"When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God." - Lev. 19:33-34

Immigration provokes the same fears and passions today that it provoked three thousand years ago, when God had to remind the Israelites to treat foreigners well. One hundred years ago, the United States, then a nation of seventy-five million people, received nearly one million new immigrants each year. These new immigrants were different: they were Jewish and Catholic, not Protestant; they were Slavic, Latin, and Irish, not British, German, and Scandinavian. Many Americans worried about these strange new immigrants. Did they believe in liberty and the rule of law? The new immigrants weren’t Protestants; would they be hardworking and independent enough to succeed in a competitive and independent market?

Of course, these fears were unfounded. The grandchildren of immigrants, whether from Catholic Italy or Russian Jewry, are today fully American – wealthy, tolerant, and contributing members of local communities.

Today there is a new set of immigrants. There are parts of Los Angeles where Spanish, Farsi, Tagalog, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Arabic are spoken, but not English. And large cities are not the only places with large numbers of people whose primary language is not English. Consider Merced, California, a town with a population of fifty-six thousand people. The local schools in Merced offer schoolchildren the option of three different languages: English, Spanish, and Hmong.

Although the languages of today's immigrants are different from those of a century ago— when arguments in Brooklyn were conducted in Italian, German, and Yiddish—the concerns are strikingly similar. Many fear that the new immigrants do not value the American political system and its commitment to human dignity and liberty, religious freedom, and the impartial rule of law. Some fear that the new immigrants will remain loyal to foreign governments or to religious leaders hostile to the United States. Some fear that many new immigrants will never prosper economically because they are unable to speak English fluently. Moreover, some fear that the size of the immigrant flow will overwhelm government budgets, and threaten the employment of American workers.

In response to these fears, many advocate restrictions on our generous immigration policies. Harvard economist George Borjas, for example, argues for a redirection of immigration policy toward a Canadian model, one that favors skilled immigrants. Pat Buchanan and Representative Tom Tancredo have taken a more extreme position, advocating a temporary halt to immigration in order to allow the United States to absorb the immigrants who are already here.

What are we to make of these arguments? One response is to recall our historical experience with migration. We know now that the fears about the effect of European Jews and Italian and Polish Catholics on the fabric of American culture and economy were unfounded. Should we not conclude also that current fears about poor Latin Americans and Asians, from Catholic as well as non-Christian cultures, are similarly unfounded? Or are the new immigrants fundamentally different from the old immigrants? Does it matter that many are neither Christian nor Jewish? Is it the case that the old immigrants from Western, Judeo-Christian cultures were assimilable, while the new immigrants from non-Western, often non-Christian cultures, are not? Another important question is raised by the rise of the welfare state: do generous social services attract a different kind of immigrant? Do they help or impede assimilation?

Questions like these shape public deliberations about immigration policy in the United States. Catholic Social Teaching also takes a keen interest in immigration. John Paul II has devoted a series of annual World Migration Day messages to the subject of immigration policy.

Catholic Social Teaching brings a word to the policy conversation that was seldom heard in the past, but which is becoming part of the immigration debate. This word, spoken quietly but insistently by the pope, is rights. Catholic social tradition consistently asserts a very broad right to migrate; the utterance of this word transforms the debate.

Catholics are not the only ones talking about rights. It is usually surprising to most Americans to find out just how saturated the immigration debate is with rights-talk. The Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which instituted a standard of non-discrimination by country of origin into immigration law, was a product of the same forces that produced the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and the Voting Rights Act of 1964. In 1971 the Supreme Court declared that immigrants were a minority group, entitled to the same civil rights as other minority groups. Currently, there is much talk of the rights of illegal immigrants to have driver’s licenses, even to earn a legal status through good behavior.

Catholic rights-language is different from standard American rights-language. As Harvard Law school Professor Mary Ann Glendon notes in her book Rights Talk, Americans tend to employ rights as rhetorical trumps. Many rights debates seem irresolvable, since both sides claim rights, and there appears to be no way of trading one right off against another.

