Pope Francis has made headlines around the world this week for castigating those who would “repel” migrants. In his own words:
It must be said clearly: there are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants – to repel migrants. And this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin. Let us not forget what the Bible tells us: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him.”
Of course there are ways in which Europe is repelling migrants that are ethically dubious — basically bribing countries like Turkey to leave migrants for dead. But there are moral problems with the policy of looking away from the law in the hope that benignly neglecting it will allow migrants to freely obtain what they need. This leads to the flourishing of human traffickers who exploit and often kill migrants while conducting other illegal activities.
Of course, we could adopt something like the Vatican’s own migration policy, though I’m not sure it lines up with Francis’s moralizing. The Vatican is the only state in the world where the majority of its border is walled. The great Leonine Walls, outfitted with advanced security-camera and motion-detector systems, guard the city state. These are backed up by military force, the Swiss Guard. Being surrounded by Italy, the Vatican is also a beneficiary of anything Italy or the Schengen arrangements of Europe do to prevent illegal migration. It holds the strictest residency and citizenship requirements in the world, such that over half its citizens reside outside the Vatican. The Vatican’s few number of citizens are not allowed to provide any unauthorized accommodation for noncitizens in the state.
Most of the Vatican’s laws on citizenship and immigration can be backed up with references to the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church. If a tiny, walled, exclusive city can maintain such strict laws for its good, it seems to me that a just application of the United States’ laws should meet the pope’s moral standards.