WASHINGTON — As a new Republican-controlled Congress is sworn in this month, the Church faces new challenges, both with comprehensive immigration reform and threats by GOP leaders to reverse President Barack Obama’s executive actions that rule out deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants in the country since 2010.

Obama announced Nov. 20 that he was taking executive action to protect many families from breakup through deportation, which could affect 3.5 to 5 million undocumented immigrants living and working illegally in the United States.

The same day, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a series of memoranda directing federal agencies to implement the president’s changes.

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. has leveled off at 11.3 million — the same number it was in 2009 — with 62% of immigrants having lived in the U.S. 10 years or more. Only 15% have lived in the U.S. less than five years, while 21% have lived in the U.S. more than two decades.

Republicans have called the president’s actions illegal and have pledged to reverse his order. The outgoing Congress’ budget deal only funded DHS until February, setting the stage for a confrontation between Congress and the White House.

“There will be a major battle early in the Congress [session],” said Kevin Appleby, director of the Office of Migration Policy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Once that’s resolved, however, I can see Congress start turning to: ‘What is our version of immigration reform?’ And then it will shift at that point to what the House and the Senate can pass and what the president can agree to.”

 

Church’s Voice Heard

Despite the anger of opposition leaders over the president’s action on immigration, the Church’s voice in the debate had been making it into the halls of Congress on both sides of the aisle prior to Christmas break.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a Catholic and the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has welcomed the input of Catholic leaders and other groups on immigration reform, according to spokesman Kevin Seifert.

“Congressman Ryan believes we need to fix our broken immigration system, and that starts with securing our border,” Seifert told the Register. “Rather than go around Congress, the president should work with Congress to pass real reforms.”

The Register reached out to the White House for comment but received none by publication time.

What those reforms might be remain to be seen. Any action by the GOP on immigration reform is likely to take place with a series of bills, beginning with border security and ending with measures to legalize the status of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. It likely will not be a comprehensive bill, similar to the one the Democrat-controlled Senate and the president favored last year, which was blocked by the House’s GOP leadership from coming to the floor for a vote.

Appleby said that the bishops’ conference does not have a position about any bills in chamber or how legislatively the immigration reform is passed, so long as it is comprehensive, adheres to the Church’s principles “and has all the elements to fix this system.”

“We would have concerns if they started sending the president different pieces without sending them all at once,” he said. The bishops would like to see Congress send the president “the whole package,” including border security and legalization, “not just pieces of it,” to make sure the reform is not left unfinished.

“They can send him the bills individually, but we would say, ‘Don’t sign any of them until you have all of them.’”

 

Not Implemented Yet

None of the president’s executive actions on immigration have been implemented yet, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website.

According to the federal website, the president is expanding DACA to include children who have been continuously in the United States since before turning 16 years old, removing the previous age caps, and is expanding provisional waivers of unlawful presence to the spouses and children of lawful permanent residents and the children of U.S. citizens. A new “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents” program will allow parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents present in the country since Jan. 1, 2010, to request deferred action on deportation and employment authorization for three years.

“It’s legalizing, in many cases, half of the families,” said Moises Barraza, a Catholic Chicago-area immigration attorney who provides legal assistance to undocumented immigrants. “It’s not an intended effect, but that’s what’s happening.”

 

Catholic Dioceses

Many dioceses are working to get Catholics engaged in the quest for comprehensive immigration reform.

Andrew Rivas, director of government and community relations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said the local Church has been engaged in outreach to parishes on immigration reform and helping to fix the system where it can.

Rivas, whose work in immigration reform goes back to the 1990s, doubts the GOP will overturn Obama’s executive actions on immigration or override his veto if he exercises it. But he suspected that lawmakers “just want to get rid of this issue.”

The issue of immigration reform is not simply a question for national leaders, Rivas said: “Catholics should always be more attentive to what their civic leaders are doing in D.C., but they should also be very engaged with this issue at the local level.”

Read the entire story at NCRegister.com.