El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz: United States Would ‘Grind to a Standstill’ Without Immigrants

Mark Seitz, the progressive Catholic bishop of El Paso, Texas, asserted on Monday that the United States would “grind to a standstill” without immigrants.

“Immigrant workers are integral to the life of our nation. They tend our fields, maintain our roads, and staff our hospitals,” said Bishop Mark Seitz, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Migration.

More immigrants are essential because of a nationwide worker shortage, he proposed, as American employers struggle to fill more than nine million open jobs.

Immigrants “labor for us all,” the bishop insisted, and without their contributions, “American communities would grind to a standstill.”

“Not only are they working in some of the most arduous conditions but frequently with limited legal protections, and they are more susceptible to human trafficking and other forms of exploitation,” Seitz said, referencing the deaths of six immigrant workers in the recent Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, Maryland.

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NTSB via Storyful

Bishop Seitz gained national notoriety for his vigorous opposition to former President Donald Trump’s U.S. southern border wall, which Seitz described as a “monument to hate.”

Xenophobia is “ravaging the United States” in a desperate effort by Caucasians to shore up white privilege and perpetuate “institutionalized racism,” Seitz said in a scathing 2019 pastoral letter on immigration.

“Ancient demons have been reawakened and old wounds opened,” the bishop contended, and racism directed against Latinos “has reached a dangerous fever pitch”:

Our highest elected officials have used the word “invasion” and “killer” over 500 times to refer to migrants, treated migrant children as pawns on a crass political chessboard, insinuated that judges and legislators of color are un-American, and have made wall-building a core political project.

“The wall is a powerful symbol in the story of race,” he said. “It has helped to merge nationalistic vanities with racial projects.”

The wall “is not just a tool of national security,” Seitz claimed. “More than that, the wall is a symbol of exclusion, especially when allied to an overt politics of xenophobia. It is an open wound through the middle of our sister cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.”

In 2023, Bishop Seitz sent a letter urging members of Congress to oppose the Secure the Border Act, which he described as an unjustifiable piece of legislation.

In his letter, Seitz insisted that the bill contained a collection of “harmful measures” and would endanger unaccompanied children, “decimate” access to asylum, mandate “damaging” detention and removal practices, restrict legal employment access, and limit federal partnerships with non-governmental organizations.

The bill would also “expedite” construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, he warned at the time.

“We have long opposed the construction of a wall spanning the entire U.S.-Mexico border, especially with the dangers it poses to human life and the environment,” Seitz wrote. He continued, saying his bill “would establish unprecedented authorities to advance border wall construction, which include the ability of the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive ‘all legal requirements necessary’ to ensure the wall’s expeditious design, testing, construction, and maintenance.”

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