Tag Archives: Immigration

Hispanic Heritage Gives New Life to Our Culture and Economy

Hispanic Heritage Gives New Life to Our Culture and Economy

 

This Month Reminds us of the Responsibility to Bring Culture, Faith, Community, and Resilience to Justice Work

Jonathan Alcantara
October 1, 2025

 

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), NETWORK’s Sr. Carol Coston Fellows share their thoughts on the importance of this observance in the U.S. The following is Part 1 of two-part reflection by Jonathan Alcantara of Marquette University. (Read Part 2.)

Jonathan Alcantara, a 2025 Sr. Carol Coston Fellow in NETWORK's Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L.)

Jonathan Alcantara

Hispanic Heritage Month is not just a time for us to honor our cultura with music, food, faith, and festivals. It is also a reminder of the responsibility to carry the values of our culture, our faith, our community, and our resilience into the work of justice especially in times like these. To me, this time of the year is a celebración of who we are, where we come from, and the challenges we face to help positively shape where we are going in the future.

Growing up in the metro Atlanta area, I saw my Latino heritage recognized not only during celebrations but in the everyday actions of our determination. Our family gatherings were filled with stories, delicious authentic comida mexicana, laughter that makes our stomach hurt, and the occasional chisme, but through all this there were also unmistakable examples of our families’ hard work and sacrifice.

Those experiences continue to guide and shape me as a first-generation Mexican American college student. As a student studying finance at Marquette University, a Jesuit community that emphasizes service, community, and justice, I remind myself every day that my Mexican and Latino heritage is more than just a set of traditions passed down to each generation but it’s the light, the source that pushes and strengthens us to lead with purpose, to advocate for justice, and to build stronger communities and a more just nation.

As I sit and reflect on this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month, I cannot ignore las injusticias that MY Latino community has and is currently facing in 2025. The federal government has intensified immigration enforcements to drastic measures. The recent Supreme Court ruling has opened the door to racial profiling and aggressive deportations.

As a result, the fear that Latino communities and neighborhoods that has existed for years has deepened even further. Since January, families have lived in constant anxiety and worry about raids, deportations, and having their families separated. These actions not only harm families and individuals but break trust in public institutions and weaken the connections that unite and make our community strong and resilient.

Despite this, the impact and strength of our economic contributions speak for themselves. The 2025 Latino GPD in the U.S. has recently surpassed $4 trillion, making our community one of the most powerful and largest economies in the world. Latinos have some of the highest labor participation rates, strong entrepreneurship, and growing levels of higher education. Still the inequalities continue through unfair wage gaps sometimes even with a college degree. Latina women, specifically, experience some of the most significant gaps, earning less than both white women and Latino men, while Latino men’s earnings fall short of his peers despite having equal qualifications.

Whether we are Latino, Black, Asian, or White, we all deserve to be paid fairly for our work. It matters just as much that many families, not just Latinos, rely on programs like SNAP and Head Start which are being threatened by recent federal legislature like the summer reconciliation bill, and political playbooks like Project 2025. In reality, Latinos contribute to face unfair barriers while significantly contributing to the U.S. economy. Now more than ever, there needs to be change.

Learn more about NETWORK’s Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L). Read Part 2 of this reflection.

photo of San Antonio's market square, the largest Mexican market in the U.S.

Hispanic Heritage Means Resilience Against Injustice

Hispanic Heritage Means Resilience Against Injustice

 

Policies of Exclusion Inflict Lasting Mental and Physical Harm on Hispanic Communities

Taylor Demby
October 14, 2025

 

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), NETWORK’s Sr. Carol Coston Fellows share their thoughts on the importance of this observance in the U.S. This reflection comes from University of the Incarnate Word student Taylor Demby.

Taylor Demby, a sociology major at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas and a 2025 Sr. Carol Coston Fellow in NETWORK's Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L.)

