Rev. Rick Ryscavage, S.J., joins Federal Task Force on child immigration crisis in Texas | Press Releases

Immigration expert and member of Federal Task Force available to comment on child immigration crisis in Texas:
Fairfield University's Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J.

Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J., Fairfield University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Director, Center for Faith and Public Life, is available to comment on the current immigration crisis in Texas involving thousands of young children from Central America crossing the borders in Mexico into the United States.

Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J., served as national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service. While he was executive director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of Migration and Refugee Services, he ran one of the world's largest refugee resettlement agencies where he oversaw annual federal grants of more than $40 million from the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

In response to the current child immigration crisis in Texas, Fr. Ryscavage has been asked to join the Federal government's Interagency Task Force on Unaccompanied Children , which includes members of the U.S. State Dept., DHS, Justice, HHS and others.

Profile:

Fr. Ryscavage was president of CLINIC, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. He chaired the humanitarian section of INTERACTION, the largest coalition of American non-governmental organizations working internationally. He was the first Arrupe Tutor at the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University in England. In 2006, he was invited by the Vatican to become a member of the official delegation of the Holy See to the 61st session of the UN General Assembly and participated in the Secretary General's "High Level Dialogue on Migration." Most recently, Fr. Ryscavage met with Pope Francis in the Vatican where he expressed his particular concern about young migrants around the world.

As Director of Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life he oversaw two grant-funded initiatives that relate to different aspects of the immigration issue: the "Immigrant Student National Position Paper" focusing on undocumented students and "Strangers as Neighbors: Religious Language and the Response to Immigrants in the U.S."

Education:

B.A., Assumption College; M.A., Boston College; M.Div., Weston School of Theology; M.A.L.D., Tufts University; Ph.D. (Hon.), Assumption College.