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Prodigal_Son1
Guest
America’s ‘soul’ at risk over immigration, Archbishop Gomez warns
“And I think that’s one of the problems we are having in this immigration debate. We have lost sense of the ‘humanity’ of the men and women and children who are living in this country illegally.”
He expressed concern that we are “losing something of our national soul” in how illegal immigration is addressed.
“This great nation finds itself today reduced to addressing this major issue in our public life through: name calling and discrimination; criminal ‘profiling’ based on race; random identity checks; violent raids of workplaces and homes; arbitrary detentions and deportations.”
A quarter of persons deported from the U.S. are from intact families, he said. “In the name of enforcing our laws, now we are breaking up families.”
Last year, 400,000 persons were deported, the archbishop noted. That means that last year, 100,000 families were rent apart in the name of American law.
“These are not statistics, these are souls. Human beings. We’re talking about fathers and husbands who, with no warning, won’t be coming home for dinner tonight – and who may not see their families again for a decade at least. We are talking about a government policy that punishes children for the crimes of their parents.”