Although there are some rights in Catholic thought that are absolute – like the right to life, or the right to the free exercise of conscience – the Catholic tradition contains many rights which are not inviolable, which may be restricted in light of the common good. The right to migrate is this sort of a right. Like the right to property, it should not be abridged lightly, but should give way when its exercise threatens the common good.

The purpose of rights-language in the Catholic tradition is not to end public policy debates and disagreements, but to orient those discussions toward the common good of all persons, natives of the host country and immigrants alike. Catholic rights language challenges policymakers to factor the interests of immigrants into their calculations.

As I have said, the right to migrate is not inviolable in Catholic social teaching. It is like the right to property, and not to the right to life. Hence, that right may be abridged when it unduly burdens a country’s common good. So research on the economic burdens of migration on the U.S. is relevant to deliberations about the extent of that right. I will argue that the modest burdens of immigration to natives are small compared to the large benefits to immigrants.

Most debates about immigration begin with the economic effects, but this is to approach the problem backward. The economic effects of immigration cannot be the only warrant for or against the right to migrate. While it is tempting—especially to an economist— to find solace in numbers, reassured by the exactness and objectivity they provide, the numbers are not enough. Data on the effects of immigration only become meaningful once we understand the nature and extent of the right to migrate.

Accordingly, I will first document the right to migrate in Catholic Social Teaching, and discuss the circumstances in which costs to natives might justify limits on that right. This will establish a framework for the economic analysis of costs and benefits to follow. I will then examine, within this framework, the most recent research into the economics of migration, to make a case for an immigration policy that is more welcoming to immigrants.

In Catholic social thought, rights are means to an end, and the end is human development, or happiness. To know whether someone has a right, we have to take a stand on what human development means, and this takes us beyond pure economic analysis. People have rights to those things that are necessary to their own flourishing, both as individuals and as members of communities. Rights are inviolable when there are no other means to pursue human happiness. When a person can pursue happiness in different ways, the right to any particular way is not inviolable.

Previous popes have emphasized the right to emigrate. Of course, as John Paul II pointedly notes, the right to emigrate is worth little if no country will guarantee the right to immigrate. Emigration and immigration are flip sides of the same coin; the right to migrate entails both. The right to migrate is founded on three principles.

1 The Right of a Family to Sustenance.

For the same reason that man has a right to private property —so that families can provide for their needs and development —man has a right to migrate in order to provide for the family that migrates. John XXIII in Mater et Magistra clearly ties the right to migrate to the right to private property:

"... private ownership of material goods has a great part to play in promoting the welfare of family life. It "secures for the father of a family the healthy liberty he needs in order to fulfill the duties assigned him by the Creator regarding the physical, spiritual, and religious welfare of the family." It is in this that the right of families to migrate is rooted.  "

Both private property and migration are important means to the development of the migrant's family.

In the pursuit of its own development, the family has priority over the state. The principle of the priority of the family over the state goes back at least to Leo XIII, in his discussion of the right to property in Rerum Novarum:

"... the family has at least equal rights with the state in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty."

John Paul II emphasizes what he calls ‘the creative subjectivity of the person’. What this means is that human beings need to be able to direct their own lives, to be participants in their own development. When their rights to economic initiative are abridged, persons should be able to seek out other places where they may exercise this right. Immigration is never undertaken lightly – it is an important part of someone’s life plan.

Although the popes clearly assert a right to migrate, they frequently express concern about the effects of migration. John Paul II repeatedly stresses the plight immigrants in his Annual World Migration Day addresses. Although the immigrants are clearly within their rights to migrate, the decision to migrate is regrettable: it’s costly to the migrant, who must leave home, and it’s costly to the sending and receiving countries.

A decision to migrate across international borders affects three groups directly: the immigrant and his family, the migrant’s home country, and the host country that receives him. Policy discussions in the United States focus primarily on the impact of immigration U.S. natives.

In sharp contrast, the primary focus of Catholic social teaching is the welfare of immigrants themselves. Concerns for the sending and receiving countries are secondary. John Paul II notes that immigrants —particularly illegal immigrants—are often at a disadvantage in labor markets. John Paul II is equally concerned about the moral life of immigrants in relation to their families, their communities, and their faith. John Paul II’s World Migration Day Messages focus primarily on the pastoral care of migrants.

