Confronted with life-challenging circumstances, Joseph and Mary fled Israel for Egypt under cover of night, we hear in the gospel for Holy Family Sunday. Many an immigrant family that has risked all to slip across the U.S. border without permission can relate to the story. For them and some 11 million others in the same situation, getting relief from deportations is more important that creating a pathway to U.S. citizenship, a new study finds.

With immigration legislation stalled in the U.S. Congress, two polls released Thursday by the Pew Research Center expose a potential conflict for minority groups that voted overwhelmingly last year for President Barack Obama. Obama is under pressure from immigration supporters to use his executive power to stop deportations.

"There's no question that these groups want a pathway to citizenship for the unauthorized, but the surveys also show that, especially for Latinos, it's the threat of deportation that casts the longest shadow on their communities," said Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew's director of Hispanic research and author of the report.

Earlier this year the Senate passed far-reaching immigration legislation that would strengthen border enforcement and allow a 13-year pathway to citizenship, but activity has stalled in the Republican-controlled House, with the citizenship provision a major sticking point.

The delay has put pressure on Obama to act, as he did last year in halting deportations for some young immigrants. Still, under his administration deportations of immigrants in the country illegally have hovered near 400,000 annually. That level continues a trend of rising deportations that began during the George W. Bush administration.

In recent weeks 29 House Democrats urged Obama in a letter to suspend deportations; last month "executive order" was the rallying cry of hecklers at an Obama Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco. Any action by Obama to halt deportations would mean that immigrants here illegally would in effect get interim legal relief; only action by Congress, however, could give the immigrants legal status.

Homily hint: “I’ll be home for the holidays” is wishful thinking for the millions of undocumented immigrants separated by thousands of miles and a national border from loved ones. Whatever your position on immigration at the policy level, on a human level we can all reach out to those who are here on their own to let them know they are not alone.

Source: An article by Hope Yen for the Associated Press