by illegal immigrants, a dysfunctional system that makes it too hard for people to enter legally, and a dysfunctional Congress that won't tackle the issue in an honest and productive way, but even the way we discuss these issues is dysfunctional.

For one thing, too many Americans keep falling into old habits and repeating a historically familiar depiction of immigrants - legal or illegal - as inferior to natives, defective in their culture, slow to assimilate, prone to criminal activity and devoid of any positive values. Or, as Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo contends in an outrageous television commercial, terrorists in the making.

Tancredo's point was not lost on the person who asked the question during the Democratic debate. George Ambriz, a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, noted that one thing shaping the immigration debate is the claim by some that controlling illegal immigration is linked to the war on terrorism. He then asked the Democratic candidates if they agreed that these two things should be linked.

Richardson seized on the question to make a pitch for more civility in our discourse.

"We should stop demonizing immigrants," he said. "We should stop doing that."

Amen. You don't hear that sort of thing often enough from politicians, even from liberal Democrats who like to portray themselves as more progressive on immigration policy than those retrograde Republicans. It should be clear by now that immigration is one issue that cuts across party lines and makes some Democrats sound downright Republican.

Nor would you expect to hear it from Hispanic politicians, many of whom might fear being tagged as overly sympathetic to illegal immigrants. That's the risk that Richardson faces whenever he talks about immigration.

The last time I heard something similar to what Richardson said, it came from someone who is an immigrant - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, like Richardson, has the advantage of living far from Washington and having the real-world perspective of a border governor.

Schwarzenegger has been saying for more than a year that Americans should channel their anger over illegal immigration toward the federal government and not toward immigrants.

I know what you're thinking - that these governors are wrong and that the angst that many Americans feel isn't over "immigrants," just "illegal immigrants."

Sure, sure. It's a lovely sound bite but one not based in fact. Anyone who believes that nonsense hasn't been paying very close attention to the immigration debate. It may have started off being about words such as "legal" and "illegal," but that lasted about 18 seconds. From there, the debate meandered into the cultural swamp. It became about the outrage that we have to "press 1 for English" and how it's bad manners to wave the Mexican flag and how cities should be able to outlaw taco trucks or dictate the number of people who can squeeze into a single-family house. It became about whether we should admit educated and skilled immigrants rather than those whose only qualifications are a strong work ethic and hope for the future. And it became about whether it is time to impose a moratorium on legal immigration to aid the assimilation process for those already here.

Once we went down that road, of course, things were going to get ugly. And, of course, the debate was going to be acrimonious. And, of course, the subtext of the discussion was going to go from anti-illegal immigration to anti-Mexican, just as it has. No surprise there.

That's why it is crucial that people speak out against this sort of thing, especially if they happen to be running for president. We ought to be grateful that at least one has - Bill Richardson.

Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/21/EDBRTG1HI.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Spitzer drops NY licence plan

This is a truly depressing day for any of us battling on behalf of the undocumented immigrants in this country.

Governor Spitzer has backed off his courageous plan in the teeth of unprecedented hostility led by the likes of Lou Dobbs.

Just for once, a politician came up with a SOLUTION not a sound bite, and he has paid a heavy price for it.

None of the anti-immigrant forces howling for his blood have a solution to this immigration crisis. They seem to live in some fantasy world where if they scream and shout loud enough then things will be alright. Nothing is alright.

There are about 12 million undocumented immigrants living in this country and no-one knows who they are. Gov Spitzer's plan was a common sense solution.

Maybe that's the real problem here - the anti-immigrant people have lost all common sense.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Immigration a dangerous issue for GOP

Even though past election results overwhelmingly indicate that enforcement-only campaigns don’t succeed, Republicans seem bent on making illegal immigration a centerpiece of their 2008 campaigns.

By MORTON KONDRACKE
Monday, November 12, 2007
For the umpteenth time, American voters this year have rejected a nativist approach to illegal immigration. It ought to be a warning to Republicans: Don’t make this your 2008 wedge issue.

Election results on Tuesday, especially in Virginia and New York, also should encourage nervous Democrats that they can support comprehensive immigration reform — stronger enforcement plus earned legalization — and prevail.

To temper legitimate concern in the country about the local burdens resulting from failure of the U.S. government to control its borders, both parties in Congress should extend federal “impact aid” to communities whose schools and health facilities are especially affected.

Polling on immigration consistently shows that large majorities of Americans — two-thirds, in a September ABC survey — believe the United States is not doing enough to curb illegal immigration. B almost as many, 58 percent, support allowing illegal immigrants to earn their way to legal status.

However, a fervent minority — figured at a third of Republicans in one private poll — opposes “amnesty” and has had its views amplified by right-wing radio talk-show hosts. Republicans in Congress have bowed to the pressure.

Even though past election results overwhelmingly indicate that enforcement-only campaigns don’t succeed — indeed, by offending Hispanics, pose a long-term threat to the GOP — Republicans seem bent on making illegal immigration a centerpiece of their 2008 campaigns.

GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are accusing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani of having run a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants, and Giuliani is trying to turn the fire onto Democrats. At this rate, things could get ugly next year, with Republicans waving the “A” word — “Amnesty” — like a bloody shirt.

Recent election results demonstrate that it doesn’t work.

In New York, for example, various Democratic county officials survived GOP efforts to link them to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s unpopular proposal to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Most of the Democrats opposed Spitzer’s plan.

