At Jesuit colleges and universities, we teach our students compassion, justice, and kindness. We teach them to care for their neighbors, to welcome the stranger, and to live their life according to God’s teachings. We teach them that they have an obligation to respect and protect the natural rights of other human beings, especially when these people stand in need before them, and they have the power to help. These teachings get to the heart of what we need in Washington in order to alleviate the plight of Dreamers.

The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) includes 28 American Jesuit institutions, schools like Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., and Loyola University in Chicago. Our schools have graduated some of the brightest minds; and many of them, today, are elected officials who can make a difference on Capitol Hill.

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At AJCU, we know the Dreamers because they play an active part of all of our campuses, and bless us with their presence, their talents, their strength, and their selflessness. If you walk through our campuses, you might miss them because they look and speak like any other young American. But their lives and predicaments are very different.

Dreamers are excellent, well-prepared students who held their mother’s hand or clung to their father’s neck as they came across the border – in many cases escaping violence, persecution, or poverty. They have done nothing wrong. Instead, they’ve bravely fought for themselves and their families, and persevered in the face of adversity. Many Dreamers are in high school ROTC, volunteer as tutors to grade school kids, and give their time in churches and nursing homes. They want, above all else, to serve their country and to serve and help others. Dreamers have already contributed to our country so much, and they have so much more to give.

Approximately 10 percent of the members of the Senate and House are graduates of our 28 Jesuit colleges and universities; and many more are graduates of our high schools. At Jesuit institutions, we teach our students about responsible citizenship. They learn in school about sacrifice and putting others’ wellbeing ahead of their own. For many of our alumni on Capitol Hill, that sense of service and civic responsibility is an underlying part of why they are in Congress today.

To those alums I say:

It’s time for you to live up to what we taught you. Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, this issue is above politics. It’s about our humanity, about doing what’s right, and about who we are as a country and as a people.

Dreamers are standing in front of you in need. You not only have a responsibility to your fellow brothers and sisters, but you have the power – in a way that ordinary citizens do not – to do justice for Dreamers and provide certainty and stability in the life of hardworking, persevering, good, young people whose livelihood and futures are in your hands.

Live up to what you learned in our schools. And persuade your peers to do the same. Be brave and courageous in your pursuit of justice for these young immigrants.

Republican, Democrat, on this issue be “a man or woman for others.” Free the Dreamers to be the Americans they already are in their hearts.

Father Sheeran is the President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.