In the wake of heightened debate surrounding immigration in the United States, Solidarity SMC held a lecture-style event titled “Immigrant Rights are a Pro-Life Issue” Monday. The club, a social justice group at Saint Mary’s College, sought to raise awareness of the Catholic social teaching perspective on immigration.
Allyson Krause, a graduate student at Saint Mary’s College, serves as president of Solidarity SMC. She co-organized the event alongside senior Maria Dach to explore how faith and justice issues are interconnected. Krause explained her goal for the event was to expand on the connection between pro-life and social justice issues.
“I think it’s really important for faith and justice to walk together, especially in these spaces, and realize there’s a central theme in our college that is justice. And my highest priority for this event was to remind people that being pro-life should be an expansive concept,” Krause said.
For Krause, the event was a way for her to communicate the importance of considering pro-life issues as ones that expand beyond abortion into other highly discussed topics.
“‘Pro-life’ is often a term that is loaded, but I think that we often forget some of the other ways it can be taken, such as with the death penalty, environmental reform, anti-war rhetoric and disability awareness,” she said. “These themes are often not given as much airtime in the pro-life movement as issues relating to the birth of a child.”
For her part, Dach saw the event as an opportunity to help Saint Mary’s students find a voice to discuss immigration and related issues from a Catholic perspective.
“The Catholic Church is so broad, and it’s 2,000 years old. But I know that there is a need from students in our community to talk about these issues, and some people feel like, ‘Oh, well, how does my faith connect to this?’ So using my own experience in religious studies, I thought I should use my voice to try to bridge that gap for people in an easy way,” Dach said.
Solidarity SMC invited four guest panelists, ranging from professors to religious sisters, to speak on their experiences with immigration, their views on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s impact on the South Bend community and how their faith has been shaped by their understanding of immigrant rights.
Rebecca Holm, a senior, attended the event hoping to become more involved in advocacy for immigrants.
“I’ve really been wanting over the past few months to get more involved in the community and learn how to make more of a difference, particularly with current events, and I think that the biggest way to make a difference is to be educated, and being educated means listening to others,” Holm said. “I don’t have an immigrant experience, so I wanted to come and learn.”
Holm felt that the panel and the stories shared across media helped ground discussions of immigration within the Saint Mary’s and broader South Bend communities. She added that topics that had seemed distant to her became much more real.
“I think you hear on the internet general stories [that] are, like, ‘These things are happening,’ or, like, ‘This happened to somebody far away,’ but then, to hear about stories here, this is our community. This is how it’s affecting people that I know, and it makes it much more real,” Holm said.
Delana Cates, a junior, also attended the event to learn more about immigrant issues. She said she was impressed by the panel, particularly by the unique perspectives of its panelists.
Editor’s note: Cates is a former writer for Scene at The Observer, the newspaper’s arts and culture section.
“I thought the speakers were great. All of them brought with them a very important perspective, whether it be from law enforcement, religious life, or just lifelong activism,” Cates said.
Ultimately, Krause said she hoped students would take away a message of community strength and solidarity with those directly affected by ICE and current immigration policy.
“I just really hope that [immigrants] can look back and realize that there are people who are caring for them,” she said. “We see you, we love you and you deserve to be here.”