Frank Sharry, director of the National Immigration Forum, says, “If you have an either-or debate on border enforcement, enforcement is going to win. If you have an enforcement-plus-legalization debate, Democrats can win, but they actually have to get out in front of it and take the initiative.”

That’s proved true in Arizona — “ground zero” in the immigration wars — where Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) got re-elected in 2006 by a 2-to-1 margin against an anti-immigrant GOP opponent. She is a strong advocate of federal impact aid to help communities cope with immigration burdens.

In 2006, other appeals to nativism failed in Indiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida and Delaware, and — after House Republicans voted to make merely being an illegal immigrant a felony — the GOP percentage of Hispanic votes dropped from 40 percent in 2004 to 30 percent in 2006.

Despite all that evidence, House GOP leaders have staged vote after vote on amendments designed to restrict benefits to illegal immigrants — even where the law already restricts them — and Senate Republicans led the way in filibustering the DREAM Act, which would have allowed young people brought to the U.S. by illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.

If Republicans want to destroy their future prospects in increasingly Hispanic, once-Republican states like Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona, it’s their option. But the process could be very nasty.

(Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)

Monday, November 05, 2007

Turn down the anti-immigrants rhetoric

BY BISHOP WILLIAM F. MURPHY

William F. Murphy is bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. This is excerpted from remarks made at the Nassau County and Latino Immigration Forum at Adelphi University on Oct. 22.

If we cast an eye back through our nation's history of immigration, it is clear that at different times different ethnic groups faced opposition and even hostility. The Irish in their time, the Italians in theirs. Sadly, in our day the Latino community bears a similar burden.

There are many millions of immigrants living and working here in the United States. We depend on their labor, and they make significant contributions to our local and national economies. They work in our hospitals, our schools, our farms, restaurants and even our own homes; they take care of our children and elderly parents.

More than 12 million of these are undocumented, and a significant number of these are Latino. But we must remember that of the approximately 330,000 Latinos living on Long Island, 50,000 are undocumented. Slightly less than one in six! In other words, 280,000 are here legally.

Mirroring the national reality, however, the presence of these people is a point of division and controversy throughout Long Island. Our communities are polarized, and people, especially the immigrants, are demonized.

What we need above all is a civil, reasoned discourse that will help us arrive at a meaningful and realistic solution. We need to listen to the other, try to understand their fears, their needs, their perspective, and get to know them as human beings. We need to muster the courage to acknowledge:

That abject poverty forces people to set out on a perilous journey to our country in search of a better life.

That 40 men living in a one-family house is neither safe nor desirable and harms the neighborhood.

That day laborers - documented and undocumented workers - fill a void in our labor market, and to date there is no reasonable alternative.

That longtime residents struggle to pay taxes and continue to live in their communities, where they have a right to see the standards of decent living observed and respected by all.

That families are torn apart as a result of the economic need to immigrate. The church approaches this important social issue from the moral perspectives of our biblical tradition and our rich body of Catholic social teaching. The quality of our relationship with God can be judged by our society's treatment of the poor and vulnerable. We must engage in important social issues with the dual moral principles of respecting the dignity and rights of the individual, while always pursuing the common good.

In 1983 the Holy See deposited at the United Nations a Charter of the Rights of the Family. This is based on the inherent dignity of every human being, a dignity that must be respected no matter who the person is or what circumstances he or she may be subjected to.

One of the values of Latino society is its high regard for the family. In fact, care of one's family in one's homeland is a major motivator for those immigrants who come here seeking work.

As we seek to respond to today's challenges, we need to keep in mind fundamental rights, such as rights to work, decent wages, safe working conditions and the ability to live simply but with dignity.

We must also recognize the right to marry, found a family, and the right of the family to live together in unity and freely to bring children into the world; the right to have access to the means to earn a living that can care for the family and for that family to contribute to the good of society. The last right in this charter states, "The families of migrants have the right to the same protection as that accorded other families."

We as a church are eager to offer our pastoral assistance in this important challenge to us all, and we recognize there are some principles that must be observed by us all in this matter:

Respect for law and the commitment that all must live according to just laws.

The right of sovereign nations to secure their borders.

The right of people to remain in their homeland or to emigrate to support themselves and their families.

Respect for the inherent human dignity and rights of every person regardless of political, economic or civil status.

The central role and rights of the family as the primary and fundamental unit that is the basis of every other society.

As bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, I have serious concerns about the recent immigration raids that took place on Long Island. I do not, in any way, object to the right and duty of law enforcement authorities to do their job, nor do I oppose the appropriate arrest and prosecution of those engaged in criminal activities.

However, any enforcement effort that does not respect the dignity and rights of every human, and denies due process under the law, ought to be vigorously rejected. One of the results of recent raids has been that families were torn apart. And even to date, pastors and family members have been unable to determine the location of their loved ones who were detained.

The federal government has a primary responsibility for comprehensive immigration-law reform. We must have enforceable federal laws that regulate immigration effectively. We should not expect local communities to fill in the void.

We should not punish people who have come here legally seeking honest work, nor should we deprive people who are here of their dignity as human beings.

All of us must rise to the occasion of this enormous social challenge by putting aside the rhetoric and stereotypes and directing our passions and strong convictions instead to finding real and lasting solutions that will build a nation and a Long Island of which we can all be proud.