With the Trump administration having “effectively achieved control of the border,” Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is now urging the president and Congress to turn to expanding legal pathways for unlawfully present migrants who have committed no other crimes to obtain citizenship.
In a statement and interview with archdiocesan media, Wenski argued that the U.S. “faces labor shortages in many industries, including health care, service, and agriculture. Removing immigrant workers will only exacerbate these shortages.”
“Rather than spending billions to deport people who are already contributing positively to our nation’s well-being, it would be more financially sensible and more morally acceptable for Congress, working with the administration, to expand legal pathways for noncriminal migrants to adjust to a permanent legal status,” Wenski affirmed.
In an interview with La Voz Catolica, Wenski said that “what makes it cruel right now is the arbitrariness of this push to deport people who have already made a stake here — people who have put in sweat and effort to stay.”
“If the United States government has allowed them to remain for 10 or 20 years, you can imagine many have children who are American citizens, own homes, or have established businesses,” Wenski noted. “To simply tell them to ‘go back home’ — when there is no home back there, and their home is here — that’s what makes it cruel.”
Wenski also echoed Bishop Frank Dewane’s concerns about the new detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” which sits in Dewane’s neighboring Diocese of Venice, Florida.
Miami’s archbishop indicated that “from the moment this detention center opened, the archdiocese has requested access to provide religious services.”
He said Deacon Edgardo Farías, director of the archdiocesan prison ministry, visited the site to inquire about when they could celebrate Mass but was told the mosquito situation was very bad and to come back later.
“We wish to ensure that chaplains and pastoral ministers can serve those in custody, to their benefit and that of the staff,” Wenski indicated. “We also raise concerns about the isolation of the detention facility, which is far from medical care centers, and the precariousness of the temporary ‘tent’ structures.”
In the interview, Wenski said if the Trump administration’s deportations are enforcement of current laws, then “the laws must be changed” by Congress, which has the authority to “rewrite, adjust, or fix the law.”
“The vast majority of those here without permanent status are honest, hardworking people who simply want a future of hope for their children and their families,” Wenski added.
Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and current fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told CNA that Wenski’s call for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally is a form of “amnesty,” which he noted “is one of those things the Trump administration said is off the table.”
Former U.S. Immigration Judge Andrew Arthur. Credit: Center for Immigration Studies
Arthur, who is Catholic, said that current law already affords the types of accommodations for which the archbishop is advocating. For example, he said people can appeal a removal order on the basis that their deportation would cause “extremely unusual hardship” to members of their family who are American citizens.
He also argued that a pathway to citizenship would not address the labor shortage issues that Wenski raised. “There are both immigrant and non-immigrant visas that are available in order to accommodate those labor needs, but allowing individuals to remain in the United States unlawfully is unlikely to accommodate those labor needs,” Arthur contended.
Arthur also noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement follows the Performance-Based National Detention Standards. In his experience as an immigration judge, he said immigration authorities have always “provided for pastoral care.”
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An artist’s rendering of the affordable apartment complex soon to be built by Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance in Los Angeles. / Courtesy of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance
St. Louis, Mo., Aug 26, 2024 / 06:30 am (CNA).
Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, with an average home price almost touching a million dollars in 2024 — a landscape that crowds out not only the poor, but also young families with children. The high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons why tens of thousands of people live on the streets of LA, and most of those who are housed are “rent burdened,” which means they spend more than 30% of their income just keeping a roof over their heads.
In the face of such challenges, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently announced it will provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.
Amy Anderson, executive director of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance and a former chief of housing for the City of Los Angeles, told EWTN News that a group of Catholic lay leaders from the business and philanthropic community reached out to the archdiocese with a vision for creating an independent, nonprofit affordable housing development organization.
“Our vision is to really collaborate with the archdiocese and [use] the resources potentially available from the archdiocese to create homes that are affordable to a wide range of populations and incomes,” Anderson told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol.
She said they hope to break ground on the project, known as the Willowbrook development, “about a year from now.”
“The archdiocese is a fantastic partner. They are providing the land for our first development, which is already in process, and we’re working really closely with them to identify additional opportunities.”
