Letters to the Editor | 31 March 2007

Christian unity

Sir: I am sorry that Piers Paul Read (‘The Pope’s anti-liberal revolution’, 24 March) assumes that the English and Welsh bishops have not welcomed the Papal Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis. It is not always customary for bishops to issue immediate comments on Papal documents. I was, in fact, part of the drafting committee and thus closely involved in its preparation. My own statement expressed my admiration for the document and my wish for it to be promulgated widely among the Catholics of this country. I have no doubt my fellow bishops will be doing the same.

Nor should it be assumed that the ecumenical movement is over or that we should cease to strive for deeper unity with the Anglican Communion. Whatever the difficulties — and they are considerable — it is still the mind of the Catholic Church, reflected often in Pope Benedict’s sayings and writings, that we should continue to seek full unity with our fellow Christians.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor
Archbishop of Westminster

Immigrants just want work

Sir: Frank Field MP (Letters, 24 March) thinks that giving a one-off amnesty to long-term undocumented migrants (that is, asylum-seekers who have waited for years in limbo on Home Office decisions; visa-overstayers who have secure jobs and pay taxes) would ‘send out a trumpet call to people to come here illegally’. I don’t pretend it would stop illegal immigration, but it wouldn’t have the green-light effect he fears: people don’t cross the world in search of visas but for work; where they find it (as in the UK) they often end up staying.

The US and many European countries have all introduced pathways to citizenship for long-term migrants because there are huge benefits, both for the host country and for migrants, of recognising realities. In each case they have not had a discernible green-light effect; immigrants have continued to arrive in greater numbers — as they have to the UK, which has not had an amnesty — because the economies need them.