Taylor Demby

Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to celebrate the richness, resilience, and many contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities across the United States. This month is especially personal to me as a San Antonian and as an ally. Having grown up in a city where Hispanic culture shapes nearly every neighborhood, classroom, and workplace, I have experienced firsthand how essential the Hispanic community is to the fabric of our daily life.

Both in and out of September, it is imperative that we take a moment to honor this cultural legacy that continues to influence every corner of American life. As we honor heritage and achievement, we cannot continue to ignore a serious concern: the rising mental health crises deeply affecting Hispanic communities, intensified by the relentless attacks and exclusionary policies that have shaped their lived experiences in this country.

Data from the CDC’s 2023 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicate a troubling trend: suicide rates among Hispanic individuals in the U.S. increased by 10 percent between 2018 and 2021, while rates for non-Hispanic White individuals declined over the same period. Behind these numbers lie the experiences of families and neighbors: each one reflecting a real human reality shaped by systemic discrimination, the emotional toll of ongoing injustice, and the daily challenges faced by a community trying to navigate a society that continues to overlook and undermine them.

I work at one of the few outpatient behavioral health facilities in San Antonio that accepts Medicaid. In my work, I encounter both the resilience of and the struggles that Hispanic families face when seeking mental health care. Many caregivers advocate fiercely for their children, yet they face barriers that others rarely encounter. Long waitlists, limited insurance coverage, lack of transportation, unforgiving work schedules, and the stigma surrounding mental health can make accessing care extraordinarily difficult. Their persistence inspires me, but it also emphasizes the urgent need for federal policies that expand Medicaid access, reduce wait times and ensure culturally competent, affordable care for all Hispanic families.

Across the country, families face the compounded effects of systemic inequities, limited access to healthcare, and the stress of navigating anti-immigrant policies. These struggles are widespread yet often hidden, reminding us that celebration alone is not enough. We must pair this recognition with meaningful action to create the change our communities need. To me, honoring Hispanic heritage means taking the time to recognize the full spectrum of experiences that shape communities.

In my home state of Texas, where heavy anti-immigrant sentiment and ultra-exclusionary policies have persisted for generations, these challenges are especially apparent. Students at my own university and across the Bexar County area are not immune to this. In San Antonio, reckless immigration policies and cuts enacted through the recent Budget Reconciliation Bill continue to disproportionately affect Hispanic families, impacting workplaces, classrooms, and homes.

These realities highlight the urgent need for culturally sensitive support, accessible care, and open dialogue about mental health and our healthcare system as a whole. By bringing these issues to the forefront, we can mobilize our communities and work to hold legislators and decision-makers accountable, ensuring that the policies introduced protect and uplift Hispanic families rather than harm them.

Hispanic Heritage Month offers advocates and allies like me a unique opportunity to pair celebration with action. Investing in the health and dignity of Hispanic families builds a stronger, more equitable future for all families, regardless of race or class. The forces driving inequity expand across race and region, hurting working people everywhere, and the solutions we fight for benefit us all.

Honoring Hispanic heritage requires confronting these uncomfortable truths: that within the great stories of strength, resilience, and perseverance live the often-unspoken realities of distress, trauma, and pain associated with inequity. We should do more than remember the past. We must contribute to culturally sensitive dialogue that affirms a principle central to my work as an advocate inspired by Catholic Social Justice teaching: human dignity. Every human being possesses inherent dignity and deserves the support to live fully and authentically, without barriers.

Learn more about NETWORK’s Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L).

graphic for Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Shines Brightly, Even Under Threat

Hispanic Heritage Shines Brightly, Even Under Threat

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe Means Both Vibrant Celebrations and the Need for Protection of Our Communities

Leslie Gracia
October 8, 2025

 

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), NETWORK’s Sr. Carol Coston Fellows share their thoughts on the importance of this observance in the U.S. This reflection comes from DePaul University student Leslie Gracia.

Leslie Gracia, student at DePaul University and 2025 Sr. Carol Coston Fellow in NETWORK's Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L.)

