Dr. Elizabeth Collier and Rabbi Rachel Grant Meyer presented a lecture discussing the views of different religions on the idea of the migrant on April 23 in Burke Lounge.

“Shared Roots, Divergent Paths Program: Border Control vs. Love the Stranger” focused on how people of the Jewish and Catholic faiths should think about refugees. Collier gave the Catholic perspective and Meyer spoke on the Jewish perspective.

Meyer and Collier explained the definitions of terms commonly used to describe migrants.

Meyer defined migrant as “people who have experienced violence and persecution for 1 of 5 reasons: gender, sexuality, race, religion, and nationality; an asylum seeker is a migrant that is legally protected; and an internally displaced people is someone who has experienced violence and persecution but is still in the borders of their country.”

“I think the talk was very informative and even though I went for a class, I ended up learning more about a topic that we hear every day in the media than I thought I would,” freshman Peter Karejwa said.

Collier and Meyer said that 65.3 million people have been forced from their homes, and people are displaced for an average of 17 years. In terms of children affected, 57 million do not go to school and 103 million are not literate because they are fleeing their original country. Girls make up 60 percent of that illiterate population. They also pointed out that the United States has taken in 11 refugees this year.

Collier and Meyer focused on three “common arguments in the face of the refugee crisis.”

The first argument they focused on was that migrants take jobs from natives, which Collier called a “persistent fallacy.” To get a job in the United States, an employer has to go through the Department of Labor which checks that there were no other suitable Americans to have the job, she said.

The second argument Collier called “get in line.” She said there is not line to get in. Someone from the Philippines who submitted a visa for an adult child in 1995 would processed now.

The final argument is “build the wall.” Collier reasoned that with 650 miles of the current barrier, it would be a financial burden the country would not be able to handle.

“The purpose of this country is to be for the people and by the people. The purpose of the United States is to accept everyone equally,” Freshman Danielle Zalamea said. “Yes, there’s controversy in that statement because of the original constitution and declaration being only for white men, but I expected that to expand by now. People shouldn’t be turned down for wanting a better life.”

The talk was sponsored by Jewish Catholic Studies and American Jewish Committee, the oldest Jewish civil rights organization in the country. Jewish Catholic Studies sponsors talks similar to this one once a semester.