Mother Cabrini, Pray for the Dreamers

Holy Mass on Mother Cabrini’s tomb during our parish-cluster youth pilgrimage a few years back. The kneeling boys are all grown up now 🙂

It can hardly come as a co-incidence: we keep the Memorial of the Patroness of Immigrants just as the US Supreme Court considers the fate of many of our immigrants friends and loved ones. (The pope beatified Mother Cabrini 81 years ago today.)

In case you haven’t paid attention: “Dreamers” are young adults who arrived in the US as children, without immigration papers. D.A.C.A. protects Dreamers from many of the adverse legal consequences of their situation.

I think I can safely say that no humane American thinks that Dreamers should suffer because of what happened when they were too young to make decisions and control their own fate.

D.A.C.A exists at the discretion of the Executive Branch of the federal government. It has to do with the great elephant in the immigration room: We simply cannot uniformly enforce our immigration laws. It is logistically impossible, not to mention morally impossible. D.A.C.A. came about as a political stratagem when legislative immigration reform failed.

Without D.A.C.A., dozens upon dozens of people we know and love in our two parishes would have their lives thrown into utter chaos. They would become people without a country. Through no fault of their own.

What the Supreme Court decides will not necessarily determine the ultimate outcome of the current controversy. The Court could uphold lower court rulings, which required the Trump administration to provide a clearer rationale before discontinuing D.A.C.A. Or the Supreme Court could overrule the lower courts and leave the whole matter in the administration’s hands.

Either way, we should recognize that no human being should have to live with this kind of tumultuous uncertainty hanging over his or her head. We should pray hard, that every human being on this soil be accorded all basic human rights.

As we read in Scripture at Holy Mass today, “For those in power, a rigorous scrutiny is coming” from God. May the Lord move those who will make decisions about this to do the humane thing.