Migration has been a fact of life for thousands of years. Paleontologists are not in universal agreement about when they took place, but there is strong evidence for the theory that homo sapiens spread “out of Africa” around the world in migrations between 100 and 200 thousand years ago. This is one theory among others, for the origin and spread of the human species. In written texts, we see migration in the Genesis account of Joseph and Jacob finding refuge in Egypt from drought and famine. In Exodus, we read of the Hebrews migrating to a ‘Promised Land’ escaping Pharoah’s persecution of their ethnic group. In the New Testament, we see the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt to avoid Herod’s murderous intent on their son, Jesus.
Nowadays the questions of migration and asylum demand special attention with hundreds of thousands of internal migrants and refugees in Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe. No continent is unaffected by migration of peoples. With the increasing effects of climate change, we can only expect that more people will be on the move to find conditions conducive to their survival.
A paragraph from the Word Migration Report 2024 of the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migrants makes sobering reading:
The current United Nations estimate is that there are about 281 million international migrants in the world, which equates to 3.6 per cent of the global population. But increasing numbers of people are being displaced, within and out of their country of origin, because of conflict, violence, political or economic instability as well as climate change and other disasters. In 2022, there were 117 million displaced people in the world, and 71.2 million internally displaced people. The number of asylum-seekers has risen from 4.1 million in 2020 to 5.4 million in 2022, an increase of more than 30 per cent.[1]
The topic of migration is further highlighted with the sometimes arbitrary and punitive deportation of residents of and tourists to the United States of America,[2] occasionally to countries which are not renowned for their record of observance of human rights.[3] There is a realistic concern that many of the Venezuelan deportees from the USA have ended up in a prison in El Salvador, where they are unlikely to receive a timeous or fair hearing. Article 14 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights[4] states that “everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” It seems that the rights of people who have found refuge in the USA, are being threatened by a regime of deportation.
However, it is not only the activities and executive orders of the president of the USA that have placed the precarity of refugee seekers in the spotlight. On 18 October last year, four Turkish refugees under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees were summarily deported from Kenya,[5] ironically the day before the death of Fethullah Gülen, the founder of the Hizmet Movement. Along with three others who were subsequently released, the four were abducted, from the streets of Nairobi (Kenya) doing such innocuous things as taking their children to school in the morning.[6]
Non-refoulment is a pillar of international human rights law by which “no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm. This principle applies to all migrants at all times, irrespective of migration status.”[7] By actively participating in the repatriation of the four Turkish citizens, Kenya, has not honoured its obligations to these four refugees under the basic principle of human rights law.[8] There is little doubt that the rendition of these men to Turkiye has placed their lives and wellbeing in significant peril.
Pope Francis has an expansive understanding of the right of people to migrate. As the son of migrants to Argentina, he writes in his autobiography, Hope, of the experiences of his parents quitting Italy in 1929 and 1931 in search of political stability and better economic prospects.[9] This significant detail of his family history has certainly influenced his view on the Church’s social teaching regarding the right to migrate. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that: “the more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent that they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.”[10] This very idealistic teaching is more frequently observed in the breach than the application.
Pope Francis does not enter into the legal niceties of whether it is the first country in which a refugee arrives, that is obliged to offer him or her refuge, or whether there is a natural right to migrate to a third country in which the migrant eventually settles. But it is evident that he is strongly opposed to people who block the international movement of people: “It must be said clearly: There are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants… and this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin.”[11]
In the prologue to his autobiography, he recounts the story of the 1927 wreck of the SS Principessa Mafalda off the Brazilian coast, in which between 300 and 600 people died, depending on whether it is the official Italian version or the version in the South American newspapers.[12] Nearly 100 years later, thousands of would-be migrants are still meeting an untimely death every year crossing the Mediterranean Sea or Africa’s Sahara Desert in their quest for better living conditions. This tragedy evokes great compassion from the pope. He maintains: “We can all agree on one thing: Migrants should not be in those seas and in those lethal deserts… But it is not through more restrictive laws, it is not with the militarisation of borders, it is not with rejection that we will obtain this result.”[13]
Certainly, nobody disputes the right and obligation of nations to control their borders and to determine how many migrants or refugees their society can safely integrate. The Catechism states that “political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties towards their country of adoption.” This is a judgment that each country must make, and some countries like Kenya legitimately call upon the international community to help it to support the stream of refugees that have received asylum in the country. At present Kenya hosts some 780,000 refugees.
