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1. America is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, well behind Mexico but ahead of Colombia. Between 60 and 70 million Americans speak Spanish. As many as 40 million people speak Spanish as their main language at home. This is a tough thing to grasp here in Indiana, where only about 8% of residents are Hispanic (and not all of them speak Spanish, though most do). In states like Texas or California, that is closer to 40%. It is one thing to realize, abstractly, that America as a whole is around 20% Hispanic with a large majority of that group being Spanish-speakers. It is quite another to realize how those percentages manifest in very different daily realities.

For a fair comparison, think of Canada. Roughly 20% of Canadians speak French, the same percentage as Americans who speak Spanish. But in Canada, 85% of those French-speakers live in one province: Quebec. It is literally the French province. America’s Spanish-speakers are spread across the country; even a state named “New Mexico” is not officially Spanish-speaking. Spanish-speakers are concentrated in the southern tier of the United States, but even there they cover many different states.

2. In early 2023, the Biden administration introduced the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One mobile app that allowed migrants to schedule asylum appointments in the United States and then enter the U.S. to await the appointment, at least in some cases. This led to a remarkable surge in people crossing the border. Whatever one thinks of asylum applications or border crossings, the numerical change from the first Trump administration to the Biden administration to the first year of the second Trump administration is not marginal. There has been a lot of incendiary rhetoric about the changes from one administration to the next, but, rhetoric aside, it is important to understand that the actual change on the ground is very large, so the political debate is based in real changes.

3. By 2024, the majority of asylum seekers and refugees entering the United States through Mexico were not Mexican. In fact, only about one in three were. Mexico was the point of entry because of its very long border with the U.S., with 50 official checkpoints and endless opportunities to cross unofficially. In October 2025, the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program visited McAllen, TX, and Reynosa, Mexico, on opposite sides of the Rio Grande River. By the end of the Biden administration in 2024, both Reynosa and McAllen were full of migrants from all over the world who believed this was their most favorable point of entry. So while Spanish-speakers of Mexican descent—both Mexican citizens and American citizens—provided services and assistance to asylum-seekers and refugees on their side of the border at that time, the clients they were serving were not primarily Mexican. Moreover, most of the people providing these services understood Mexican immigration differently from immigration by people from countries that were not part of the NAFTA agreement. Many Hoosiers lump all these immigrant populations together. People of Mexican descent living on either side of the border do not.

4. Recent Hispanic immigrants are overwhelmingly Catholic. This simple fact creates different kinds of pressure for any who mean to serve recent immigrants, so it’s important to think about what this means. It does not mean that only Catholics can provide services; many Protestants certainly do. It does mean that for many new immigrants, Protestant churches are likely to seem somewhat foreign. There are exceptions. There are many Pentecostal churches in Mexico, and Mormons have reached out to indigenous populations from the start. But Mexico’s culture is still overwhelmingly Catholic.

The Catholic Church has considerable infrastructure in place to deal with the language problem, at least in urban areas in the United States. Many city parishes have Spanish-speaking masses. In rural areas, the hope of reaching out to Spanish-speakers may exist, but the resources frequently do not. Protestants meaning to serve these new immigrants need to be realistic about how Hispanic immigrants view their churches. Protestants who may be inclined to think of recent immigrants as potential future members of their communities must realize that many immigrants are less likely to think of themselves that way.

One of the most confounding aspects of faith-based efforts to serve recent immigrants is the lack of coordination, or even conversation, among different religious traditions providing these services. In an area with a strong diocese, for instance, it is notable when Protestants undertake missions to Hispanic populations without at least seeking advice or information from Catholics. It is not necessary to have full, ecumenical cooperation in order to share information or resources. This is a perennial problem for religious groups around all issues, but it is especially pronounced when dealing with a very large population speaking a language other than English.

5. Churches need to distinguish between documented immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and migrants. This is emphatically not about who deserves assistance or who is worthy of dignity and respect. That would be everyone. It is instead about practicing empathy toward the recipients’ particular situation. Both Catholic and Protestant churches may think of mission in terms of inviting new neighbors into their worship communities, but the neighbors start from very different places. All immigrants, almost by definition, are interested in blending their old lives with their new if they intend to stay in the new place. Religious communities are famously places where immigrants keep some of the old traditions in the context of their new lives. One of the best examples in the United States is seen in Greek Orthodox churches, where an amazing number of Greek immigrants, some here for many generations, still celebrate their Greek roots in their national church.

But new arrivals in the U.S. come with a mix of intentions. Labor migrants may have no intention whatsoever of staying. They come to work, save money, and return. They may need help with basic services, but they are not usually open to invitations to join local faith communities. Immigrants without full documentation may be open to blending their old lives with the new, but they also have reasons to keep a low profile, especially if they are waiting for their immigration case to be heard. Documented immigrants have traditionally been the most open to blending, but now they are also interested in keeping a low profile because of confusion around who can be detained or deported. Congregations do not need to be experts in these distinctions, but they do need to consider them.

The goal of highlighting these complexities is certainly not to encourage congregations to give up. America is multicultural and the future will be more plural, not less. This project hopes to help congregations avoid making the same mistakes over and over by learning to ask the right questions early in their outreach efforts.

Not everyone will be able to travel to the Rio Grande Valley to see immigration from Mexico through the eyes of the people who live on the border. And America has plenty of immigrants who do not come across the Mexican border. Still, all of us stand to benefit from reframing our assumptions in light of better information about America’s largest immigrant population.

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