In his video defending immigrants, Chicago archbishop Blase Cupich begins by talking about migrants without regard to their status. “We stand with the father who labors in silence to build a better future.” Then, speaking expressly to immigrants “without documents,” Cupich adds, “Most of you have been here for years. You have worked hard…. You have contributed to this nation.” (A link to the video is here.) The Archbishop largely bypasses the question of the immigrants’ legal status. Twice he refers to work: once about the hardworking father laboring for the future, then — explicitly to illegal aliens — about those who “have worked hard.”

Discussions of illegal immigration usually focus on the initial violation of law that resulted in lack of status, usually either by entering the United States without immigration inspection at a port-of-entry or overstaying a visa that expired. That’s the first violation. But it’s not the only one.

So is working. Illegal aliens have no right to work. There’s a reason old-school, economic-but-not-necessarily-social conservative Republicans supported open borders. It wasn’t solicitude for the Lord’s global anawim (the poor). It was labor costs.

Once upon a time, Catholic bishops understood that. Once upon a time, Democrats understood that. They understood that because they understood that illegal immigration was a social justice issue that injures American workers.

Public intellectual Oren Cass made these points last week in observing how three kinds of law — employment, labor, and immigration law — intersect:

Employment law regulates the individual relationship between businesses and workers and establishes baseline terms for pay, safety, and treatment. Labor law governs collective action by workers, protecting their right to organize, bargain collectively, and engage in concerted activity. Immigration law determines which workers are authorized to work at all. Together, these bodies of law decide who can work, on what terms, and how workers can exercise power in their workplace.

Floods of illegal aliens into the workplace primarily benefit employers. American workers lose out in terms of both rights and jobs because foreigners will not file grievances and will work more cheaply, especially when paid under the table. Foreign workers lose out because, absent legal protections, they are at the mercy of employers. Employers have possibilities for retaliation against one side or the other baked into the system. Large flows of illegal immigrants — as we have seen in the past few years — overwhelm all aspects of law enforcement: immigration, labor standards, and employment eligibility. The fact an illegal alien became Des Moines Superintendent of Schools at a six-figure salary meant either somebody was derelict about employment eligibility due diligence (see here) or understood that, the law notwithstanding, it really didn’t matter. That last line should be chilling in American society: it really didn’t matter, the law notwithstanding. Cass sums it up this way: “robust immigration enforcement is not a substitute for the robust enforcement of our employment and labor laws, it is a necessary precondition for all three legal regimes to function well and for maintaining tight labor markets in which workers can exert power.”

As Cass notes, in many ways illegal immigration stacks employment and labor markets in favor of employers, i.e., in favor of capital. This is the central error against which St. John Paul II warned in Laborem exercens (here): a system that prioritizes capital over labor. The encyclical is clear that labor — as a force of persons — has priority over capital, capital being a thing that exists to be in the service of persons (no. 12). This is exactly what tolerance of mass illegal immigration subverts.

That truth may not be immediately apparent to today’s clerics. Many appear to operate in what might be called an “existentialist” mindset: theoretical principles always yield to the “needs” of the concrete immigrant of the moment. To such thinking, ad hoc adjustments take priority over general principles, even if the latter’s subversion also entails long-term subversion of people’s — labor’s — rights. This seems perversely akin to the logic of secular liberals who, for example, confronted with a concrete teenage boy in rut insist the general principle of chastity yield to the concrete “need” to hand out condoms.

Yes, Cardinal Cupich, immigrants work hard. Yes, Your Eminence, many have done so for years and have contributed to America. But yes, Cardinal, that has come at a cost: a cost to foreign labor that always remains open to exploitation, a cost to Americans driven out of the job market, not just in “the jobs Americans won’t do” but in the jobs they would, distorted by the impact of capital with all the power.

That’s why, while protecting the immigrant of the moment from exploitation, genuine safeguarding of “human dignity” requires immigration enforcement to ensure the priority of labor over capital, a fundamental principle of Catholic social thought.

A personal note: I remember the stamp in my passport the first time I arrived in the United Kingdom. Besides “Aug 28, 1999 – Heathrow” it carried the superscription: “Employment and Recourse to Public Funds Prohibited.” Her Majesty’s Government made clear to me I was not entitled to work in the British economy nor avail myself of full British social services without cost. It wasn’t English xenophobia or a diminution of my dignity. It was a recognition that the British laborer deserved the protection of the British government.

The same is true of the United States.