It has become almost a reflex in public discourse to claim that the Catholic position on immigration is simple: ‘welcome the stranger’, and do so generously.
This is not the Church’s teaching. It is a partial reading of it, frankly a soppy one. The Catholic tradition does indeed command generosity towards the stranger. But it also affirms something just as real, and now widely ignored: the right – and duty – of nations to preserve themselves, and of governments to act first for the good of their own people. When these principles are applied to present circumstances, the conclusion is difficult to avoid: current patterns of immigration in much of the West are not serving the common good and ought to be curtailed.