Catholic social teaching does not distinguish, as nations do, between ‘economic’ migrants (who presumably have no claim on our welcome) and ‘non-economic’ migrants. In fact, most of Catholic social teaching's discussion of the right to migrate is conducted in the context of economic motives for migration. A country may violate the rights of economic migrants when it returns them to their home country, even when they are in fact not fleeing political persecution.

Although the Catholic tradition does not distinguish between economic and non-economic migrants, it does distinguish between ‘desperate’ and ‘non-desperate’ migrants. John Paul II, in his 2000 World Migration Day message asserts that, for a substantial number of migrants, migration is the only acceptable option.

In many regions of the world today people live in tragic situations of instability and uncertainty. It does not come as a surprise that in such contexts the poor and the destitute make plans to escape .... This is the migration of the desperate: men and women, often young, who have no alternative than to leave their own country to venture into the unknown. Every day thousands of people take even critical risks in their attempts to escape from a life with no future.

When migration is the only vehicle by which a migrant can escape conditions that directly threaten the basic goods of human life, that right is near inviolable. This inviolability holds even when the host country is not responsible for the dire conditions that drive migrants from their home countries.

Catholic social teaching does not focus on the burdens of migration on home and host countries. If it sympathetic to any country, it is sympathetic to the burdens of migration on the sending country. In Laborem Exercens, John Paul II emphasizes that emigration is a regrettable loss for the home country:

It is the loss of a subject of work, whose efforts of mind and body could contribute to the common good of his own country, but these efforts, this contribution, are instead offered to another society which in a sense has less right to them than the person's country of origin.

John Paul II describes the migrant as ‘a subject’, that is, one who exercises a creative agency in society. This description implies that the host country should welcome the immigrant, who can enrich the culture and economy of the nation in which he settles. Immigrants are not burdens; they are creative persons.

Only recently, Catholic social teaching has recognized that immigration might be a burden to host countries. When the migration is large and the migrants are from a different culture, the host country may "fear the loss of its identity." Large migrations may strain the resources of host countries. Despite these concerns Catholic social teaching is still less sympathetic to host countries that it is to migrants. John Paul II, characterizes the burdens of immigration as mere "inconveniences" when set against the poverty of the migrant.

Even though Catholic Social Teaching is very sympathetic for migrants, it does not go so far as to claim that the right to migrate is absolute. John Paul II states clearly that "illegal immigration should be prevented," implying that states have a right to enforce restrictions on migration. Just as clearly, John Paul II states that the right to migrate must be regulated in light of the burdens it imposes on the host country.

When the right to migrate is not absolute, by what principle is it to be regulated? In his address for World Migration Day 2001, John Paul II ties the mediation of rights closely to the common good:

"... rights are concretely employed in the concept of universal common good, which includes the whole family of peoples, beyond every nationalistic egoism. The right to emigrate must be considered in this context."

Note that John Paul II invokes the universal common good, not just the common good of a particular country. Countries that rely on a narrow conception of their own common good, one that ignores the rights of those outside of their borders, are likely to ignore the right to migrate.

The proper balance between the rights of the migrant and the common good of the various nations affected by migration can only be found in the concept of the universal common good. This poses a challenge for policy, since the concept of common good has been neglected until relatively recently, and researchers are only beginning to attempt a theory of the universal common good. At the end of this talk, I will discuss in more detail the concept of the universal common good, with a view toward applying it to international migration.

The right to migrate in Catholic Social Teaching is not absolute; it may be abridged when immigration threatens the common good of a host country. In the U.S. case, the most commonly cited threats to the common good from immigration are its economics burdens, its effect on U.S. culture and identity, and its effects on national security.

It is at this point that the economics of immigration become important to the debate. Economists have two sorts of expertise which are relevant to this analysis. First, economics offers a useful framework within which to discuss the causes and effects of immigration in an world economy. We all know that people are not the only things that move across borders – billions of dollars worth of goods and trillions of dollars worth of investments move across national borders every year. Economists offer insights about how all of these movements are related, as well as insights into how flows of labor into labor markets affect markets for labor and capital.

