The Bay Area’s biggest religious institution, the Catholic Church, is throwing its weight against a federal immigration dragnet that in the past two years deported more than 6,500 people from the region.
“It helps replenish members of the congregations around the country,” said Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “The Catholic Church sees this as a way of keeping the pews full.”
Religious appeals on behalf of the downtrodden may be sincere, he said, but the economic consequences of illegal immigration hurt legal U.S. residents.
The last part of this quote is really the bottom line in this issue. Justice and charity do not exist in a vacuum, but are part of a larger picture of whether others are being dealt injustices and violations against charity, in service of a particular group. If and when no injustice to others results (from a policy of permissiveness & special exceptions), then there is an argument to be made. If not, however, then the issue is one of patisanship and favoritism at the expense of the needs of others.
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