While the EU recognises more and more rights to regular migrants, the ‘fortress Europe’ continues to deal with human mobility as a purely economic issue, a two-day meeting sponsored by the Council of the Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Europe, for bishops and national directors of the pastoral care of migrants and refugees of the European Bishops' Conferences concluded.
The meeting, held in Malta at the invitation of Archbishop Paul Cremona and the President of the Maltese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Gozo bishop Mario Grech, was organised by "Malta Emigrants" Commission director Fr Alfred Vella.
The conference concluded that approach to migration in Europe was affected by a kind of schizophrenia.
“Migrants are not a commodity that you can import and export at will… An approach to the phenomenon of migration that fails to take into account all the dimensions of the human person and the social and cultural reality of each nation is expected to generate exclusion, marginalisation and social tensions.
“The pastoral approach proposed by the Church expects of the players involved a realistic focus on the reality of the individual persons and the communities of migrants.
The bishops and delegates for the pastoral care of migrants expressed their concern for all situations where refugees or asylum seekers were not respected in their dignity.
The European policy and the policy of the individual member states could only be based on respect for the individuals, and the recognition of the value and importance of the family.
Each migratory movement should take place in a legal framework, otherwise the public order of the countries of destination was likely to be threatened, making these countries less attractive for immigration.
“In any case, the criteria of love and lawfulness must always be observed.”
The bishops said that a sound migration policy should encourage an active participation of migrants in society and facilitate their integration in the labour market.
A permanent activity that allowed for their livelihood or responded to the needs of their family was fundamental in their process of integration. At the same time, this policy had to always be accompanied by the fight against the various forms of economic and social injustice, within the individual countries and globally.
The bishops acknowledged that migration was a real challenge for the Christian community because it called into question the ability to accept and deal with difference.
“Pluralism should not be perceived as a conflict of antagonistic realities, but as a complementarity of multiform riches. On the other hand, the participants repeatedly insisted that we should not be contented with offering what we have, but we must learn to give what we are.
“To welcome means to love, to take seriously the humanity of people, allowing each of them to be themselves. It means to let the other person exist without feeling threatened by his or her own difference.”