Where All Find a Home
Help make higher education affordable for all qualified Maryland students regardless of immigration status. Learn how you can activate and educate your parish or community to support their DREAM.
The Maryland Catholic Conference will hold training sessions about Maryland's DREAM Act in each of Maryland's three dioceses in January 2012.
The Bishops of Maryland have formed a new Interdiocesan Task Force, whose mission will be to educate Maryland Catholics about why the DREAM Act deserves their support, and to help them make the connection between Gospel values and the Church’s public policy positions on immigration.
The DREAM Act, which was signed into law in May, provides tuition equity for all students, regardless of immigration status, who have been residing in Maryland for at least three years while attending high school.
The task force will be chaired by Bishop Francisco González, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, and will include representatives from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Archdiocese of Washington and Diocese of Wilmington, which each have territory in Maryland.
As a first step, the Maryland Catholic Conference has launched a Facebook page dedicated to the issue of immigration as a way to connect people to this issue and educate them (http://www.facebook.com/JusticeforMDImmigrants). Please LIKE this new Facebook page and share it with your friends and parishioners.
The Conference also has prepared a Q&A on the DREAM Act, that also is available in Spanish.
Immigration is increasingly becoming the subject of debate in our neighborhoods, families and parishes. In many places, the discussion can grow divisive. It doesn't need to be. As Catholics, our focus must be the dignity of the human person and the welfare of families.
The Maryland-serving bishops have released "Where All Find A Home: A Catholic Response to Immigration." In it, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and Wilmington Bishop Michael Saltarelli urge Catholics to engage in faith-filled discussion of the issue.
In the Church no one is a stranger, and the Church is not foreign to anyone, anywhere.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was a naturalized immigrant from Italy and the first American citizen to become a saint. Today she is universal patroness of migrants.