For their part, there is a duty for immigrants to integrate themselves into the country of adoption: “Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”[14] The more honesty migrants are welcomed, the more successfully they integrate into the receiving country, and become contributing members of society. Reluctance to integrate might be an indication that the immigrants are not happy in their country of residence, and may be happier to settle elsewhere.
My experience in South Africa has been that first-generation migrants prefer to receive pastoral care in their home language, preferably in specific linguistic religious contexts, which also function as a social centre in which they can remain in touch with their compatriots and fellow migrants. The second generation often goes along with their parents, because they are frequently too young to protest. But by the time the third generation comes along, they want little to do with the parish of the “old country.” If they do belong to a church or mosque or synagogue, they choose to do so in the prevailing language of the country of their residence. They want to worship with the other children of their generation, with whom they attend school and socialise. There is frequently sadness on the part of the (now) grandparents, as they see the diminishing numbers of members of their ethnic chaplaincies or parishes. But this is a reality of life. Unless there is a constant stream of migrants from a particular country or region, the need for a chaplaincy to a specific ethnic group generally diminishes.
As countries exhibit hostility to immigration, they will lose their attractiveness, and the stream of significant skills and talents brought by migrants and refugees. The xenophobic attacks on migrants to South Africa from other African countries earlier this decade are a source of shame, particularly when so many of our own nation received generous hospitality during the years of apartheid and the struggle for liberation. The United States of America, a country built and populated by generations of migrants who have reduced the indigenous populations to small pockets, is expelling refugees with legitimate claims to asylum, as well as people who have been resident there sometimes for generations. The country seems also to have forgotten the tradition of asylum which made it a multiethnic melting pot of humanity.
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[1] Amy E. Pope “Foreword” in M. McAuliffe and L.A. Oucho (eds.), World Migration Report 2024, (Geneva: International Organisation for Migration, 2024), xii.
[2] Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Tyler Pager and Hamed Aleaziz, “As Trump Broadens Crackdown, Focus Expands to Legal Immigrants and Tourists,” New York Times, (21 March 2025).
[3] Lilla Luciano, “Venezuelan Migrant Deported from U.S. To El Salvador Has No Criminal Record, Documents Show.” CBS News, (20 March 2025).
[4] United Nations General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Paris, 10 December 1948.
[5] TM, “Turkish Citizens under UN Protection Feared to Have Been Kidnapped by Turkish Intelligence in Kenya,” Turkish Minute, (18 October 2024).
[6] Irungu Houghton, “Statement on the Abduction and Disappearance of Seven Turkish Asylum Seekers for Immediate Release.” Amnesty International Kenya Section, (19 October 2024).
Not satisfied with vilifying the religious Hizmet movement and its founder Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish government has forcefully repatriated refugees belonging to the group. The government maintains that members of the movement were behind the attempted coup d’etat in July 2016. See: Stockholm Centre for Freedom, “New Report Exposes Systematic Use of Hate Speech Following Fethullah Gülen’s Death to Dehumanize His Movement” (30 December 2024).
[7] Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “The Principle of Non-Refoulement under International Human Rights Law,” (2018).
[8] Paradoxically, Kenya was voted onto the UN Human Rights Council on 9 October 2024, a mere 10 days before it deported these four refugees to certain persecution in their native Turkiye. Kenya took its three-year seat on the Council in January 2025.
[9] See Francis, Hope: The Autobiography (London: Penguin Random House, 2025), Ch 4.
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), 2241.
[11] cf. Hanna Brockhaus, “Pope Francis: Intentionally Hurting Migrants ‘Is a Grave Sin’.” Catholic News Agency, (28 August 2024). The quotation is an off-script remark at the general audience on 28 August 2024.
[12] cf. Francis, Hope: The Autobiography, 3-5.
[13] Hanna Brockhaus, “Pope Francis: Intentionally Hurting Migrants.”
[14] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2241.