A second economic contribution to the immigration debate is a careful accounting of the costs and benefits of immigration to immigrants, native workers, native business owners, and state and federal governments. Estimates of these effects paint a clear picture of the economic costs and benefits of immigration. If the economic benefits of immigration to natives outweigh the costs, or if the costs to natives are small compared to the benefits to immigrants themselves, then the case for abridging the right to migrate in light of the common good of the U.S. will be weak.

First, let’s look at the facts of U.S. migration:

1. The U.S. receives 950,000 legal immigrants per year.

2. This is the highest volume of immigration since the early 1900s. Arguably, though, the mass migrations of the early 1900s had a bigger impact on the United States, since the country had a quarter of the population it does today.

3. Add to the 950,000 legal immigrants about 300,000 illegal immigrants per year.

4. Roughly 40% of all immigrants eventually return to their home countries.

5. Net immigration each year is thus about 1 million.

6. One half of immigrants are from the Western Hemisphere; of those, one-quarter are from Mexico. One-third are from Asia, and 16% are from Europe. One hundred years ago, 98% were from Europe and Canada.

7. Immigrants settle in a handful of states – California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois – and within those states they tend to cluster within certain cities. Because of this, their impact on governments will be concentrated in a few states and cities.

8. Roughly two-thirds of immigrant visas are for family reunification. 14% are for refugees and asylees. Only 13% are targeted at skilled immigrants. Thus, nearly 80% of visas are granted for explicitly humanitarian reasons.

Equipped with the data at hand, let’s look at the economic impact of immigration. The first question is: Why do people migrate?

Immigration thus results from differences in opportunity across national borders. In an integrated world, immigration is often a symptom, an indicator, of imbalances between countries in the economic order.

As I have said, current United States immigration policy is geared toward the needs of refugees and those immigrants who are separated from their families. The large numbers of immigrants who are admitted legally, and the reasons for their admittance, accord with the right to migrate in Catholic social teaching. Nonetheless, more immigrants want to come. Are we morally obligated to welcome them?

The answer to this question depends in part on the costs and benefits of immigration to United States citizens. Nevertheless, the entire issue cannot be resolved by reference to the impact of immigration on natives. It involves an additional comparison of the benefits to immigrants and the net benefits to natives.

Unfortunately, there is little direct data on the benefits to migrants. The benefits for immigrants must be substantial. Take, for example, a typical Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles. He comes from a country that has a per capita GDP of $6000, and whose median income is well below that. If this Mexican immigrant works full time at the California minimum wage of $6.75, he will clear $13,500 a year. If he works at the Texas, Florida, or New York minimum wage of $5.15, he clears $10,300 a year. Even at the minimum wage, the increase in income must be substantial.

Immigration confers large benefits on sending countries, as well. Mexico alone receives $10 billion annually in remittances – an amount equal to 1.7% of its $600 billion economy. Remittances are the third largest source of foreign income in Mexico, after oil and tourist revenues. Latin America as a whole receives $23 billion annually in remittances. The volume of money sent home from America exceeds foreign aid to Latin America. These remittances are probably better targeted to help the poor in Latin America than foreign aid, since they are sent directly to poor families. Immigrant remittances are a great benefit to many poor countries in Latin America, as well as to the immigrants themselves.

The exact measurement of the benefits to immigrants is difficult, since it involves speculation on how much immigrants would have earned if they had stayed home. However difficult to measure, the benefits must be large relative to the incomes of poor immigrants, and highly relevant to any evaluation of the United States immigration policy.

Now let me address the effect of immigration on United States natives. The United States has a skilled labor force, and lots of capital. Our comparative advantage lies in goods made with skilled labor and capital. The arrival of relatively unskilled immigrants allows U.S. natives to specialize even more heavily on the production of more skill-intensive goods without sacrificing their consumption of goods made with unskilled labor. The net benefits for natives of the recent immigration wave are, however, almost certainly small because the recent immigrant wave is not particularly large relative to the United States labor market. A National Academy Study in 1997 estimated the gain somewhere between one and ten billion dollars per year. These may seem like a lot of money, but is very small relative to an $8 trillion economy.