Leslie Gracia

In my experience, living in America means witnessing month-long ethnic and cultural celebrations throughout the year. As someone of Hispanic descent, I love how, from mid-September to mid-October, I see Mexican restaurants, bakeries, and street vendors selling cut-up fresh fruit, elotes, and Mexican flags.

There are street murals in vibrant shades of red, green, and orange. They display images like Our Lady of Guadalupe, a mom praying her rosary for her child who hasn’t arrived home before midnight, Frida Kahlo with monarch butterfly wings, Indigenous Mexican people, and so many other beautiful images.

Seeing Hispanic people connect through our ethnicities makes it feel like we are at home, especially in Chicago. And yet they also make me feel like I am walking down the streets of Etzatlán, Jalisco, a town I visit in Mexico because I have family there.

Our Lady of Guadalupe plays a significant role in the Catholic Mexican community, as she appeared on the outskirts of what is now considered Mexico City, up on a hill called Tepeyac in the year 1531. When I visit Etzatlán on December 12, her appearance day anniversary in Mexico, we gather at night in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is near the plaza. We pray the rosary, sing her Las Mañanitas, and offer her roses that are blessed by the local priest.

street mural of Our Lady of GuadalupeWe eat traditional holiday foods like tamales with atole, a warm, thick corn drink flavored with guava or nuts. A view of a big, knitted figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe, almost like a mural, adorns the wall of the sanctuary. Above us in the sky, a knitted star pattern is draped from the sanctuary to another building, creating a woven ceiling. Then we move towards the plaza for the last event of the night, the castillo.

The castillo gets lit from the bottom, and the fire and beautiful bright lights escalate to the top of the structure. When the fire reaches her figure, red and white light explosions and loud whistling noises emerge from the castillo itself. It feels magical. Towards the end, our Lady of Guadalupe’s white crown begins to burn, hence the name castillo. Then it flies up into the sky. Kids run after it, not caring about the possibility of getting burned. They just want to have it.

Our Lady of Guadalupe plays an important role for immigrants. Many pray to her for protection when crossing the border. The same goes for anyone who feels unsafe, especially right now, with ICE raids targeting communities and places of employment, but mostly just anyone who looks Hispanic. No Hispanic person is safe after the Supreme Court ruled that ICE can now racially profile anyone who looks Hispanic or is speaking in their native tongue – that is, because of our Hispanic Heritage!

While Our Lady of Guadalupe has always been invoked for safety, right now I feel like everyone is coming together to pray to her and ask for protection. Hispanic Heritage Month is usually a time for celebrating as a community. We forget the racism we encounter every day and throw street parties, unapologetically and loudly playing our Spanish music. But this year it has turned into a month of fear and hiding, of staying alert so that fewer families get separated. Our community bonds remain strong.

Learn more about NETWORK’s Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L).

Image source: Wikimedia Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike International 4.0. license. Image cropped for this post and adapted into the featured image graphic.

Hispanic Heritage Promotes Democracy and Dignity

Hispanic Heritage Promotes Democracy and Dignity

 

My Responsibility is to Help Build a Future Where We All Have a Share in the Decisions That Shape Our Destiny

Jonathan Alcantara
October 6, 2025

 

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), NETWORK’s Sr. Carol Coston Fellows share their thoughts on the importance of this observance in the U.S. The following is Part 2 of a two-part reflection by Jonathan Alcantara of Marquette University. (Read Part 1.)

Jonathan Alcantara, a 2025 Sr. Carol Coston Fellow in NETWORK's Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L.)

Jonathan Alcantara

In addition to undeniable economic and cultural contributions, the Latino community also participates powerfully in the democratic process. In particular, young Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic of voters, and our voices will shape the future elections. However, targeted voter suppression tactics like disinformation and misinformation, lack of access to absentee ballots, limited early voting, and bans on students using their school IDs at the polls continue to create barriers for young Latino voters.

So, over the past two years, I’ve served as a Sr. Carol Coston Fellow, working with other students and young adults in Wisconsin and across the country to foster a safe environment for civic engagement and support voter registration on our campuses. All of the meaningful conversations I’ve had with my peers on campus and with community leaders show and remind me that our democracy is stronger when we all participate and a lot weaker when we’re separated and pushed out.