The proposed building, which will be located steps from Los Angeles Community College, will feature 74 affordable housing units, as well as “on-site supportive services” for young people transitioning out of foster care — a population that often ends up experiencing homelessness.
The land, located at 4665 Willow Brook Ave just a few miles from the Hollywood Sign, currently hosts a Catholic Charities building, which will move its operations to another site to make way for the apartments.
“Through Catholic Charities and our ministries on Skid Row [an LA street where many unhoused people live] and elsewhere, we have been working for many years to provide shelter and services for our homeless brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement to LAist.
“With this new initiative we see exciting possibilities to make more affordable housing available, especially for families and young people.”
Making land work for mission
The Catholic Church is often cited as the largest non-governmental owner of land in the entire world, with an estimated 177 million acres owned by Catholic entities.
Maddy Johnson, program manager for the Church Properties Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE), noted that the Church as a large landowner is not a new phenomenon, but there is a need today to adapt to modern challenges like regulations, zoning, and the importance of caring for the natural environment.
Many Catholic dioceses and religious orders have properties in their possession that aren’t fulfilling their original purpose, including disused natural land and parking lots, as well as shuttered convents and schools. Sometimes, Johnson said, a diocese or religious order doesn’t even realize the full extent of what they own.
“How can the Church make good strategic decisions, strategic and mission-aligned decisions, if it doesn’t know what properties it’s responsible for?” she said.
The Church of St. Agatha and St. James in Philadelphia, with The Chestnut in the foreground, a housing unit developed on property ground-leased from the church. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
Since real estate management is not the Church’s core competency, FIRE aims to “provide a space for peer learning” to educate and equip Church leaders to make better use of their properties in service of the Church’s mission.
To this end, they offer an undergraduate minor at Notre Dame that aims to teach students how to help the Church make strategic real estate decisions that align with the Church’s mission. The Institute also organizes a quarterly networking call with diocesan real estate directors, as well as an annual conference to allow Catholic leaders to convene, share best practices, and learn from each other.
Fr. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., a professor at Notre Dame Law School and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative, conducts a workshop for diocesan leaders on Notre Dame’s campus in summer 2023. Courtesy of David J. Murphy/Church Properties Initiative
In many cases, Catholic entities that have worked with FIRE have been able to repurpose properties in a way that not only provides income for the church, but also fills a need in the community.
Johnson said the Church is called to respond to the modern problems society faces — one of which is a lack of housing options, especially for the poor.
“Throughout its history, there have been so many different iterations of how the Church expresses its mission…through education, healthcare — those are the ones that we’ve gotten really used to,” Johnson said.
“In our day and age, could it be the need for affordable housing?…that’s a charitable human need in the area that’s not being met.”
Unlocking potential in California
Queen of Angels Housing’s first development, which has been in the works for several years, is being made possible now by a newly-passed state law in California that aims to make it easier for churches to repurpose their land into housing.
California’s SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, was signed into law in October 2023. It streamlines some of the trickiest parts of the process of turning church-owned land into housing — the parts most people don’t really think about. These can include permitting and zoning restrictions, which restrict the types of buildings that can be built in a given area and can be difficult and time-consuming to overcome. SB 4 even includes a provision allowing for denser housing on church-owned property than the zoning ordinances would normally allow.
Yes in God’s Backyard
The law coming to fruition in California is part of a larger movement informally dubbed “Yes in God’s Backyard,” or YIGBY — a riff on the term “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), a phenomenon whereby neighbors take issue with and oppose new developments.
Several Catholic real estate professionals with ties to California expressed excitement about the possibilities that SB 4 has created in the Golden State.
Steve Cameron, a Catholic real estate developer in Orange County, told CNA that he is currently working with the Diocese of Orange, which abuts the LA archdiocese, to inventory properties that could be repurposed for residential use.
He said their focus is on building apartment buildings and townhomes, primarily for rental rather than for sale, in an attempt to address the severe housing shortage and high costs in Southern California.
Unlike some dioceses, the Orange diocese has an electronic GIS (geographic information system) database showing all the properties it owns. Prepared by a civil engineering firm, the database includes details such as parcel numbers, acreage, title information, and demographic reports, which facilitate the planning and development process.
