As a 10 year-old boy working alongside Mexican workers in a Hollywood, Calif., poultry processing plant owned by his father, Cardinal Roger Mahony said he felt terrorized when the border patrol raided the business one day and intimidated workers with their guns.
It was one of many experiences that made Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, the church's most outspoken advocate on behalf of immigration reform. Wednesday night he spoke about the issue to students, professors and fellow Catholics during a lecture at UNC Chapel Hill's FedEx Global Education Center.
Stories such as the one he told might open people's hearts and minds to the plight of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and help bring into public view the need for reforms, he said.
Mahoney, who will retire next month as head of the nation's largest archdiocese, visited the state for the first time at the invitation of sociology professor Jacqueline Hagan, who studies migration between Latin America and the U.S.
The cardinal said that while the U.S. happily employs illegal immigrants, it fails to offer them legal protections.
"We gladly accept the toil and taxes of the immigrant work force to fill our economic needs," he said, "but look the other way when they are exploited in the workplace, die in the desert, or are arrested and deported for the most minor of civil violations."
Opponents who support tougher enforcement for illegal immigrants conceded Americans ought not hire people without working papers.
"Employers who knowingly hire them are criminals and should be put in jail," said Ron Woodard of NC Listen, a Raleigh advocacy group. But he added just because employers are breaking the law doesn't mean illegal immigrants can get away with it.
"We do have a pathway to citizenship, and it's laid out," Woodard said.
Mahoney said he was skeptical of increased enforcement along the border with Mexico.
"We've spent billions of dollars and have only affected the influx very little," he told reporters.
He also suggested that some emboldened opponents of the nation's immigrants are racist.
Mahoney's archdiocese includes 5 million members; 70 percent are Hispanic.
