GUATEMALA CITY (Zenit.org): The bishops of Guatemala have pleaded for better treatment for migrants from their country, just as the European Union was hoping to finalise its new policy on immigrants.
In a statement on July 3, the prelates expressed their “regret and concern” over the worldwide situation of immigrants, noting that migrants are motivated by “extreme reasons – poverty, unemployment, insecurity, natural disasters, war, and others.”
Meanwhile European Union officials, at informal talks in France recently, expressed optimism that the “European Pact on Immigration and Asylum” could be finalised by October.
The bishops took particular issue with some of the clauses in the pact, saying, “This initiative is excessively restrictive and does not give sufficient guarantees for respect of migrants’ human rights.”
In that regard, they lamented that the policy gave authorities the right to detain immigrants for 18 months for processing, without any criminal charge.
The Guatemalan bishops’ statement, signed by president of the Pastoral Committee for Human Mobility Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri, expressed their “solidarity, and moral and spiritual support to all those migrants suffering persecution, raids and deportations at present in the United States of America”.
The bishops said deportations from the United States and Mexico “in no way solve the migratory problem; they are counter-productive and inhuman actions.”
The episcopal conference also called on the Guatemalan Government for better measures to reinsert deported workers back into society.
The bishops also exhort the migrants “to be strong in face of such blows and to remain united and in solidarity in their struggle against such adversities.
