March 24, 2014
You don’t know Hannah or Denis Geaney. They are my parents. When they came to the United States from Ireland the laws of immigration in the United States were not as difficult as they are now.
When they came to the U.S. my parents were sponsored by relations already living in this country. The path to citizenship was clear. My parents took advantage of that clarity and became citizens of the United States.
They were proud of their citizenship, even as they continued their natural love of Ireland. My dad often said “America is the greatest country in the world, but there’s no place like Ireland.” When I asked my mother about that she said: “John, even the Savage loves her native shore.”
Today, the immigration question is framed in politically totally different terms. Immigrants to our shores today often come from Mexico and other Latin American and South American countries. Many who come, arrive without documentation. There is no clear path to citizenship for them at the present time. When they bring their children with them, children who grow up in the United States and are totally absorbed in the American culture, there is no clear path to citizenship for them, either.
Last week in New York the possibility of allowing what are known as the “dreamers” children who come to the United States with parents who are undocumented suffered a setback when the New York Senate failed to pass by two votes, legislation that would allow dreamers to receive educational funds.
What does that have to do with us? Only this. It’s time that culturally American children born of undocumented parents – and brought to our country without knowing the circumstances – be able to find a clear path to citizenship.
Dreamers hope that they will be able to share in what we know as the American dream. But it is also important for us to realize that if we are to be in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are the dreamers that we should heed the words of Pope Francis: “To be affected by those who are out at the edge of the road and sympathize with them is the attitude of the men and women who recognize their own face is both muddy and precious in the faces of others and therefore do not reject them.”