Despite the inequalities, political tensions, and fearmongering, our lucha and resilience still define us. Across the nation this month, Latino communities are finding ways to gather and celebrate their heritage while navigating their fears. In cities like Chicago, Madison, and Appleton, Wisconsin, festivals celebrate with live music, dances, and traditional food. They also have workshops and representatives talking about healthcare, business inclusion, and professional leadership.

However, many events have scaled back and have even been postponed because of the possibility of immigration raids, but one thing’s for certain, seguimos unidos y en solidaridad, no matter the obstacles. Our culture is still alive not only in the happy moments but also in times when we must pivot, adapt, and continue showing up for one another through advocacy.

What ties all of this together is the set of values that go with the Latino community. We strongly believe in familia, dignidad, and oportunidad, which are values that anyone, regardless of their background and what they look like, can recognize as important. My Catholic faith reminds me that these are more than just cultural values; they are moral truths: that every person is made in the Imago Dei and deserves respect, freedom, and the chance to grow and thrive, no exceptions. In our faith, we say, cada persona es hijo de Dios, every person is a child of God. And that truth calls us to treat every person with the same dignity and respect.

Looking ahead, I see a hopeful future where our cultura is not only honored by others but fully integrated into the story of this country. A future where Latino students, like me, succeed in college without the barriers that are currently holding us back, where workers earn livable wages that match their contributions to our country, where families can live without the fear of leaving their house for five minutes, and where our voices are fully recognized in the public.

This vision is attainable, and this is why Hispanic Heritage Month matters. Is it about honoring culture? Yes. But it’s also about defending human dignity, expanding and growing economic opportunity, and strengthening our democracy. For me, Hispanic Heritage Month is both personal and shared. This month calls me to remember the resilience of those who came before me and to act with the knowledge of my responsibility for those who will come after me.

This month, I celebrate my heritage not only by remembering the past but by helping build a future where every family, Latino or not, can live, work, and thrive con fe, esperanza y orgullo, no exceptions.

Learn more about NETWORK’s Young Advocates Leadership Lab (Y.A.L.L).

Advent 2023, Week One Be Vigilant

This Advent Calls for Vigilance 

NETWORK Lobby offers Advent reflections

This Advent Calls for Vigilance

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM
December 1, 2023

Advent 2023, Week One Reflection: A Call for Vigilance

Readings for the First Sunday of Advent, December 3

Is 63: 16B-17, 19B; 64:2-7
Ps 80: 2-3, 15-16, 18-19
1 Cor 1: 3-9
Mk 13:33-37

The readings on the First Sunday of Advent call for vigilance. In the Gospel, Jesus instructs his disciples to be alert and watchful, careful not to be found sleeping when the time is nigh.  

This year, the NETWORK community has had countless opportunities to stay awake and to practice the virtue of vigilance. At a moment’s notice, we have called on faith-filled justice-seekers to protect the rights of asylum seekers in the United States. From the racist and problematic U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP1 App, to the threat to cut funding to programs that serve asylum seekers, some Members of Congress continually proposed drastic changes to the asylum process. And how did you respond? Nearly 10,000 of you signed on to our letter calling on Congress to invest in welcoming communities. You have also called your Members of Congress and visited them. 

To receive all of NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections in your email inbox, sign up here!

We cannot grow complacent; we must stay awake and vigilant. Just this week, some Members of Congress are trying to decimate the asylum system in order to pass a funding bill. We cannot ignore their attempt to re-institute an asylum ban.  

In this Sunday’s first reading, Isaiah tells us the story of the people who longed for God to come down from on high with a force that would shake the mountains, but, instead, we are reminded that “we are the clay and you are the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” To participate in the building up of Welcoming Communities, we, too, seek to do the work of God. With the Psalmist, we turn our face to God, eager to have God show us the way to the building up of the Kin-dom here on Earth.  

