Across the developed world, demographic decline is now the rule. Birth rates well below replacement level have left nations from Japan to Britain, and from Italy to Canada, facing ageing populations and shrinking workforces. To compensate, governments have increasingly turned to mass immigration as a demographic and economic stopgap.
What was intended as a technical solution, however, has proved to be a civilisational experiment with serious consequences. The large-scale importation of people into nations with which they share little history, culture, ancestry, or moral inheritance has coincided with the importation of violent radicalism and hostile ideologies, cultural fragmentation, and the flaring of ethnic and religious tensions. Integration and assimilation efforts are proving futile in the face of anthropological realities. These outcomes are predictable effects of treating human beings as interchangeable labour units rather than moral agents entering a living civilisation.
Meanwhile, contemporary liberal, postwar, humanistic political culture is often unwilling to see people as anything other than atomised individuals, rather than understanding them for what they more meaningfully are: Englishmen, Vietnamese, Somalians, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, Christians, and so forth. To acknowledge this, rather than denying the dignity of migrants, more authentically recognises their humanity. Recognising difference is a task Catholics must now undertake with urgency.
Because whether one wishes it or not, recipient countries are increasingly aware that something has gone badly wrong. Discontent is growing and patience is thinning. In the United Kingdom, explosive unrest following the 2024 Southport stabbings, after a British born second generation migrant named Axel Rudakabana murdered three primary school girls, unleashed horror at the crime itself and fury at a system perceived as unable or unwilling to protect its own. Migrants were attacked in plain sight by groups seeking revenge against those who bore neither individual nor corporate responsibility for the atrocity.
It is in this atmosphere that questions of deportation and “remigration”, the Financial Times’ word of the year for 2025, have moved rapidly from the fringes to the centre of political life. A widely viewed exchange between former BBC journalist Andrew Gold and anti-migration campaigner Steve Laws brought a new divide on the right into public view. Gold argued that citizenship alone renders deportation immoral. Laws replied with an ethno-nationalist claim that anyone without British ancestry on the part of both parents, including Gold himself, ought to be expelled.
The exchange was crude but illuminating. It exposed a fundamental fault line. On one side stands civic nationalism, which treats nationality as a purely legal status, a matter of passports and documentation detached from culture, history, or inherited loyalty. On the other stands absolutist ethno-nationalism, which reduces belonging to blood alone and leaves no room for conversion, assimilation, participation, or adoption. Both positions are false. One dissolves the nation into paperwork, the other freezes it into biology.
Catholic teaching permits neither extreme. But it does not evade the harder question they circle: who may live among us, and on what terms?
Against the likes of Laws, the Church insists that foreigners be treated justly and with charity, and where possible with hospitality and warmth. It therefore makes demands of host peoples and recipient nations. But it also insists that hosts be treated with charity and care by new arrivals, and thus makes demands of migrants as well. Against Gold and his ilk, when migrants do not meet these demands, the Church recognises circumstances in which they can, or should, be removed.
Simply put, deportations carried out in accordance with Catholic principles are permitted. If we attend to Scripture, theology, and even recent papal teaching, when the alternative is a serious compromise of the social, economic, cultural, or religious common good of a nation, some may be expelled.
There are therefore clear criteria governing who may stay, who ought to be received, and when outsiders should be expelled or never admitted in the first place.
To understand these criteria, the principles must be stated plainly. Ancestry and biology, lineage, are inextricable from nationhood and nationality, even if they are not the only elements. Scripture recognises this clearly. The ethnos is a foundational component of nationhood and is a term used throughout Scripture, acknowledging lineage as the basis of nations across the Bible. The Christian tradition understands that a nation is not a hotel, nor a marketplace for international business, nor a mere administrative zone. Nations are families of families.
Political leaders’ refusal to recognise or respect this truth has emboldened extreme proposals for remigration and expanded deportations, now gaining mainstream traction. In France, polling has shown majority support for Éric Zemmour’s call for a ministry of remigration. Similar language is used by figures such as Herbert Kickl, who is on course to become Austria’s next head of state, and Rupert Lowe in Britain. In the United States, aggressive deportation policies have provoked clashes with Catholic clergy and drawn intervention from Pope Leo XIV. This debate is not going away, whether Trump is in office or not.
This places Christians in a genuine bind. On the one hand, the Church proclaims that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Christianity seeks the salvation and fraternity of all peoples and nations. It has always crossed borders, baptised empires, and forged supernatural bonds transcending ethnicity and tribe. Many Sunday Mass congregations testify to this universality. We rightly recoil from cruelty towards migrants, especially those who live peacefully among us and share our faith.