“Strategically, what we’re doing is we’re inventorying all of the property that the diocese and the parishes own, and trying to understand where there might be underutilized property that would make sense to develop some residential use,” Cameron said.
Cameron said he can’t yet share details about the housing projects they’re working on, but said they are looking to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Queen of Angels housing project as a model for how to take advantage of the new incentives created by SB 4.
“I think it’s great, and it’s exciting that they’re taking the lead and that they are able to find an opportunistic way to repurpose an underutilized property to meet the housing shortage in California,” he said.
“[We] look at them as a role model for what we’re trying to accomplish here in the Diocese of Orange.”
Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago with One Chicago Square in the background, a residential tower constructed on the former cathedral parking lot, which was sold in 2019. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
John Meyer, a former president of the California-based Napa Institute who now works in real estate with J2 Development, emphasized the importance of viewing the Church’s vast real estate holdings as an asset rather than a liability.
Meyer said he is currently working with two Catholic entities on the East Coast on ground lease projects, one of which will fund the construction of a new Catholic Student Center at a university. He told CNA he often advises Catholic entities to lease the land they own rather than selling it, allowing the church to maintain ownership of the property while generating income.
Naturally, he noted, any real estate project the Church undertakes ought to align with the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel, and not merely be a means of making money.
“Any time we look at the Church’s real estate decisions, it’s got to be intertwined with mission and values,” he said.
“We’re not just developing for the sake of developing. What we want to do is we want to create value for the Church, and we also want to create value for the community. So working closely with the municipality to make sure that needs are met, and to be a good neighbor, is important.”
He said Church leaders should strongly consider taking advantage of incentives in various states such as California for projects like affordable housing, which align with the Church’s mission and provide both social and financial benefits.
“Priests and bishops aren’t ordained to do these things, and sometimes they have people in their diocese that have these abilities, and sometimes they don’t,” Meyer said.
“This [new law] in California has created an incentive that we can take advantage of, so we need to take advantage of that incentive…it’s allowing us to unlock potential value in land while at the same time serving a social good that’s part of the mission of the Church.”
Denver, Colo., Jan 11, 2023 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
A federal judge has ruled against a Catholic-founded hospital in Maryland, contending that it discriminated in refusing to perform a hysterectomy on a woman who… […]
Washington D.C., Aug 1, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Washington condemned racist and divisive rhetoric Thursday in response to controversial tweets by President Donald Trump about his critics in Congress.
It’s premature to declare that the Trump administration has achieved control of the border. There’s been a few months of relative stability. But there’s unknowns out there, such as how the cartels will adjust their smuggling operations to the new conditions at the border. I doubt they will just give up; they’ll change how they get migrants across, and then the Border Patrol will have to adjust their operations in response. When the Border Patrol has successfully gone through several rounds of that, and the situation is still stable, then we can start feeling like the border is under control.
Also, Archbishop Wenski’s assumption that once the border is under control, we can go back and adopt policies and practices of the Biden administration doesn’t seem too realistic, as many American do not support what the Biden administration was doing. I am sure that’s what he and his fellow bishops want, but the old patterns and problems will return. For instance, creating “Pathways to citizenship” for illegal immigrants currently living here, whatever those “pathways” end up looking like, will only encourage more people to want to migrate here however they can (including being smuggled over the border) and get the same deal. That makes the job of maintaining control over immigration even harder.
The labor shortage, well, a big problem is that American citizens don’t want to work for the below-market wages that illegal immigrants accept, but those wages have become the norm in businesses thst employ them. They accept those low wages BECAUSE they are here illegally, but if they gain legal status, they lose the reason for doing so. So if there was a “pathway to citizenship,” employers will eventually have to raise wages to retain workers, at which point, American citizens will get more interested in those jobs, and the immigrants will have to compete with them.
Won’t? Or are not allowed to? Gov’t mandated minimum wages are real. I suspect that is partly the reason why we have companies hire workers under the table illegally–not every job out there is “worth” a living wage (or minimum), and not every small business owner can pay a such even if he needs help (whether full or part time.)