The specialization brought about by immigration is a net economic benefit to natives, but the benefits are not distributed evenly, and some natives, instead of benefitting, will experience a decline in their standards of living. Business owners and those who consume products made cheaper by immigrant labor will benefit. Hardest hit will be those who compete most directly with immigrants: the unskilled, whose wages will fall.

Over the last thirty years wage inequality has increased in the United States. Because large immigrations coincide with the increase in wage inequality, immigration has featured prominently in explanations of the trend. Immigration and capital flows have much the same effects as trade on wages and profits, so many look to immigration to explain the income stagnation of native unskilled workers. Is this theoretical explanation borne out in data on U.S. incomes?

Most studies compare native wages across localities that have experienced large migrations and those that have not. Typically, they find that immigration has little effect on the wages of unskilled native workers. These studies don’t take into account internal migration of natives in response to immigration, however. It turns out that natives move out of a cities that have lots of immigrants; this response mitigates the fall in wages in the city with new immigrants, while depressing the wages in the towns to which they move. The effect of immigration on wages is thus spread out across a larger area than the locality to which immigrants move.

Even taking into account the migration of natives in response to immigration, the effect on wages is still small. The most that can be said is that immigration can account for perhaps one-quarter of the increase in wage inequality over fifteen years (a three or four percent fall in the wages of unskilled workers).

Of course, we must admit that even a small decrease in the wages of unskilled native workers is a hardship for those at the bottom of the wage distribution; even a small impact on this vulnerable group is troubling. Nonetheless, restrictions on immigration alone would not prevent a loss to unskilled natives. Trade and immigration have similar effects on the unskilled, so both would have to be restricted to keep their wages up. Restrictions on imports of goods made with low-wage labor would be necessary in order to shield low-wage natives from indirect competition with low-wage workers. There are more desirable alternatives for improving the lot of unskilled native workers, such as improvements in our abysmally poor inner city schools.

The economic effects of immigration on natives is small, but unevenly distributed: Capital owners and skilled workers have benefitted slightly, and unskilled workers have experienced a modest stagnation in their standard of living. Its economic effects appear to be very weak grounds for opposing immigration. Although one might argue that even a modest fall in the wages of unskilled natives is enough to restrict immigration, such a calculation must weigh the wage decrease for native unskilled workers more heavily than the significant increase in wages that is enjoyed by immigrants from much poorer countries.

There is another economic argument made against immigration, though. A common concern is that immigrants benefit too much from government assistance programs, while paying too little in taxes. This raises the fear that immigrants will impose large burdens on public finances, especially since new immigrants from Mexico and Central America do relatively poorly in U.S. labor markets.

The fiscal impact of immigrants is like the impact on labor markets: overall, the benefits of immigrants to public finances are greater than the costs, but the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed – immigration is a short term drain on state and local finances, but a significant benefit to long run federal finances.

In the short run, immigrants place substantial burdens on a handful of states and localities. Immigrants are young and poor – they don’t pay much in taxes in the short run, their kids need schooling, and they need government assistance. These burdens are large because they are concentrated in the cities and counties where immigrants cluster. If they were shared equally across the U.S., they would not seem so large.

If immigrants are a burden to some states and cities in the short run, in the long run they a re a substantial boon to the federal government.

These same immigrants pay more in federal taxes than they consume in federal government services. Young immigrants keep the average age of the population down, which will shore up the Social Security and Medicare systems. The looming demographic crises in Europe and Japan are largely being avoided here by immigration.

To sum up the economic impact of immigration: there is little evidence that immigration is a great economic burden on the United States. Immigration may have slightly reduced the wages of unskilled native workers (e.g., high-school dropouts). Nonetheless, other factors—particularly changes in production technology—are primarily responsible for the recent stagnation in the wages of unskilled workers. The long term fiscal impact of immigration is positive, but the benefits and costs are distributed unevenly across federal, state and local governments. The federal government receives most of the long term fiscal benefits, while those states and localities which receive the most immigrants bear the short term fiscal costs.