To do this, we must all participate in the work to bring more abundant life to all of God’s people, because the hope for abundant life does not end at our borders. It does not stop to decide if someone has the proper documents. Abundant life is God’s hope for all of us—and we will continue to be vigilant and respond to any threat to take away someone’s chance at abundant life. 

To receive all of NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections in your email inbox, sign up here!

Fortunately, we are not alone in this work. Fortunately, the NETWORK community lives out this mission together. Our Spirit-filled community of justice-seekers has significantly influenced elected officials this year to ensure the federal government makes room for the people most in need in our communities.   

We draw strength and encouragement from living this shared mission together, and we draw our hope from the God who, according to St. Paul, remains faithful and will keep us firm to the end. 

Advent 2023, Week One Be Vigilant

Call to Action:

Congress is now back in session, and their first order of business is passing a package to meet the President’s supplemental funding request for aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Unfortunately, some Members of Congress are pushing to decimate asylum in the U.S. as a condition of this deal.

Tell your Senators to protect asylum in the United States and not give into demands to change asylum law in order to get a funding deal passed. 

To receive all of NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections in your email inbox, sign up here!

The legislative priorities not passed before the end of the 117th Congress will continue to be priorities of NETWORK in 2024 and beyond!

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, speaks at a reparations vigil in Cleveland in June 2022.

The Welcoming Call

The Welcoming Call 

Solidarity with Migrant People is Intrinsic to the Vocation of Catholic Sisters

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM
August 1, 2023
Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, pictured with Eilis, amember of the Congolese community in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM, pictured with Eilis, a member of the Congolese community in Cleveland, Ohio.

For generations, Catholic Sisters in the U.S. have served alongside immigrant communities. Time and again, we have responded to the call to open our homes and hearts to meet the needs of families seeking asylum or newly arrived refugees. Our sisters and our communities have sponsored refugees, opened service agencies, taught English as a second language (ESL), served along the border, accompanied individuals and families, represented them in court, and advocated for just immigration policies. In so many ways, we have lived the call in Scripture to welcome the stranger and love our neighbor as ourselves.  

My own story of ministry is a part of this multi-generational call. In 2010, I began my own journey working with the Somali refugee community in St. Cloud, Minn. In subsequent years, I ministered alongside people from Bhutan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, and so many other countries. I learned about the asylum system in Immokalee, Fla. and witnessed the conditions that force a person to flee their homeland in Haiti or Guatemala. My own community, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, remains connected through the sponsorship of Mary’s House in Cleveland. This work connects me with generations of sisters who have felt this call.  

Ministering alongside asylum seekers, refugees, DACA recipients, and other immigrants has shifted the way many of us Sisters understand immigration policy. We can no longer distance ourselves from the dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric that has energized lawmakers to pass legislation to shut down and militarize the border, expand Title 42, deport asylum seekers from Haiti, or create an app that only recognizes white faces. 

These horrible policies impact the people who are a part of my extended community. They affect our neighbors. They affect members of our own family. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for Congress to fix the broken immigration system; we must do our part to ensure that a just and equitable immigration system remains at the forefront of our representatives’ minds.  

It was this sense of urgency that drove over 100 sisters and associates and their sponsored ministries to Washington DC in December 2021 to march for, pray for, and call for the end of Title 42. At that event, Sisters shared stories of ministering at the border, in Florida with the Haitian community, and in cities across the country. We shared a common understanding that our lives are forever changed by time spent ministering in El Salvador, Honduras, and many other countries. 

We shared with each other our own experiences of accompanying a family seeking asylum, only to watch helplessly as they were turned away by Border Patrol, or telling an individual that, according to current policy, they do not have a valid asylum claim even though a return to their home country would most certainly result in death. We also shared about moments of community — of shared meals of pupusas or beans and rice that made the Body of Christ a tangible offering that widened our understanding of community. All of these moments further strengthened our deeply held belief that the country’s immigration system needs an overhaul. 

