Before being named a bishop, I served for 14 years as a priest in Texas. George W. Bush was governor for some of that time, and I found it easy to understand why the state's Hispanic voters supported him so strongly in the 2000 presidential election.

Bush had earned a reputation as a decent and capable man, a leader with good will and good instincts toward Latinos. His election to national office seemed to promise a new, healthier relationship with Latin America, especially Mexico.

It also implied a new opening of t h e Republican Party toward the fastest-growing minority in the United States.

Bush saw the future earlier and better than most. Today, every prudent candidate knows that Hispanic voters and Hispanic concerns matter in a big way. Latinos recently passed African-Americans as the largest ethnic minority in the country. Like the Irish and Italians a century ago, Hispanic Americans are the “tomorrow” of the United States.

They can't be ignored by any political party — at least, not if the party hopes to have a successful national agenda.

Since most Latinos trace their roots back to traditional Catholic cultures with strong family and religious identities, the Hispanic vote seems like a natural recruiting pool for Republican organizers. And it could be, except for one very big problem: Republicans are dead wrong on immigration. Worse, the Bush administration seems blind to this mistake, and it will cost the party bitterly in the coming decades.

America the Nativist?

The United States is a nation built on immigration. That's one of our great strengths. It's also why nativism — “Americans for the Americans” — never works. Nativism assumes America's economic pie is small and its culture is set in cement, and we need to protect both for the people who already live here. But our history shows just the opposite. Immigrants make the pie bigger. They create wealth, bring new energy and ideas, and keep our country competitive. They also take the jobs that nobody else wants.

The more successful we are, the more we draw people from abroad seeking to build a new life among us. That's logical. It's also a good thing. We needn't fear it. As President Bush said in his State of the Union address this year, “Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.”

Central to human freedom, as the Church repeatedly reminds us, is that people have a God-given right to move and travel freely to sustain themselves and their families. Interfering with that right without very good cause violates human dignity. We couldn't stop it even if we wanted to, and while it's certainly reasonable to regulate our immigration policies to ensure public well-being, the line separating a fair concern for national security and the unfair mistreatment of newcomers can be very thin.

The truth is, in the United States in 2003, our economy depends on the labor of millions of undocumented immigrants, many of them Latin American. In many places, agriculture couldn't survive without the work of their hands. The overwhelming majority pose no threat at all to national security. They simply want to earn a livelihood in jobs already suffering from a severe labor shortage. For most Mexican “illegals,” the issue is very simple: America needs workers, and they want to work.

Why is it so unreasonable to extend to these workers reasonable protection under the law?

As the U.S. bishops have pointed out, legalizing our undocumented immigrants makes sense in several key ways.

Legalization would help, not hurt, national security. Bringing undocumented workers in from the margins would enable the government to keep far better track of who is in the United States and why.

The Republican Party, with a majority in both houses of Congress, has the power to seize a unique, historic opportunity with Latinos.

Legalization would not steal jobs from the native born. On the contrary, it would help people who are already contributing to our economy.

Legalization would help keep families together and support the well-being of U.S. citizen children. Most undocumented families include at least one child who is an American citizen and other children and parents who are not. Policies which target the undocumented worker inevitably also attack U.S. citizen children.

Legalization would help further development and stability in Latin America. Immigrants in the United States sent back $20 billion to their home countries in 2000. Many of those immigrants are Latin American, and their resources are vital to Latin American economies.

Legalization need not reward lawbreakers nor harm immigrants already waiting in line for visas. Current U.S. policies actually invite undocumented immigration by imposing upon the spouses and children of lawful permanent residents at least a five-year wait in reuniting with their loved ones. This is self-defeating and unrealistic. There's no logical reason why policies cannot be crafted that would assist both immigrants seeking visas through normal channels and undocumented immigrants.

Finally, legalization would bring U.S. immigration into conformity with U.S. economic policy. We can't reasonably encourage freer interaction with Latin America through treaties such as NAFTA, which encourage immigration, and then crack down on immigration when it occurs.

Where does this leave us? Crises abroad, like Iraq and the war on terror, run the risk of short-circuiting our common sense and real needs at home. Americans currently face a choice that seems to recur throughout our history: to be true to our national ideals by seeing the bigger picture, thinking creatively and welcoming new possibilities along with our newly arrived immigrants; or retreating into fear and selfishness, and punishing immigrants for trusting in the very ideals we stand for.

The Republican Party, with a majority in both houses of Congress, has the power to seize a unique, historic opportunity with Latinos. President Bush certainly has the decency and intelligence to see that. Whether he has the courage to act on it remains to be seen.

Most Reverend José H. Gomez, S.T.D., is the auxiliary bishop of Denver.