AMERICA/MEXICO - Bishop Aguilar’s appeal : "Migrant children are not intruders or invaders"

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Tehuacán (Agenzia Fides) - The Bishop of the Diocese of Tehuacan (Puebla, Mexico), His exc. Mgr. Rodrigo Aguilar Martínez, has launched an appeal to the entire diocesan community, priests in their parishes, lay people, businesses and social organizations, so that they give their support to migrants who pass through this region. Tehuacan is located about 200 km south of Mexico City.
The note sent to Fides by the diocese reports that Mgr. Aguilar Martinez reminded everyone that "migrants affect us, but not negatively, because they are also a workforce". The Church invites then to consider them as political refugees, because they have their rights, therefore "we cannot see the migrants, particularly children, as intruders or invaders and despise them".
Mgr. Aguilar points out that this problem is not new and also signals a more serious aspect: U.S. children who cannot return to their country because their parents have been deported. He therefore mentions the last issue of the weekly magazine of the Archdiocese of Mexico, "Desde la Fe", which features the latest census "Población y Vivienda" (2010), which shows that about 700 thousand children, recognized as United States citizens because they were born there, live in Mexico, whose parents, Mexicans, were expelled because undocumented or for other reasons. It also officially recognizes that 53 children cross the country every day.
Mgr. Aguilar Martinez said he did not know the precise number of migrants in his diocese, but everyone knows that the situation has become a human problem that must be solved and which directly involves all institutions. He finally reported the presence of the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin in Mexico (see Fides 14/07/2014), who is attending a meeting at an international level on this serious problem. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 15/07/2014)


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