AmericanPapist Comments
Render unto Caesar the things that are . . . really applies here.
I have never held any respect or agreement with prelates who advocate the breaking of national laws.
By the act of entering our nation without permission and without invitation, a foreign national is breaking our laws. Henceforth, that illegally invading human is subject to whatever punishments connected with their illegal acts. Period. There isn't any excuse, reason or excuse sufficient to remove the stigma of the original wrong act being supported by some moronic and wrong-headed State lawmakers.
But that bad,bad, commedienne MUST be shamed!
Legality is a secondary concern here. When a state fails to protect certain human rights, it surrenders its sovereignty. Cf. Pope Benedict's address to the UN.
I used to be against Amnesty; after all, illegals broke our laws by illegally entering this country.
However, I am having second thoughts about the issue. What are the options we have regarding the illegal situation?
1. Status Quo: Not acceptable. Up to 20 million people are here and we have no way of knowing who they are. It is also creating a terrible problem in services, such as the California hospitals and social services.
2. Deportation and attrition: How can we deport up to 20 million people? Cattle cars? Trail of tears? Logistically and politically it is a nightmare. Footage of Holocaust victims heading to Auschwitz will be invoked by an already biased and hostile media, and the Left in America will virulently oppose the action. The world won't forget it.
3. Amnesty: We create a path to citizenship only for those who are actually working and demonstrating assimilation to our culture and values. Only criminals and those unwilling to assimilate should go.
The bishops should temper their rhetoric by also demanding that illegals adapt to their host society, otherwise they are giving the Catholic Church a poor reputation as aiding and abetting those who violate our laws and national sovereignty. Their impolitic statements fuel the anti Catholic bigotry of those who have not forgotten how Catholic clergy covered up the priest sex scandal that rocked the Church.
I failed to mention another "unintended consequence" of the ICE raid: those illegals who were rounded up are being replaced by legal Muslim immigrants.
So, are we to replace our Mexican immigrants with Muslim ones?
I'd take the former, thank you. At least most Mexicans are Christians, and I'd prefer them to the latter anytime, anyday, anywhere.
This is the sort of issue about which I would like to see more reporting. I have heard of cases where families are split up by one or both parents being departed.
Possibly a response to those upset at their condemnations of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Biden. To prove they're not affiliated with one party or another. Now if they would only move up the dates for their meetings regarding abortion to, say, some time before November 4.
These illegal immigrants took the risk. They should not be surprised, nor the bishops. The bishops should either sponsor them or find sponsors for them for citizenship or help them get back home and find a good situation there.
We also had to leave a foreign country because we no longer had a work permit. You have to follow the law or legally immigrate. Also, birthright citizenship should end. No other country does it. I had two sons born overseas. They could not and did not become citizens of that country just by birth.
My family sponsored three foreigners for citizenship. They are to this day so grateful and regularly call on and visit my parents with great affection. They are also VERY hard-working and productive.
Tom,
To answer your question at the end of your post, I too take it that their legality is not in question, but merely the means of their execution. However, I would like to, AGAIN, point out that the DoJ did attempt to conduct a program over the summer where illegals voluntarily turned themselves in and were then given ample time to prepare for their deportation. This program, however, did not work. (I forget the numbers on how many illegals participated, but it was only in the double digits for a NATIONWIDE program.) If you don't want to go quietly and you need to go . . . then loudly is the only way! What else are law officers supposed to do if 'asking nicely' isn't going to cut it?
The interpretation of the bishop's statement seems to be: the raids are fine, breaking up families is fine, but the Bishops want us to do it nicely. Teep seems to think that asking even that is too much. (We tried nice, and it didn't work. Looks like them Mexicans didn't really want to *voluntarily* turn themselves in and break up their families.) What the bishops want us to do is *not break up the families.* Do something else. Think outside the left-right paradigm. Something else. But not this.
Atheling is the most disturbing of all. He seems to think mass deportation is a bad idea because the Left will use it against the US. Not that it isn't bad in and of itself, or anything. And then there's the kicker: at least these Mexicans aren't *Muslims.* I am surprised such xenophobia is allowed on this blog.
Teep-
I seem to remember a total of 23.
SR-
ignoring that many illegals *left* there families to come here, the voluntary deportation would transport a family that turned itself in back, as a whole.
