Catholic Social Teaching tells us that it is our “duty to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the dignity and rights of the human person.”  Currently there are 36 million foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, 11 million of whom are undocumented.  Under current legislation there is no pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who consider the United States home and who are are contributing to society, making up 5.2% of the labor force and contributing over $10 billion annually to state and local tax revenues.  Additionally, for every day that there is inaction on immigration reform, families continue to be ripped apart by deportation. In 2013, 369,000 undocumented immigrants were deported, costing the American taxpayers $20,000 per deportation and stripping immigrant families of the opportunity to be united.  As violence escalates and poverty remains endemic in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, over 45,000 unaccompanied children, many under the age of 12, have surged the United States-Mexican border seeking asylum.  At present, most of the children wait for their cases to be heard, relying on the judgement of immigration courts to dictate whether they will receive the protection of refugee status.