In the United States, the Catholic Church is an immigrant church.

It came to this country early on, but didn't solidify itself until the great European immigration of the 19th century. It has been a stranger of sorts in the United States, and to some extent this hasn't changed.

After all, the unofficial religion of the United States was originally a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that had little use for anything Catholic. Which is why local parishes and sometimes even bishops ended up fighting for the rights of their immigrant parishioners. Times have changed, but this history still shapes how the Church views government and society.

So it should come as little surprise that the Catholic Church officially supports the rights of immigrants, legal and illegal. After all, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006 called the immigration system "seriously flawed," and the bishops together have called for comprehensive immigration reform. And it should be telling that Chicago's Archbishop Francis Cardinal George marched in last year's May Day rally here in Chicago and that there is a nationwide Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform.

The Church's dedication to this issue was formally discussed in 2003 when U.S. and Mexican bishops released a joint pastoral letter entitled "Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope."

In "Strangers No Longer" the bishops called for broad-based legalization (which means permanent residency) for all undocumented persons residing in the United States. They also called for the reform of the immigration system to allow for the reunification of family members with loved ones. And they called for the reform of employment-based immigration law to create legal channels for migrants to come and work in a safe, humane and orderly manner, as well as for the restoration of due process for immigrants. In short, they called for human decency.

Their letter was based on five points of Catholic social teaching: that persons have a right to find opportunities in their homeland; that persons have a right to migrate to support both themselves and their families; that sovereign nations have a right to control their borders; that refugees and asylum seekers should be given protection; and that it is mandatory to respect the human dignity and human rights of undocumented and illegal immigrants.

Now I think that most Americans can agree with the first four points. The last point that deals with human rights is the one that I think we often forget. And when you pair human rights with economics, you find the bottom line of the immigration debate.

Economically speaking, it's as simple as supply and demand. We as a nation have invited persons from other countries, and especially Mexico, to come and work here. Our economy and consumers demand cheap services and goods, and by tapping into a continuous supply of undocumented immigrants, we meet our demand.

We don't ask too many questions because we know that very few Americans are willing to put in the long hours of hard, physical labor for low pay that is required to keep our economy going. We need cheap labor, and we make it known that if someone finds a way to get here, they will be given a better job than they could find back home. Especially in the service sector, where low-paying and unglamorous jobs are necessary to keep our lives easier and our eateries, homes, hotels and businesses running.

The human rights aspect is the forgotten side of the coin. We embrace economic reality, but we often don't recognize that those who provide this labor are fellow human beings. We have no problem with accepting illegal laborers, as long as they keep quiet. That is, as long as they're invisible. But if they start asserting themselves and demanding that they be treated like human beings, then a debate breaks out and we start talking about deportations and building walls.

To my eyes, this means that we as a society are not willing to recognize that undocumented workers have the same human rights as we do. In theory, I'm sure that we can all agree on this. But in practice, we prefer to say that we as citizens have rights and they as aliens do not. We declare that they have broken the law. Which is true. We should recognize, though, that we helped them do it and reimbursed them for their efforts.

So if we take God as revealed through Jesus Christ as our model, then our outlook might change. When we look through the eyes of Jesus, we might see the image of God that undocumented workers bear along with us. This means that the economy may still be the bottom line, but that it's immoral to use the labor of undocumented workers while treating them in a way that takes away their God-given human dignity.

If we used the eyes of Jesus, we might also think twice before breaking up families through deportations. And we might think differently about exploiting immigrant labor, about raiding immigrant communities, about building a wall and about blaming immigrants for many of the ills of our society.

This is the Catholic Church's basic concern with immigration: to look at the situation through the eyes of Jesus. That's also why the bishops called for permanent residency for all undocumented workers currently living in the United States.

And that is why Catholics demand human dignity for all those whom society makes invisible, which includes all illegal immigrants. Even though economics is the bottom line of everyday life, we still have a divine mandate to treat our immigrant brothers and sisters with respect and love.

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Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine.