Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 27, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, Msgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, said this week that the Holy See is concerned about legislation on immigration reform currently before the US Senate which includes proposals to build a wall on the US/Mexican border and to make it a crime to help illegal aliens.
Speaking to reporters, Msgr. Sanchez said, “All peoples have been immigrants” and immigration is “one of the characteristics of globalization.” Likewise, he defended the right and freedom of movement of the 400 million immigrants around the world. He said that closing the doors to them goes “against the natural order (and) against the Christian order.”
He said he did not intend his comments to be “a statement against a law,” but emphasized that “man has the right to immigrate and communities and nations have the right to receive those who immigrate and the right to establish certain norms.”
Msgr. Sanchez added warned against allowing immigration to “become clandestine” because that would mean a further trampling of human rights.