The Trump administration’s immigration measures and attendant dehumanizing rhetoric have fanned the flames of nationalism and sown fear in communities. Its internal enforcement strategies are bolstered by manipulative narratives that perpetuate myths and reflect facile analyses of complex dilemmas, focusing on symptoms rather than causes of migration. Reducing immigration questions to the locus of border crossers alone eclipses from view transnational actors responsible for economic instability, violent conflict, or labor recruitment, and also eclipses their accountability. Recent developments in migration ethics help illuminate significant historical and structural contexts of migration as well as models of justice and norms for negotiating duties of reception that better reflect such relationships. Attending to underlying fears and idolatries that contribute to exclusionary dynamics also emerges as critical for advancing just policy reforms and cultivating civic friendship moving forward.

The category of social sin elucidates the connection between unjust structures that contribute to undocumented immigration and pervasive ideologies that foster resistance to reform efforts and immigrants themselves. Following an exploration of the development of social sin by Pope John Paul II and Latin American liberation theologians, the author advances a conception of social sin that accounts for its personal, institutional, and nonvoluntary dimensions. The analysis seeks to clarify intersecting levels of inhospitality and injustice.

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Basic human rights reflected in international rights regimes and presupposed in Catholic social ethics are universal in theory, yet in practice their exercise depends upon legally sanctioned membership in a political community. This gap between the normativity of the dignity of the migrant and the practical denial of their rights is maintained by (1) standard paradigms for analysing migration and (2) a related neglect of structural injustices that facilitate rights violations. The Catholic tradition’s social anthropology, understanding of social sin, and commitment to a global common good are poised to reorient responsibility for irregular migration beyond individuals who cross borders or overstay visas alone.