As women religious, our individual community’s charism informs how we respond to the call to minister alongside our country’s diverse immigrant communities and advocate for justice. While our ministerial actions might vary, we all believe that all people, no matter their country of origin, economic status, family composition, gender or sexual orientation, or reason for migrating, deserve the opportunity to apply for asylum.  

This is the foundation of our belief as Christians: that all people reflect the Imago Dei — the image of the loving God who created them. Therefore, we will continue to call on our elected officials to stop playing politics with the lives of our immigrant siblings and create an immigration system that works for all people. 

Sr. Eilis McCulloh, HM is NETWORK’s Education and Organizing Specialist and a co-host of the podcast Just Politics, produced in collaboration between NETWORK and U.S. Catholic magazine.  

This column was published in the Quarter 3 2023 issue of Connection. 

Catholic Organizations Urge Safety and Rights of Asylum Seekers as Title 42 Ends

Catholic Organizations Urge the U.S. Government to Promote the Safety and Rights of Asylum Seekers as Title 42 Ends

May 11, 2023

As Catholic organizations serving asylum seekers and people seeking safety, we urge the U.S. to promote the safety and rights of asylum seekers as Title 42 ends.

Today, we mark the termination of Title 42, a policy that critically limited or denied access to asylum for thousands of individuals and families seeking refuge and protection. But with the end of Title 42, we are appalled by the continuation of asylum restrictions through different measures enacted and proposed both by the Biden administration and Congress. With the new rules and proposed Congressional policies, the U.S. government is changing the asylum system as we have known it since 1980 and is failing to improve and provide protection to people seeking safety in a just and humane manner. Despite the government’s previous promises to protect the right to seek asylum, the new measures make asylum seekers pay the ultimate price.

We are deeply concerned by the Administration’s announcement yesterday that the Title 42 expulsion policy will be replaced by the final asylum ban rule. This rule will further restrict access to asylum by requiring individuals to first seek asylum in another country before coming to the U.S. It also includes extremely limited exceptions that will place many individuals and families in dangerous and life-threatening situations.

The Administration will continue to require that asylum seekers apply through CBP One application, a process that limits access to asylum due to its language, technical glitches, and requirement that individuals have a smartphone in order to seek protection. We also fear the use of Title 8, paired together with the new policy on credible fear interviews in CBP custody and other rushed processes of adjudication, will gut due process for immigrants all together.

The Administration’s announcement that 1,500 additional troops will be sent to the border raises additional concerns. We fear that further militarization of the border may compromise the safety and rights of those seeking safety and traumatize communities who live at the border.

In late April, the Biden Administration announced a new proposal to manage regional migration. We recognize that the Administration is taking steps to expand refugee resettlement and family reunification parole, measures that will provide a life-saving pathway for individuals and families in need of protection. Yet these expansions are part of a proposal that further restricts access to asylum for those arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, in Congress, we oppose bills in both the House and Senate that would severely cut access to asylum and limit the rights of asylum seekers. We call upon Congress to find long-term solutions to ensure that the U.S. has the processes in place to welcome and provide refuge for asylum seekers.

As organizations guided by Catholic values, we see it as our duty to welcome those in need of refuge. As recently stated by Pope Francis, “How sad and painful it is to see closed doors. The closed doors of our selfishness with regard to others; the closed doors of our individualism amid a society of growing isolation; the closed doors of our indifference towards the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close towards those who are foreign or unlike us, towards migrants or the poor.”

We urge the U.S. government to promote the safety of asylum seekers and protect their rights. Through continued restrictions on asylum and the militarization of the border, the U.S. government has shut the door to many of our siblings who are calling out for help. This failure to provide welcome sends a clear message to the rest of the world that the U.S. will not keep its previous asylum promises and instead continues to turn away from those most in need.

