A Respectful Response to Concerns About Undocumented Immigrants

I find my myself both grateful and dismayed by the letter from Terri Glotflty responding to my letter about my friends in Central America.  I am grateful that someone took what I said seriously.  I am dismayed that my words so disturbed a victim of a vicious crime.

Allow me to make one thing very clear.  If a person is residing in this country without documentation and that person commits rape or any other violent crime, that person should be deported.

However, I do not believe in collective guilt.  In other words, I do not believe that if one undocumented immigrant commits a crime, all undocumented immigrants are therefore guilty.

President Trump told us that he wants to rid our country of violent criminals.  Violent criminals should be deported.  There are about eleven million undocumented persons residing in the United States and the vast majority of them are not violent criminals.  They are human beings who were forced to leave their homelands because of violence, poverty or natural disasters.  They work and contribute to our country.  They live peacefully among us, go to church and raise their families.  They deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion.

The written word is an effective way for people to communicate but it has its limits.  I therefore offer my email address (tom.howarth67@gmail.com) to Terri and hope that she will contact me.  I will be happy to treat her to lunch.

If I hold myself to be a model Catholic, I should beg the Lord’s forgiveness.  I am not a model Catholic or person of faith, but some of those I met in El Salvador are.

Tom Howarth
Warren County, VA

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