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As President Barack Obama and lawmakers in Washington began the discussion on immigration reform Thursday, Greensboro faith leaders also gathered to urge fairness and a humane approach.

“It is a moral issue, but a moral issue is not incompatible with good laws,” said Lori Fernald Khamala of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice.

Hours before Obama was to outline his own views on immigration reform, Khamala and the others called on elected leaders to work with the president on a process that unifies families, protects workers’ rights, and provides a clear pathway to citizenship.

People of faith have a particular responsibility to speak out, said the Rev. Nelson Johnson of the Beloved Community Center, a grass-roots community empowerment effort.

“Our neighbors — our brothers and sisters — are living in fear,” Johnson said. “In all of the religious texts ... there are very clear, moral mandates to welcome the stranger. We as a nation need an immigration system that is common sense — one that our immigrant brothers and sister can go through, not go around.”

Fear-mongering has placed all immigrants under suspicion, but three-fourths of all foreign-born residents of the U.S. have legal status to live and work here, said the Rev. Maria Palmer , a minister and former member of the North Carolina education board, who herself immigrated to the United States three decades ago.

“What about the others?” Palmer said, mentioning the 69-year-old grandmother and the young father recently separated from the rest of their families when they sought legal means to stay, and the children of undocumented workers.

“They have the same dreams and hopes ... however, most of them do not have any way to obtain legal status,” Palmer said. “This is about who we are as a nation. We have a choice: We can stand up for our shared American ideals or do nothing but succumb to our worst instincts. Let’s do the right thing and choose fairness and practical solutions that benefit us all.”

The solution, according to Palmer and the others, includes halting the deportations that separate parents from children and husbands from wives; strongly enforcing employment and labor laws; and granting permission to stay to most undocumented workers who may have entered illegally or overstayed a visa.

“It is catastrophic,” the Rev. Hugo Medallin , a deacon at St. Mary’s Catholic Church , said of conditions and abuses against undocumented workers. “Every person has a right to a 'dignifying’ life.”

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com