I don’t believe that economic concerns justify restrictions on the right to migrate to the United States. There are, however, other possible reasons to restrict immigration. Among these reasons, cultural concerns are frequent.

I would be more comfortable with the argument that immigrants threaten American culture if I believed that America was a people, and not an idea. Is there in fact an American culture, American habits that support democratic institutions? I believe there is – that habits of association, respect for both human and natural law, tolerance, devotion to liberty undergird democratic institutions – but I don’t see these habits threatened by new immigrants. If I did, I could see the argument for immigration restrictions to the cultural supports for democracy. But the new immigrants seem on the whole supportive and appreciative of the American experiment in ordered liberty, willing to join it. Sometimes the second generation becomes assimilated to the culture of ethnic division and resentment – learning to see themselves as victims, and as members of unreal pan-ethnic groups such as Hispanics or Asians – but new immigrants tend to embrace America and its democratic values.

Concerns about the cultural impact of immigration are more warranted in some European countries, which have neither a history of large migration nor an identity as a "nation of immigrants." Countries with by a homogenous ethnic and religious identity confront the possibility of a dramatic change to their culture as a result of the entry of an ethnically and religiously diverse migrant population. If culture is a common good, then a community may act to protect it.

After 9-11 there were renewed calls for restrictions on immigration. Terrorists have taken advantage of our welcoming immigration policies, and the lax control we have exercised over it. National security is foundational to any other U.S. common good; if restrictions on immigration are necessary to protect the nation’s integrity, then they are justified.

However, obviously legitimate concerns about the safety of U.S. citizens and institutions from terrorist attack do not justify across–the–board restrictions on immigration from every country. This does not mean that immigration policy and procedures have no impact upon national security. Extensive reform of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is an important part of the war on terrorism. Nevertheless, it is the structures and operations of the INS that deserve the closest scrutiny, not the numbers of people it lets into the country. The immigration profiles of recent terrorists, documented by Steven Camarota, clarify the INS’s problems. one-third were either naturalized citizens or permanent residents, but many were illegal immigrants or temporary visitors. Moreover, many violated the terms of their entry to the U.S. or should not have been allowed into the country because they were on terrorist watch lists.

The many ways in which terrorists enter the U.S. highlight the futility of attacking terrorism by restricting permanent immigration. For one thing, there are thirty-four million foreign visitors to the U.S. each year – temporary visitors who come on business, to visit relatives, or to go to school. Terrorists attempt to enter with these groups, and they are at least as difficult to track as permanent immigrants.

Most 9-11 legislation has aimed to improve the ability of the INS to screen out possible terrorists, to track immigrants in the U.S., and to expel those who violate the terms of their entry. This approach focuses on better intelligence about terrorist and immigrants, not on better barriers to entry. It is the disarray of the INS, and not the desire of the U.S to welcome immigrants, that threatens national security by allowing terrorists easy entry to the U.S. and the ability to disappear once they have entered.

The United States can probably increase its rate of immigration without incurring significant costs. The question is, what level of costs is too high? What is the threshold? We may plausibly expect that one million additional immigrants over five years will increase government expenditures by $700 million. Is this expenditure too high? Would $1 billion be too high? Furthermore, should a cost-benefit analysis of immigration account for the benefits enjoyed by the immigrants themselves? If it is true that there is a right to migrate, in what practical ways can this right be promoted so that nations will consider it in their deliberations about immigration policy?

According to John Paul II, a country cannot balance justly the benefits of migration, on the one hand, with concerns over migration’s burdens, on the other, unless it employs the criterion of the universal common good. At this point we must distinguish the concept of the common good from that of the universal common good. The common good entails the sum total of conditions that people need for their individual fulfillment as persons. Traditionally, national common good encompasses only the interests of a nation’s citizens. The concept of the universal common good has not been fully developed yet; I shall not attempt a full treatment of this difficult concept here, but will instead sketch out the implications of the universal common good for immigration policy.

The decision to migrate directly affects the people of two communities: the host (or new) community, and the home (or original) community. Consequently, the host community is too narrow a sphere for judging the desirability of migration. The universal common good is a call to take seriously the development of persons outside of our national community. The universal common good emerges from the interplay of two principles of Catholic Social Teaching: solidarity and subsidiarity.