Signed,

NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Jesuit Refugee Service – USA
Hope Border Institute
Kino Border Initiative
Franciscan Action Network
Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico
Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns
Dorothy Day Catholic Worker – Washington DC
St. Columban Mission for Justice, Peace and Ecology
Pax Christi – USA
Jesuit Conference Office of Justice and Ecology
Franciscan Network for Migrants – USA
Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services Inc
Sisters of Mercy of the Americas – Justice Team
Catholics Against Racism in Immigration (CARI)
Quixote Center

Photo of produce on grocery store shelves.

End of Health Emergency Will Impact Immigration, Other Human Needs

End of Public Health Emergency Will Impact Immigration, Other Human Needs

JoAnn Goedert, Ignatian Volunteer Corp Member
Government Relations Special Contributor
May 8, 2023

President Biden has announced that the federal government’s COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) will end on May 11. The Emergency has been in effect since early 2020, and its termination signals a welcome easing of the tragic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But for millions of our neighbors who struggle at or near the poverty in the U.S., and for those hoping to enter the country at our borders, the implications of the PHE’s end will be significant.

Impacts on Domestic Human Needs

In recognition of the economic devastation of the pandemic, benefits were added and eligibility and reporting requirements were suspended for many federal programs, but only until the end of the PHE. For individuals and families living at or near the poverty level, the consequences of terminating these protections will be serious, especially in the areas of health care and food assistance.

“Unwinding” of Medicaid Continuous Enrollment Protections: Pandemic legislation provided enhanced Medicaid funding and authorized Medicaid recipients to keep their coverage until the end of the PHE without having to re-certify their eligibility on a regular basis. Not surprisingly, enrollment in Medicaid grew by over 23 million during the pandemic. However, in December Congress prematurely ended this enrollment protection and instead allowed states to begin “unwinding” the continuous enrollment in April.

Some states already have aggressively begun disenrolling Medicaid recipients, many of whom may be unaware that their enrollment is in jeopardy and even more who will struggle to rapidly document their current eligibility. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that up to 15 million individuals will be disenrolled in the coming months, and that nearly half of those who lose coverage are in fact eligible but unable to surmount the bureaucratic challenges of proving it. As a result of the unwinding of Medicaid continuous enrollment, the number of uninsured adults and children in the U.S. is predicted to soar, with tragic consequences for families and massive new burdens on health care system.

Restoration of SNAP Benefit Limits for Individuals Without Jobs: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has strict and complex work requirements for “able bodied adults without dependents” under age 50 that terminate their benefits after three months unless they can prove that they are employed or in a job training program. In response to widespread unemployment during the pandemic, the government suspended that three-month limit. With the end of the PHE, however, this suspension will cease for most SNAP participants on June 30, and these individuals will once again be limited to only three months of SNAP eligibility while unable to meet the work requirements in any three-year period.

March 1 Termination of SNAP Emergency Benefit Allotments: It is important also to note that increases in SNAP benefits provided as pandemic relief were ended nationwide by March 1. This substantial reduction in benefits amounted to an average of approximately $90 per month per individual and over $200 per month for most struggling families. Soup kitchens and food banks nationwide already have reported an overwhelming increase in need since the cut.

Phase-out of SNAP Benefit Expansion for Students: In addition, pandemic legislation extended SNAP eligibility to many more higher education students. With the end of the PHE, their eligibility will be phased out over the next year. Here is an explanation of this change in student SNAP eligibility.

Impact on Immigration

Termination of Title 42: Title 42 expulsion policy is a Trump administration order issued in 2020, purportedly as a public health measure, that allowed border authorities to expel migrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum. Public health experts have long declared that Title 42 is not related to any health measure. Reports are that the rule has been used more than two million times to abruptly turn back immigrants since 2020.

Title 42 will expire with termination of the PHE, and the expulsions are set to end on May 11. However, NETWORK is deeply alarmed that, the new measures announced by the Biden administration to purportedly ease pressures at the border, comes at the expense of the right to seek asylum at our southern border and does not support a just and humanitarian immigration policy.

NETWORK is monitoring the critical impacts of these policies and protections that end with the termination of the PHE. We will share this information with you, along with any calls for action that they may require to safeguard the welfare of our neighbors in the U.S. and at the southern border.