The Overlooked Question on Hispanic Immigration

In our social debates, of course, we get all caught up in numbers: asking how many are coming in, how much money is this costing. It's part of our scientific, bookkeeping modern Western culture. But, sometimes, when all the empirical, numerical questions are asked and even answered we may have forgotten to ask the most important question: who? For Catholics and other Christians, "who" is a more important question to ask than questions about numbers. Our scale of priorities is and should be radically different from that of our technological, secular culture.

That focus on "who" is why when it came to Terri Schiavo, we did not just ask how much it cost to keep her alive. We focused on who she was: a human being with as much dignity as anyone else. We also focus on "who" when it comes to abortion. We don't focus on the economic burden on the mother. We focus on who the child is: a human person of equal dignity with the mother.

I submit that when considering Hispanic immigration we ask the "who" question more, and not just focus on numbers and statistics. Who are these, mostly darker, people streaming over our borders? They are members of the only culture on earth that I know of which names its male children "Jesus," after the Son of God.

I know of no other culture on the planet where children are intentionally named "Jesus" to signify the Son of God. All of which reminds me as a Catholic Christian of a very famous question: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4; RSV). Saul then immediately asked the "who" question: "Who are you, Lord?" Before we get on our high horses and start going after the Hispanic poor coming across the border with the zeal of the Pharisee Saul, we had better meditate first on that famous and prophetic biblical dialogue. The "who" question and the related biblical question about persecution from Acts may be the most important questions for Catholics and other Christians to ask in the entire immigration debate.

As Catholics, our questions naturally overlap with those of our non-believing fellow citizens because we also rightly employ our common reason; but our question lists will, thank God, never be identical. We ask the "who" question when it comes to euthanasia and abortion. We need to ask the personalistic "who" question on immigration also. As Catholics, we always have more to ask. And in the Hispanic immigration debate, the "who" comes, uniquely among all cultures, with the name of "Jesus," the Son of God.