On the other hand, justice remains a cardinal virtue and patriotism a legitimate moral duty. The Catechism teaches that “the love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity” (CCC 2239). Politics therefore must concern itself with upholding the common good and guarding against threats to it.
Recent papal teaching confirms that, in questions of deportation and citizenship, discrimination between cases is legitimate. In late 2025, Pope Leo XIV stated that “every country has a right to determine who, how, and when people enter”, adding that “no one has said the United States should have open borders”. At the same time, he urged protection for families and long settled residents who live peacefully. These qualifications are significant. Although the Pope expresses strong sympathy for migrants, this remains a matter of prudential judgement. He did not suggest that those who exploit hospitality or endanger the innocent possess an absolute right to remain.
Much of this is widely accepted. Criminals should be incarcerated. Vetting is legitimate where there is risk of violence or terrorism. But Catholic principles require more than this minimum threshold.
This is where much contemporary Christian and conservative commentary has faltered. The question is not merely whether migrants pose an immediate threat. The absence of murder, rape, or theft is not sufficient. A civilisation is not sustained by the absence of evil alone. It depends upon shared love, loyalty, memory, and purpose.
Christian civilisation has never been an ethno-religious blood cult enforcing racial purity. If nations are families of families, then, like families, they permit marriage in. A friendly stranger may join a new people and enrich the broader community. History offers many examples. Outsiders can become patriots, as French born Prince Eugene of Savoy did in Austria. Scripture offers a still clearer model. Ruth the Moabite was a foreigner to Israel. She declared, “your people shall be my people, and your God my God”, and was welcomed and honoured. This offers a humane and coherent benchmark for new arrivals, one that Catholic commentator Connor Tomlinson rightly commends.
No parent would give their daughter in marriage to a man who was merely non violent or indifferent to her people. To join a family requires affection, loyalty, and participation in its life. The same is true of a nation. Those who wish to live among us should at the very least like us. Better still, they should love us. And if they wish to belong fully, they should develop a genuine attachment to our history, our customs, our way of life, and where possible, our God.
Regarding calls for remigration, while Catholics should stand firmly against the evil of indiscriminate targeting of migrants on the basis of skin colour or other such characteristics, we must recognise that it is entirely legitimate for host populations to ask why those who do not have much affection for their society, and especially those who actively disdain it, have been welcomed and granted permanent residency in our historical home and access to finite resources. Mere indifference is not enough. No civilisation can be sustained on indifference. Nor can a family.
This truth brings us to the fundamental question recipient nations must examine when assessing arriving migrants: do they love us? Families are sustained by active love among their members. Without it, they fracture. Nations, bound together in the pursuit of the common good, are no different. They come apart when large sections of the population view one another as ethnic or religious outsiders, or as adversaries.
A nation is a family bound together by history, sacrifice, law, custom, and, where possible, love of the same God. To belong to it is not merely to reside within its borders, as a spy or merchant might, but to participate in the life of that family: to build, repair, defend, love, and pass it on. Only if new members actively love their adopted family can they plausibly contribute to its good.
These criteria sit comfortably within the Christian tradition. Pope Pius XII’s Exsul Familia, the most comprehensive Vatican document on migration, affirms the duty to receive the truly needy and the “decent”, particularly refugees and imperilled Christians, provided that public wealth, carefully considered, does not forbid this. In other words, the reception of migrants is a duty only when the need is genuine or the persons are upright, and only insofar as nations possess the material, social, and spatial capacity to host them reasonably. Pius XII further notes that it is desirable for migrants to return once the conditions, such as famine or war, that prompted their flight have passed.
St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Old Law gives “suitable precepts” for dealings with foreigners, which he describes as twofold: peaceful and hostile. It commanded genuine kindness towards those passing through or settling as newcomers: “Thou shalt not molest a stranger” (Exod. 22:21). Yet with regard to full membership of the people, Aquinas explains that “a certain order was observed”. Newcomers could not be admitted immediately to citizenship, because foreigners who had not yet firmly embraced the common good might act to the detriment of the people. He also argues that the fact some were sent back to their homelands, lest the people suffer by their presence, was reasonable.
It is also significant that Pius XII suggested that “overpopulated” nations, such as Japan, bore less obligation to receive foreigners than those with ample space and capacity. When Exsul Familia was written in 1952, Japan had a population density of 246 people per square kilometre. England’s population density today is nearly double that figure. By the criteria of the Church’s most authoritative magisterial document on migration, much of Europe appears to be operating at or beyond capacity. This permits the removal of those without genuine necessity or those who damage the moral and cultural fabric of the host society, whether through active hostility, as in the case of Islamists, or through tribal self interest and exploitation of another land.
