After the midterm elections of 2010, the burst of activity by the lame-duck 111^th Congress offered some hope that the DREAM Act—the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act—might finally be passed. This legislation would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for irregular immigrant young people who arrived in the United States as minors, provided that they complete at least two years of higher education or of military service. Passed by the House of Representatives on December 8, 2010 (coincidentally or providentially, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, patronal feast of the United States), the DREAM Act did not make it through the Senate, coming up five votes short of the sixty needed to achieve cloture on December 18, 2010. Commenting on the Senate vote, Archbishop José Gómez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration called the vote a “setback, not a defeat,” and insisted that, as we move forward, “More education is needed to ensure that Catholics, as well as all Americans, fully understand the humanitarian consequences of a broken immigration system, especially on families.”[1]

For this editor, the need for such education hit home especially hard this past October 12, at a panel debate of Arizona SB 1070 sponsored by the Department of Student Life at St. John’s University, New York, where I serve on the faculty of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. SB 1070, a controversial piece of anti-immigrant legislation signed into law by Arizona governor Jan Brewer, now appears to be serving as a model for at least six additional state legislatures (Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina). The debate at St. John’s featured film maker Carlos Sandoval (director, with Catherine Tambini, of the 2004 documentary Farmingville), [2] who along with City University of New York School of Law professor Jenny Rivera voiced eloquent and substantive opposition to the Arizona law. Speaking in favor of Arizona SB 1070 were former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agent Michael Cutler, and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) press secretary and communications director Bob Dane. I was asked to moderate the panel, and I resolved, first, to do all I could in that capacity to keep the conversation civil and respectful all around; second, to make sure that there were printouts of resources from the USCCB Justice for Immigrants Campaign at each table for students to read. In so doing it was my hope that, once the dust settled, the facts about immigrants and the need for just and comprehensive immigration reform might sink in.[3]

While I was encouraged by the student turnout for the debate, a showing due in large measure to the co-sponsorship of the debate by Latino fraternities and Latina sororities, and while the presence of a representative from the campus student newspaper (The Torch) made me cautiously optimistic, all that crashed and burned when I read the October 13 story about the event that appeared in The Torch. Despite what I thought were knockout-solid arguments against the Arizona law by Carlos Sandoval and Jenny Rivera, coverage of the event made it unfortunately clear that at least some of the students who attended were persuaded by those who made a case in favor of anti-immigrant legislation and in opposition to the DREAM Act. With regard to the DREAM Act, for example, FAIR representative Bob Dane quipped, “Education used to come with a diploma not a green card,” claiming that the proposed legislation constitutes a “form of mass amnesty.”  One student quoted in the Torch’s coverage of the event admitted, “Before the event, I myself, of course was against it because I am Hispanic but after talking to the panelist who were for it now I understand why they feel that way.” Another (Latino) student weighed in to observe, “Arizona simply said we’re not going to wait for this bureaucratic government to get off its butt and help out a situation that’s been dragging our state down, that’s been dragging the southern United States down for the last two and half decades.”[4] Such comments made it clear to me that even on the campus of a Catholic university with a serious commitment to educating students about Catholic social teaching and its implications for the shaping of public policy toward a more just and equitable society that affirms the dignity of very human person, the words of Archbishop Gómez rang true: “More education is needed.”

Appropriately enough, an occasion for such education took place in the very same St. John’s University conference room less than two weeks after the on-campus Arizona SB 1070 debate, in a conference sponsored by the University’s Vincentian Center for Church and Society.[5] At that conference, “The World Is Here: Global Migration and Local Strategies,” undergraduate and graduate students were joined by faculty members from a broad range of disciplines, by service providers, activists, and others from the New York metropolitan area and beyond. They heard Dr. Gemma Tulud Cruz, author of the book entitled An Intercultural Theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness,[6] deliver the keynote address, “Social Justice and Migration: Encounters and Engagement,” before participating in roundtable discussions that addressed economic migration and employment, violence in the schools, national policy and immigration laws: the crisis of deportation and detention, women on the move: employment, health and safety; and intercultural parishes: vision and practice. Although the roundtables were facilitated by experts from a broad range of disciplines—economics, education, law enforcement, theology, history—the roundtable format encouraged the sharing of expertise by all of the participants. In this way, the harsh rhetoric of anti-immigrant sentiment that had echoed hollow through the room not two weeks earlier gave way to substantive discussion, and easy answers yielded the stage to serious interdisciplinary reflection.

The two contributions to this journal that this editorial introduces likewise represent articulate and effective responses to the call for further education. Both provide material to nourish such efforts among those who share the conviction that the Bible can be an ally in the work of shaping minds and hearts to effect comprehensive immigration reform that advances respect for the human dignity of people on the move. Aquiles Ernesto Martínez contributes “Old Testament Legislation and Foreigners: An Alternative Majority Group Response,” a study in which he examines legal texts to test his hypothesis that the “cumulative experience of ancient Jews interacting with non-Jewish communities as recorded in the Old Testament (OT hereinafter) appears to be an exception to the typical anti-minority group reaction.” In his contribution, an Gilberto Ruiz examines the dynamics of movement and migration in the Fourth Gospel, suggesting that, perhaps surprisingly, the high christology of this so-called “spiritual” Gospel can make it a “faithful ally in our struggles and solidarity with im/migrants.” An earlier version of the essay by Gilberto Ruiz was discussed at the 2009 Annual Colloquium of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, held at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. With its theme, “Doing Public Theology: Immigration Reform in the U.S.,” the discussions at the Colloquium took place in the hope that the fruits of our discussions might be useful in our communities, our educational settings, our parishes, even nationally, in laying bare the theological foundations for just and compassionate immigration reform. Both of the essays introduced by this editorial are offered to our readers in the service of that vitally important goal.