Justice at the Margins
David B. Couturier, OFM. Cap.
On January 31st, I was a panelist at a national discussion on migration and justice sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The annual event brought together 800 policy experts and social justice advocates and ministers from across the United States to discuss the work of protecting the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers on our borders and across the world. I joined Cardinal Alvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetanago, Guatemala, and Sr. Tracey Horan, an immigration advocate on the Kino, AZ, border.
I was asked to speak about migration and poverty, specifically about how the contemporary state of global economics threatens the lives of those already severely at risk and occasions the motivation for many Central and South Americans to migrate in search of work opportunities.
Organizers of the conference asked me to speak about my research on alternative economic models, specifically the Franciscan “fraternal economy” and other ventures being developed in response to Pope Francis’ insistence for more relational economic models. I described the work of the Focolare movement’s “Economies of Communion” and the soon-to-be-published work of Dr. Rod Hewlett on the “virtuous economy” (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2022).
The United States spends $30 billion per year on immigration enforcement efforts, $8 billion dollars per year on internal search and seizure measures alone. Could a fraction of that money go to a less defensive and provocative and more effective approach that would go to the root of the concerns we are facing? Could we turn swords into plowshares by focusing on economic development investments and stopping the colonialist strategies of some American businesses that are built on wealth extraction from already fragile economies?
(More information on the Committee on Migration here).