The Archbishop of Miami is operating out of his lane. The arena of politics and civic governance is NOT the bailiwick of priests and bishops but OF THE LAITY. The Archbishop needs to restrict himself to the teachings of the Church and instructing the Faithful in them. The implementation of the teachings of the faith is left to the prudential judgment OF THE LAITY. So, Archbishop, butt out.
Bishop Wenski says that we should, “expand legal pathways for noncriminal migrants to adjust to a permanent legal status.” But we have that. Every year we admit one million noncriminal migrants to our country and they get on a pathway to citizenship. What bishop Wenski is advocating is for those who entered our country illegally, and have thus committed a crime, to be treated the same as those migrants who followed the law.
However, as many other bishops do, he distorts the language to try and make his point. Look at the language of the bishops’ 2024 voting guide – “We must stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized.”
The bishops say that abortion is the pre-eminent issue. If we look at how much the bishops say on an issue, how many letters and documents they write on an issue, and how many marches and demonstrations they participate in, it would seem that illegal immigration is their primary area of concern.
The bishops also say that the ICE agents should treat the illegals they apprehend with courtesy. Yes, but at times this is hard to do when rocks and other objects are being thrown at them.
It’s premature to declare that the Trump administration has achieved control of the border. There’s been a few months of relative stability. But there’s unknowns out there, such as how the cartels will adjust their smuggling operations to the new conditions at the border. I doubt they will just give up; they’ll change how they get migrants across, and then the Border Patrol will have to adjust their operations in response. When the Border Patrol has successfully gone through several rounds of that, and the situation is still stable, then we can start feeling like the border is under control.
Also, Archbishop Wenski’s assumption that once the border is under control, we can go back and adopt policies and practices of the Biden administration doesn’t seem too realistic, as many American do not support what the Biden administration was doing. I am sure that’s what he and his fellow bishops want, but the old patterns and problems will return. For instance, creating “Pathways to citizenship” for illegal immigrants currently living here, whatever those “pathways” end up looking like, will only encourage more people to want to migrate here however they can (including being smuggled over the border) and get the same deal. That makes the job of maintaining control over immigration even harder.
The labor shortage, well, a big problem is that American citizens don’t want to work for the below-market wages that illegal immigrants accept, but those wages have become the norm in businesses thst employ them. They accept those low wages BECAUSE they are here illegally, but if they gain legal status, they lose the reason for doing so. So if there was a “pathway to citizenship,” employers will eventually have to raise wages to retain workers, at which point, American citizens will get more interested in those jobs, and the immigrants will have to compete with them.
Won’t? Or are not allowed to? Gov’t mandated minimum wages are real. I suspect that is partly the reason why we have companies hire workers under the table illegally–not every job out there is “worth” a living wage (or minimum), and not every small business owner can pay a such even if he needs help (whether full or part time.)
Meanwhile, the Vatican does not tolerate illegal immigration into its own territory. See how it threatens illegals:
Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border
The Archbishop of Miami is operating out of his lane. The arena of politics and civic governance is NOT the bailiwick of priests and bishops but OF THE LAITY. The Archbishop needs to restrict himself to the teachings of the Church and instructing the Faithful in them. The implementation of the teachings of the faith is left to the prudential judgment OF THE LAITY. So, Archbishop, butt out.
Bishop Wenski says that we should, “expand legal pathways for noncriminal migrants to adjust to a permanent legal status.” But we have that. Every year we admit one million noncriminal migrants to our country and they get on a pathway to citizenship. What bishop Wenski is advocating is for those who entered our country illegally, and have thus committed a crime, to be treated the same as those migrants who followed the law.
However, as many other bishops do, he distorts the language to try and make his point. Look at the language of the bishops’ 2024 voting guide – “We must stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized.”
The bishops say that abortion is the pre-eminent issue. If we look at how much the bishops say on an issue, how many letters and documents they write on an issue, and how many marches and demonstrations they participate in, it would seem that illegal immigration is their primary area of concern.
The bishops also say that the ICE agents should treat the illegals they apprehend with courtesy. Yes, but at times this is hard to do when rocks and other objects are being thrown at them.