I'm more of the view that harsher enforcement at all levels would be a good thing-- that poor little boy that was killed by a multiple-offender illegal, that dad and his sons who were shot, all the rest who are harmed by serial criminals because of the lack of enforcement of basic sovereign authority.
Dear Host:
I think you described it correctly.
Anon-
I much agree that the abuse of birthright citizenship should be stopped; it was put in place to prevent abuse of former slaves.
For the argument that there are just too many illegals for them to be deported-- in 2006, there were 11.4 million crimes reported, from arson through rape to vehicle theft. Are we supposed to just start ignoring crimes because there are too many for *all* of them to ever be solved?
Foxfier,
If they left their families, it was in order to find a better job to better support them financially. I'll gloss over your uncharitable implication. That is fine that you think we should be rougher on the "illegals" -- but just admit that you are not thinking with the Church on this one. You are using your own (right wing ideological) criteria to judge a certain situation, rather than using the signs (ie, the bishops) that the Church sends you. Sure, it's a prudential judgment, but where do you learn prudence from? I prefer the bishops to Ann Coulter.
Singling out the isolated instances of crimes committed by immigrants is a play right out of the Know-Nothing playbook. Well done, my friend. A catholic using xenophobic tactics. First time as tragedy, second time as farce, indeed.
"Atheling is the most disturbing of all. He seems to think mass deportation is a bad idea because the Left will use it against the US. Not that it isn't bad in and of itself, or anything."
It would appear inhuman. That's why I said it is politically costly. I wonder that you have actually pondered the nature of such a task. It's a dirty job, and no one wants to take on the mantle of being the heartless bureaucrat booting people out of their homes. I urge you to consider the ramifications.
And you ignore the fact of the enormous logistical cost of doing such a thing humanely.
" And then there's the kicker: at least these Mexicans aren't *Muslims.* I am surprised such xenophobia is allowed on this blog."
Xenophobia implies an irrational fear. I am not irrational in my fear of Islam. Read Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, Alexis de Tocqueville, Bertram Russell, Oriana Fallaci, Robert Spencer, et al. These are not "xenophobic" people. They are people who are unfettered by the blinders of political correctness and moral relativism. They know history. To wit, John Quincy Adams:
"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar (i.e. Mohammed), the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an imposter, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of Mosaic Law, the doctrine of one, omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and Apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountan, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy, and he declared eternal undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men"
I suppose SR should call upon John Quincy Adams to be forever banned from speaking on this board... for his apparent "xenophobia". But before he does, I would recommend that he read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and acquaint himself with its principles.
Robert Spencer is quite close to being an irrational person.
The First Amendment only applies to public fora, not to privately-media outlets.
Islam in and of itself is not the problem. Certain radical elements within that that faith, who have drunk deep from the totalitarian ideologies of the West, are the problem (as outlined by Paul Berman in TERROR AND LIBERALISM, which I am sure you've already read). I welcome all good-willed Muslims to my country.
SR-
You lost any room to talk of charity when you tried to use it as a weapon.
Since you cannot use reason, you try to use emotion, and you ignore the facts. There is nothing in the Church that demands we abandon reason and actual charity-- and true charity would not try to be used as a weapon.
Simple fact is, many did *not* leave to better support their families; many left because it was easier, many to pursue drug smuggling and other nasty illegal actions. Some of the Marines I went to school with were supporting the abandoned families. (These would be the people, and their children, who jumped through all the hoops to obey Cesar's law and enter the country legally.)
That, however, is not relevant to the original post. The original post is the Bishops said they'd like it to be done more delicately, and that the US has a right to protect her national borders.
Well, Foxfier, he wasn't thinking with the Church on this one. He's using his own (left-wing ideological) criteria to judge a certain situation.
SR:
You are a self loathing moral relativist... possessor of exactly the type of ideology which Pope Benedict laments as a pervasive cancer in western civilization.
Take off those blinders.
"My family sponsored three foreigners for citizenship. They are to this day so grateful and regularly call on and visit my parents with great affection. They are also VERY hard-working and productive." (Anonymous)
I would recommend that we, as Catholics, consider sponsoring illegal immigrants with child as US citizens so that no raid can separate a family (Gods family).
Yes, the raids are so inhumane--like the one that busted the packing plant for using Illegal alien child Labor... .
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