The relevant question, therefore, is not simply whether new arrivals refrain from violence, but whether they either wish to, or can in fact, become part of the broader family that a nation represents. The extensive network of Pakistani grooming gangs uncovered across the United Kingdom, in which underage, white non-Muslim girls were systematically raped, crimes that authorities wilfully ignored, illustrates the cost of neglecting this distinction. These atrocities are a downstream consequence of importing populations that do not regard the host people as their own, nor love the broader family as such.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born former Muslim and award-winning writer, has documented the profound differences in moral outlook between the Christian and Islamic worlds. In the West, there is a persistent and naive assumption that all people share the same universalistic moral framework, particularly the injunction to treat outsiders as equals. This is not so. As Hirsi Ali explains, for the perpetrators of the grooming gangs, white girls were kuffar, infidels. Their religious sensibilities did not require equal treatment of all people, but could permit or even encourage crimes against out group members. Cultural and religious incompatibilities are real and cannot be ignored simply because discussing them is uncomfortable.
For this reason, while Catholics may understandably fear that innocent foreign citizens could be unfairly targeted as calls for remigration intensify, they must also recognise why such calls are gaining momentum. Native populations see their sons and daughters exposed to avoidable harms inflicted by people whose presence is optional. This fuels legitimate frustration and anger. The Church must therefore provide moral clarity and act as a moderating voice of reason.
Aquinas further clarifies the Catholic position. Charity, he teaches, is ordered. In the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 32), he insists that finite goods must be distributed prudently, with regard to order, merit, repentance, and benefit to the commune bonum. He cites Sirach 12:4–6: “Give to the merciful and uphold not the sinner.” He also quotes 1 Timothy 5:8: “If any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
Aquinas holds that prioritising one’s own people and family is a duty and a moral good, though he concedes that holy persons in need or those who significantly benefit the common good may sometimes take precedence. Mercy in spiritual matters, which are inexhaustible, should be abundant. In material matters, it must be governed by reason and restraint. Charity must not entrench vice or harm the wider community, even as it seeks to ensure that genuine human need is met.
Applied to migration, this means that residency, welfare, and legal protection are not unconditional gifts. They are goods held in trust for the nation. They belong first to other members of the national family, many of whom may themselves be in need. To distribute them indiscriminately, especially when resources are finite, is negligence. Christians are called to caritas in veritate. Charity must never be separated from truth.
Scripture itself does not reduce moral concern to abstract individuals divorced from peoplehood. Although it does not address mass migration directly, it consistently affirms the moral reality of nations. Acts 17:26 teaches that God “made from one man every nation” and “fixed the boundaries of their habitation”. Nations arise from shared heritage and history and possess divinely permitted domains.
The criterion Catholics must therefore recover is clear. Those who wish to join a nation must do more than refrain from harming it. They must, in some meaningful sense, love it: its people, its inheritance, and ideally its God. A family would be foolish to welcome into its household someone indifferent or hostile to its shared life.
Failing to ask this of those who settle permanently in another land is irresponsible. While enforcement may be imperfect and difficult, even partial attempts are worthwhile. Refusing to do so has produced segregated cities, terrorist attacks, and crimes that shock the conscience. Asking it is neither racist nor unchristian.
This does not justify cruelty. It does, however, justify firmness. There is such a thing as too many, too fast, and the wrong kind. There exists a moral duty to remove those who persistently threaten the common good.
Some commentators warn that unrest will escalate if present trends continue. Political scientist David Betz of King’s College London, for instance, argues that prolonged breakdowns in trust, legitimacy, and social cohesion can generate cycles of disorder that are extremely difficult to reverse. Whether or not one accepts his most pessimistic forecasts, history is clear that sustained social breakdown rarely resolves itself peacefully. The Church will be asked to guide and must not be silent.
Governing a nation is not unlike raising a child. If necessary discipline is avoided during the window in which correction is possible, far greater harm follows later.
Catholics may wish this debate would disappear. It will not. The question of deportation and remigration is only becoming more urgent. If the Church does not articulate a clear, principled, and humane account rooted in justice, charity, and the common good, others will supply answers far less worthy. Alternatively, preventable suffering will be inflicted upon peoples who, however imperfectly, evangelised the world and sustained Christian civilisation, and who now risk losing their homelands unjustly.
No Catholic should accept either outcome. Reason and moral order require that migrants who genuinely love their host people, their culture, and their inheritance may stay. The rest may have to leave.
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