There are 42 million foreign-born persons in the United States, nearly 14 percent of the population. They come from virtually every nation in the world. If you add their U.S.-born children, the percentage jumps to 26 percent. Worldwide, there are more than 232 million international migrants and nearly 60 million forcibly displaced persons. What do we mean by integration and human development in light of these record numbers of migrants, particularly unaccompanied children, survivors of trafficking, refugees and other vulnerable persons?
To start, integration must be an inclusive process devoted to creating the conditions that allow all persons in a community flourish. This process cannot be limited to citizens or persons with immigration status. It must include the trafficked, persecuted and abused. Moreover, it should promote "integral development", which has been defined as the flourishing of each person and of the whole person. Nobody is expendable, and each marker of a person's identity -- as a member of a family, a polity, a faith community, a workplace or a school -- should be honored.
Immigrants must respect the core values and laws of their new communities. However, it does not follow that they should be required to abandon their cultures. Unity, not uniformity, should be the goal, and the foundation for unity should be a commitment to shared values like justice, the rule-of-law, civil rights, religious freedom, equality and the common good. Integration policies should also privilege participation and agency. Institutions can mediate the integration of immigrants into the broader society. That said, immigrants integrate, not institutions or nations, and integration works best if immigrants, in the words of the Aparecida document, become "agents of their own development."
The United Nations defines human development, channeling Amartya Sen, as the process of building human capabilities and enlarging choices. A vision of integration which seeks to allow all residents to thrive would invariably advance human development in this sense. Thus, we might think of migrant rights, human development and integration as a kind of virtuous circle.
A key integration challenge is to align legal immigration opportunities with the family, employment, protection and other needs of a state and its residents. In the United States, there are nearly 11 million unauthorized residents. Nearly four million are parents of US citizens or lawful permanent residents. An estimated 1.9 million have resided in the United States for 20 years or more, and nearly 60 percent for 10 years or more. As of 2013, 4.4 million persons - most of them undocumented -- had been approved for family-based visas, but had not yet received them. The undocumented comprise more than 5 percent (a disproportionate share) of the US workforce, and are vital to many industries and economic sectors. The United States should expand the legalization opportunities for these family members, friends, colleagues, co-religionists, and long-term residents.
A second need is to allow persons fleeing persecution, torture, terrorism, and refugee-like conditions to reach protection. Access to a safe haven is denied to many of the world's 60 million forcibly displaced persons, including those dying in the Mediterranean, along the US-Mexico border, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the response of developing states is too often to try to contain, block, deter, detain, criminalize and otherwise deny protection to vulnerable migrants. Developed states also fail to contribute sufficient resources to the states that host the overwhelming majority of the world's refugees. For present purposes, it is only after a forced migrant accesses protection that a durable solution can be found and the integration process can begin.
Between 2012 and 2015, roughly 110,000 unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle states of Central America were apprehended by immigration authorities. In New York City alone, a projected 11,000 thousand children and adults with young children will be placed in removal proceedings this year. Most of these children have witnessed or experienced extreme violence in their home states. Many have been robbed and sexually or otherwise abused during transit. Some have suffered disabling injuries.
The need to protect children does not end upon their arrival in the United States or Europe. During a January 26th conference on due process and access to justice in New York, a teen-age girl's attorney spoke of receiving her "green" card (permanent residence document) at his office, but months later she had still not picked it up. After repeated attempts, his office and law enforcement officials could not locate the girl. She had reportedly been passed from one "uncle" to another and presumably forced into prostitution. Europol reports that, during the past 18 to 24 months, 10,000 unaccompanied migrant and refugee children, after registering with government authorities, have disappeared in Europe. It fears that the children have been forced into commercial sex trafficking or otherwise enslaved by criminal syndicates. The United States has released unknown numbers of children to traffickers and other abusive sponsors.
The poverty, past traumas and untenable living situations of many migrant children impede their prospects for success in host communities. Thus, the best integration programs seek to address holistically the needs of vulnerable migrants, which include food, tutoring, housing, medical care, psychological counseling and case management services. Legal representation, in particular, makes an enormous difference in the case outcomes of children and, in fact, of all persons in removal proceedings.
A final integration challenge involves vision. Many of the world's politicians and opinion-makers and a large tranche of its citizens view immigrants as a problem, a burden, a threat or simply an exploitable labor source. For this reason, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) devoted its World Migration Report 2011 to the need for effective communication about migrants and migration. In doing so, it sought to promote a more "open, balanced and de-politicized migration discourse." Faith communities can play an indispensable role in this regard. They can educate their societies -- in word and deed -- on the need to see immigrants not as a burden, but as a font of innovation, work and cultural enrichment; not as a problem to be solved, but as an opportunity; not as a threat, but as a potential source of renewal.
Pope Francis has urged people of faith to measure their work by its value in God's eyes. He has referred to immigrants and refugees as "an occasion that Providence gives us to help build a more just society, a more perfect democracy, a more united country, a more fraternal world ..." Immigrants will struggle to survive, integrate and succeed, relying upon the relationships, opportunities and institutions that are open to them. It is a privileged role of faith communities to urge societies to honor the dignity and avail themselves of the gifts, potential and full participation of their newest members.