The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34)

Let’s cut to the chase:  What, exactly, is loving about the way we treat “the alien” among us – the immigrant, the foreigner, the non-native who has left her/his own land because of war, starvation, disease, and desperation, and travels to another in hopes of making a better life for her/his family (the meaning of the original Hebrew in this text)?

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AFTER MEETING WITH MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION

State Dining Room
 

3:17 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  We have just finished what I consider to be a very productive meeting on one of the most critical issues that I think this nation faces, and that is an immigration system that is broken and needs fixing.

We have members of Congress from both chambers, from parties, who have participated in the meeting and shared a range of ideas.  I think the consensus is that despite our inability to get this passed over the last several years, the American people still want to see a solution in which we are tightening up our borders, or cracking down on employers who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages -- and oftentimes mistreat those workers.  And we need a effective way to recognize and legalize the status of undocumented workers who are here.

The time has come for comprehensive immigration reform. After several failed attempts in past years, the president has promised it and the White House is showing a clear commitment to it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that it is one of his top three priorities for this year. Next week, the president will meet at the White House with congressional leadership on immigration reform.  The debate on reform is moving and will only intensify.

Today marks the first anniversary of the Postville, Iowa, immigration raid where 389 workers were arrested and a small town of less than 3,000 was scarred forever, losing half of its thriving population. (Follow our updates from Postville on Twitter.)

For the past several weeks, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago has been conducting a national tour promoting immigration reform, primarily speaking at Latino evangelical churches around the country. On Saturday, the tour came home to a prayer forum at a local Chicago Catholic church attended by more than 2,000 people.  One of the key speakers was Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Cardinal George used the occasion to call on the Obama administration to stop immigration raids and urged passage of comprehensive immigration reform.  In his remarks, the cardinal

The AP recently published a fascinating look at the hard facts about immigrant detention centers. My firsthand experience at a local maximum security jail, which doubles as an immigrant detention center, affirmed what I read in the article: The system in place is costly and isn’t targeting hardened criminals. According to the AP’s data analysis of all detainees in custody, on Jan. 25, 58% did not have any criminal conviction. Among the 32,000 detained on any given day are people such as Sarjina Emy, a college-bound 20-year-old detained for nearly two years because her parents’ claim for asylum was denied when she was a child.