Getting the Emphasis Right on Catholicism and Immigration: A Reply to Feser

Modern politics is overburdened with rights. With a flawed understanding of human nature’s relationality, rights discourse turns us inward away from others. One’s relationship with other persons and communities is centered around an obsession with mine. Too many, according to Pope Benedict XVI, are “concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people’s integral development.” Ever deepening our concern with rights, the modern person “closes in on himself”—losing track of the fundamental relationality between self and other, between us and them. We need to recall that “rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere license.” We need the necessary grasp of their interrelationship—but also, as Christians, we need to sincerely prioritize what we, in justice, owe others. The name for what we owe is caritas. Caritas is shaped by the need of others and our capacity to give. It is only within this context that we can understand a Christian approach to immigration—one that requires getting the emphasis right between rights and duties, while understanding that giving the love that is owed to the stranger does not detract from our common good, but rather enriches it because it integrates the stranger into our community.

What Feser Gets Right

Edward Feser in his recent Public Discourse essay offers a robust account of the rights of a country to secure its borders and to have and enforce immigration laws. His essay is an important reminder of the need for balance in understanding the question of immigration. The political community is a real expression of the fundamental sociality of the human person. We ought to love the us that we are part of. We rightly prioritize our own communities, and we have a legitimate role in determining who can join this community and how. It is because of this reality that a nation has a right to its borders and “governments have the right to prevent illegal immigration.” 

To show this, Feser quotes several passages from the Church’s magisterium and places in boldface the parts that emphasize the right to territorial integrity. He is right to emphasize this right. Those who advocate “a virtually ‘open borders’ position in the name of Catholicism” should indeed read Feser’s article, because such positions are incompatible with a Catholic stance. Countries have a legitimate right to regulate the who, how, and how many of immigration. 

But quite a lot depends on what one emphasizes. Feser emphasizes that countries have the right to manage immigration, but forgoes much emphasis on the duty to welcome migrants. For him, balancing between these two realities is simply a matter of opinion. Immigration is something about which “Catholics of good will can reasonably disagree.” For Feser, the question of immigration is fundamentally a prudential matter; those arguing for the exclusion of the oppressed, suffering, and impoverished are merely reminding us that America has rights too. But this misses a great deal of the point of Catholic moral teaching and what ideas we should be putting in bold. Feser may be using boldface to remind those who have allegedly forgotten the Church’s moral teaching, yet this is still emblematic of a misreading of Catholic teaching that turns clear moral teaching into optional counsels.

Those who seek to turn away migrants consistently emphasize our rights such that what is mine shapes my relationship with others. All that seems to matter is our borders and our rights. Feser writes that “John Paul II, like Pope Francis and the Church’s bishops more generally, have nevertheless put special emphasis on welcoming migrants. But everybody already knows that.” Does everyone know this? Do we make it the special—dare I say preferential—emphasis of our approach to migrants and refugees? When we balance welcome for migrants and our rights to our borders, we need to get that special emphasis on our duty to the stranger right. The fundamental problem with Feser’s argument is that he acknowledges no special emphasis duty to the needy stranger, and instead especially emphasizes only our rights. 

Scriptural Emphasis 

The Church’s understanding of the treatment of the xenos, the stranger or foreigner, goes back to the Exodus understanding of the people of God. The alien who resides with you should be treated “no differently than the native born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Furthermore, we must store up our goods to share with “the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows in your towns so they may come and eat and be satisfied” (Deuteronomy 14:29). For Ezekiel, the promised Land is to be allotted among the Tribes of Israel “and for the foreigners residing among you,” who are to be treated “as native-born Israelites” (47:22). As a result, less money and land might be distributed to those in the nation as resources are distributed to others.

Christianity continues this tradition, especially in Christ’s teaching that “I was a foreigner [xenos] and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:34). For Pope Pius XII, Christ’s self-identity as a foreigner is grounded in his family’s having been refugees. The Holy Family is “the archetype of every refugee family;” they are “protectors of every migrant, alien, and refugee of whatever kind.” Considering our refugee God, St. Paul tells the faithful to live out philoxenia—a brotherly love, for foreigners to whom we owe hospitality (Romans 12:13). Augustine—in the context of his understanding of the Church as a city of foreigners or migrants (civitate peregrinus)—explains why the Apostles did not recognize the Resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus: “He became a foreigner (hospes).” For Augustine, the lesson to be taken from Christ’s identification with the foreigner is the obligation to welcome them in from the outside. “Learn to welcome foreigners (hospites), and there you can recognize Christ.” Our hospitality to the stranger is our hospitality to Christ. 