According to John Paul II in Solicitudo Rei Socialis, when an individual recognizes the interdependence of mankind, the natural and appropriate response is solidarity. Solidarity is not an abstract idea; it is love for the common good. It is a virtue, John Paul II writes, "not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress … On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good."

The universal common good is a call to solidarity in migration policy. Solidarity enables nation states to look beyond their narrowly defined national common goods, to make appropriate accommodations for the rights of migrants to human development. This call to solidarity is binding on immigrants, too, who should respect and contribute to the common good of the host country.

Solidarity is an important part of any healthy community’s development. Healthy families are not completely insular; healthy churches enrich their local community, and nations must look beyond their own interests in order to be fully human nations. Solidarity in immigration policy, which require a recognition of the rights of immigrants, is not a trade-off of the receiving country’s interests for the benefits of migrants but, rather, is a requirement for the full development of the host nation itself.

The orientation toward the universal common good requires more than merely practicing solidarity. It also requires subsidiarity. Larger communities should not swallow up the identities and functions of the smaller communities that comprise them.

Small, local communities give rise to what John Paul II calls "networks of solidarity": you only learn solidarity by being part of a common good at a local, personal level. The common good of the US should not extinguish the common goods of the smaller communities that belong to it – the families, churches, and other organizations. No one will care about the nation’s common good if they have no stake in the local common goods. A nation must respect and value the autonomy of the communities that comprise it. In the same way, the universal, supra-national common good is only possible when every individual nation enjoys appropriate autonomy in its pursuit of its national common good.

There is a delicate balance, a dialectical give-and-take, between solidarity, which orients us toward more universal common goods, and subsidiarity, which respects and preserves the common goods of nations and smaller communities. Solidarity thus impels us to recognize that immigrants are persons, and have a claim against national common goods of culture, economy, and security; nevertheless, subsidiarity protects those national common goods against absolute claims of immigrant rights against local common goods. It is in the give and take of the claims of immigrants and communities that the universal common good is made real, however imperfectly.

I have argued in this talk that the right to migrate, recognized in Catholic Social Teaching, is very extensive in the U.S. This right is based on migration’s important role as a means for promoting the development of persons (especially poor persons), and the relatively light burdens that immigration imposes on U.S. natives. Immigrants, many of whom come from areas much more impoverished than any in the U.S., benefit tremendously from their migration. Often, their impoverished home countries share in their good fortune through the remittances they send home. While immigrants are a net economic benefit to natives as a whole, their presence depresses slightly the wages of unskilled natives. Likewise, immigrants are a net benefit to government budgets on the whole, but a handful of state and local governments bear the costs while the federal government gathers the benefits. Since immigrants are on net a benefit to the U.S., and since they pose little threat to U.S. culture or national security, they do not threaten the common good of the United States. Since a right may be restricted only in light of the common good, there is little reason to reduce immigration from its current level. Lacking international institutions to promote a broad right to migrate, developed nations are in a sense ‘on their honor’ to institute and maintain generous immigration policies.

In conclusion, I offer the following reflection on the effects of ‘limiting’ oneself in view of another’s rights. Some see in the right to migrate only a severe restriction of a nation's ability to "control its own borders," or to "promote the interests of its own people." The surrender of the option of a tight immigration policy appears to narrow the options available to a nation seemingly beset by immigrants.

It is important to counter this perception that a nation with a generous immigration policy is narrowing its options, since the exact opposite is true. John Finnis notes that the acceptance of moral duties does not narrow one's moral horizon; it widens it. A nation that depicts its immigration challenges as a clash of immigrant and native interests will seldom be able to see beyond that clash to the dynamic process of immigrant economic and cultural assimilation into a free community. A recognition of the rights of immigrants opens up horizons of cooperation and growth that are ignored when immigrants are treated simply as burdens. The acceptance of the right to migrate, like the free acceptance of any duty, releases moral energies that redound to the common good. They are the energies of a free society that willingly embraces its moral obligations – energies which find expression in a vibrant, innovative economy, in healthy democratic institutions, and in a generous, dynamic culture.