World Refugee Day is Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

Immigrant or Migrant; Refugee or Asylum Seeker?

Immigrant: leaves their homeland with the intention of permanently living elsewhere. 

Migrant: leaves with the intention of returning – after a day’s work, a season’s etc.  

Both are legal.

More confusing are refugee and asylum seeker. 

Refugee: seeks entry into the US for safety from violence while still in their own country or a resettlement camp – this is entirely legal and can take as long as 10 years.  

Asylum seeker: seeks safety from violence but arrives at the US border without prior documentation – this is entirely legal – but it can be problematic to compassionately house and feed those who have crossed deserts and rivers on foot desperately seeking safety in the US as they await a hearing in an over-flooded immigration court.  

Visit SMOS Advocacy Table after 8:00 or 10:00 Masses on June 25 and send a letter to your lawmakers to ‘welcome the stranger among us,’ for in this encounter with the immigrant, the migrant, and the refugee in our midst, we encounter Christ.”