The whole emphasis is on welcoming and giving to the foreigner. These passages lack bold-able words that say that we should welcome the stranger only if we are able, or that we should only distribute to the foreigner if it does not decrease what is owed to our own, or that philoxenia should be less than our love for our fellow citizens. Instead, these central texts only highlight gift, duty, and caritas to the stranger. 

The Emphasis in Catholic Social Thought 

We should also turn to Catholic Social Thought to see how it structures its emphasis. For Pius XII, we are to welcome migrants, aliens, and refugees of any kind who come to our country “whether compelled by fear of persecution [refugees] or by want [immigrants].” Because of this, he wrote to the American bishops about U.S. regulation of migration (just as Pope Francis did). Pius told them that “the natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people.” Considering this, we must understand that “the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to the land is denied to needy and decent people.” Pius XII admonished Americans that the right of the nation must not be exaggerated in the face of outsiders’ needs. Thus he told American senators that they should “administer as liberally as possible” the American immigration laws that he thought were “overly restrictive.” 

Pius XII does hold that there is a limiting principle to this, in that “the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid” aiding the foreigner. But the burden of proof lies on those who would restrict, because the emphasis is the need of the stranger. The fundamental aim must be helping the needy whose way of migration should not be restricted unless a very careful consideration identifies harm in that migration for the public good. There is a right to territorial integrity, to determining the process for managing immigration, and to an order of love that prioritizes our citizens. But more importantly, there is a duty to refugees fleeing oppression and to migrants suffering from want. This duty corresponds, for Pius XII, with the “natural rights of people to migrate.” If grounded in sincere need, this right mitigates—sometimes completely—the wrongdoing of illegally immigrating just as such need can mean that it is lawful to take “the property of another.” 

Our personal and political lives should center on caritas “given and received,” as duty and right. This is the problem with Feser’s reading of Catholic Social Thought. We get truth in his essay, but what is needed is “caritas in veritate in re sociali.” To write about how we ought to treat migrants and emphasize our rights while neglecting the emphasis of Scripture, and deemphasizing what Catholic Social Thought emphasizes, is to lose that intimate connection of love in truth. When one speaks of the truth of one’s rights and speaks less, or not at all, of the truth that we owe our caritas to the needy migrant as an act of justice, one forgets caritas and thus does not fully get to the veritas. Neglecting caritas transforms the ordo amoris from a principle that expands our loves and broadens our duties to those outside our order to a principle that reminds us only of our own rights and prioritizes borders over persons. 

More than Just Rights and Prudence

For Pope Leo the Great—known for his welcome of refugees into Rome—since God is love, “charity should know no limit, for God cannot be confined.” Our caritas cannot be limited to what is our own; while it must include that, it must also extend beyond it. Importantly, love of others and prioritization of the common good is not a zero-sum game. Solidarity with others and the common good itself constitute expansive principles. The common good grows in our sharing it. As Pope St. Leo teaches, “In all this activity, there is present the hand of Him who multiplies the bread by breaking it, and increases it by giving it away.” This is a claim grounded not only in metaphysics and theology, but also in the way economics works—especially in a market economy. When we welcome strangers, we not only benefit them, but we also benefit ourselves. This is the whole history of the United States. Our country’s greatness and public wealth have always been elevated and expanded by the arrival of migrants. 

I am the grandchild of immigrants, the husband of a daughter of immigrants, the neighbor of immigrants, in a nation of immigrants. Patriotism welcomes others into the good that is this nation because we love that good. Such love does not only insist on its rights, but also insists on sharing this good. John Paul II writes (quoted by Feser) that “patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land.” One of those things that has to do with any native land, but especially this native land, is philoxenia toward those here and at our borders. Real love communicates itself and so welcomes others into our native land in a way that benefits our common good. For those who fear that an expansive welcome to migrants will hurt our country, they can be assured by both economic research and by America’s history of integrating immigrants from every country.

Integration involves all kinds of prudential approaches to this question, including robust foreign aid to make it easier for people to stay in their native land, comprehensive immigration reform, and a due process approach to deporting criminals. Feser’s reminder of the validity of immigration laws is a service to making this possible. But we need more than just rights, and more than just prudence. Rights must be united to duties, prudence must be at the service of caritas in veritate, and caritas must be at the service of both the native citizen and the needy stranger if we are going to get the emphasis right.

Image by sherryvsmith and licensed via Adobe Stock.