Pope Leo Says Migrants Should Integrate And Obey The Law

When Pope Leo XIV last week completed his seven-day trip to Spain by visiting the Canary Islands, where thousands of migrants have died attempting to reach Europe, one would expect the usual boilerplate language typical of the Catholic hierarchy of late. This would include that Western nations need to treat immigrants with respect and dignity (hint: unreservedly welcoming them in and putting them on the fast track to citizenship) and that immigrants have the right to leave their nations of origin. There was certainly some of that, similar to his predecessor, Francis. 

But what was surprisingly welcome was that the pope tempered that language with exhortations and warnings to those same migrants, a message that has been often frustratingly absent from the Catholic Church’s public commentary regarding one of the greatest crises facing the West. It’s language that many of the Catholic faithful — and the broader world that, to various degrees, still looks to the papacy as a moral compass — desperately yearned to hear, especially given that Catholic teaching is actually quite nuanced and moderate on the topic of immigration and borders. One hopes the rest of the Catholic hierarchy were paying attention.

What Pope Leo Said About Immigration

Some of what Pope Leo said was relatively unsurprising. He warned European nations that they “cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves.” He declared: “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.” He threw a bouquet of flowers into the ocean to honor those migrants who had died trying to reach the Canary Islands in search of a better life. In many respects, this mimics language Leo has offered since he assumed the papacy last year, including his direct criticism of U.S. enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

But that’s not all Pope Leo said during his Spanish trip. He reprimanded human traffickers, calling on them to repent for tricking families, threatening women, and abusing workers. He directed some of his rhetorical energy at the countries from which immigrants originate, exhorting them to preserve justice and offer economic opportunities that would curb the desire of their citizens to leave for distant shores. “While there is a right to seek refuge when life is threatened, there is also the right not to have to migrate,” he said. The pope even asserted that all countries have a “right” to define and defend their national borders. 

Pope Leo even offered cautions to would-be immigrants. He warned them to reconsider the “siren songs” of traffickers who promise “easy paradises” in Europe and North America. He argued that those intending to immigrate must pursue “legal” mechanisms to move from one country to another, an implicit rebuke of the millions who have violated other nations’ laws by crossing their borders. Moreover, once those migrants arrive, Pope Leo acknowledged that as much as they have a right to preserve their own culture, they must not “creat[e] parallel worlds, closed off from one another, where people live side by side without truly encountering one another.”

Why This Is a Welcome Shift

For a long time, Catholics have become inured to the hierarchy’s tendency to emphasize the protection and celebration of immigrants over native citizens. Regardless of how many migrants illegally crossed the borders of Western nations, the faithful were told by many of their bishops, and even the previous pope, that to be anything less than welcoming was un-Christian. The West must, in Pope Francis’ words, “welcome … protect … promote … integrate.”

This was the message, even as millions of illegal migrants competed with working-class citizens for jobs. It was the message as large numbers of Muslim migrants created extensive networks that groomed and exploited thousands of native underage girls. It was the message after more than a thousand women were sexually assaulted, apparently mostly by immigrants, in a single night. It was the message after immigrants exploited federal funding programs to steal hundreds of millions of federal dollars, some of which may have funded foreign terrorist groups. And it has been the message while immigrants continue to commit acts of violence against native residents.

Almost everyone has stories about what they have experienced or witnessed when it comes to illegal immigrants. They are exploiting government programs, creating criminal networks in our communities, and not assimilating. The Federalist recently reported that as many as 200,000 illegal aliens reside in Fairfax County, Virginia.

As a lifelong resident of Fairfax County, I can attest to the realities of a people who feel no compulsion to assimilate. Directly outside my suburban subdivision, I daily drive by a massive amount of Section 8 housing, where dozens of women and girls walk the streets in burkas. When Fairfax County sends notices to residents by mail, it prints them in almost a dozen languages because local officials have decided that people who can’t (and won’t) speak English should have a voice regarding changes to county policies. A local friend of mine, once a professional carpenter, entered federal service because it was impossible to compete with cheap immigrant labor.

Communicating Church Teaching on Immigration

I don’t know why the Catholic hierarchy has typically taken such a firm stance in favor of illegal immigrants, directing their ire not at those committing crimes but at legal residents frustrated by that crime and the disturbing changes to their communities happening right under their noses. Is it a naive, misplaced sense of Christian charity or a belief that the church must always side with whoever has a better claim to being “the victim”? Is it a hope that these illegal immigrants represent the next generation of Catholics holding up the declining parishes of the West? (Certainly that can’t be the case in Europe, where most of these migrants are Muslim!)

Everyone, regardless of race or nationality, deserves respect and dignity. But that doesn’t mean the United States, or any other country for that matter, must open the gates and let everyone in, regardless of their culture or willingness to assimilate. That’s not Christian charity. That’s chaos and civilizational collapse. And, as Pope Leo has aptly observed, it’s not even good for the countries of origin. As I’ve argued, this paradigm encourages a brain drain of the best and brightest from other countries because they’d rather pursue opportunities in the West.

As our nation celebrates our 250th anniversary, we’re reminded that the founders intended the United States to be an example to the world of what representative government by a culturally united, self-governing people can accomplish. The objective was that other people would, in time, emulate our nation, not that they would all move here. We should be grateful that the current pontiff in Rome is speaking in ways that confirm that vision.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He is a regular contributor at many publications and the author of three books, including the upcoming “Wisdom From the Cross: How Jesus’ Seven Last Words Teach Us How to Live (and Die)” (Sophia Institute Press, 2026).