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grampben
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AMEN!
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Ender
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The “fear and prejudice” canard is simple minded name calling; it is the tool of those who are unable to make an intelligent argument and it should be loudly objected to wherever it arises.
Nor should it and you are right to complain about it.
This needs to be made very clear: the Church takes no position on how our immigration problem should be resolved. You will find a great number of individuals who have opinions - including priests and bishops - but these are prudential questions and the Church is silent on how to fix them.
Make your decision on Catholicism, not on Catholics. My opinion of bishops in general is not one that would inspire confidence in Catholicism either - don’t let them scare you off.
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LDNCatholic
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If you find that Catholic Church holds the fullness of Truth, then one possible action would be to admit that the Church may know better than the rest of us.
God bless, and welcome to CAF.
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Ender
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No, it didn’t stop them from wanting to leave but it was quite effective in preventing them from going. I don’t care if people want to come here illegally; I care very much about preventing them from succeeding.
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Mystic_Warrior
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Tongue in cheek coming up…
And, we should also build a western and eastern fence. As a matter of fact, build a fence around the entire country. That would also keep out immigrants from other countries coming by boat. We could totally isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. There’s a precedence for this isolation - it’s called North Korea. And we see how happy they are.
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grampben
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It wasn’t so much the wall as it was the guards killing them for trying to leave. Should we shoot anyone trying to cross the border?
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Ender
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This is a response contained in one of your citations with which I agree:
“We do need to know what enforcement would cost,” he said, “but [the study] is a cartoon version of how enforcement would work.”
The study estimates that it would cost about $28 billion per year to apprehend illegal immigrants, $6 billion a year to detain them, $500 million for extra beds, $4 billion to secure borders, $2 million to legally process them and $1.6 billion to bus or fly them home.
The $28B number is absurd. As I said, there are efficient and inexpensive ways of identifying large numbers of illegals; it gets more expensive as the numbers decrease, but for the bulk of them the costs would be minimal. The other numbers are pretty small potatoes.
We can solve our problems whether or not Mexico solves hers. In fact, Mexico has no incentive to solve her problems so long as the US takes the pressure off. Almost 10% of the entire population of Mexico live in the US, half of them illegally.
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Mystic_Warrior
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Why is it absurd? What information do you have that I don’t have?
We can solve part of the problem of immigration ourselves. But, we cannot solve the immigration problem in our country without something changing in Mexico, whether we help them or they do it all alone. I’m not advocating helping them. All I’m saying is that something within their country has to change to make them want to stay in Mexico. If nothing changes in Mexico, the people will continue to try to come to this country, legally or illegally.
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4GBradley
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Print | Close this window
Shadow of vigilantes appears in Mexico drug war
Mon Jan 19, 20096:11pm EST
By Julian Cardona
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Shadowy vigilante groups are threatening Mexico’s drug gangs near the U.S. border in retaliation for a wave of murders and kidnappings that killed 1,600 people in this city alone last year.
One group in the border city of Ciudad Juarez pledged last week to “clean our city of these criminals” and said their mission was to “end the life of a criminal every 24 hours.”
The emergence of vigilantes would be a new twist to a vicious drug war that killed 5,700 people in Mexico last year and forced the United States to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Mexican government.
Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing center in the desert across from El Paso, Texas, was the scene of the worst violence in 2008 as drug cartels fought each other as well as staging kidnappings for ransom and extorting businessmen.
In an e-mail to news organizations, the “Juarez Citizen Command” said it was funded by local businessmen sick of abductions and extortion in the city, home to factories that export goods to the United States.
While none of the city’s 1,600 in the last year were undoubtedly the work of vigilantes, a body was found on Jan. 7 with a message next to it that read: “This is for those who continue extorting.”
And six men in their 20s and 30s were shot dead and dumped together in Ciudad Juarez in October with a cardboard sign reading: “Message for all the rats: This will continue.”
Drug gangs often leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims, but security officials said those two incidents might have been the work of vigilantes.
Another group, “Businessmen United, The Death Squad” put a video on Internet site YouTube last June threatening to go after kidnappers and criminals in Ciudad Juarez, the biggest city in Mexico’s Chihuahua state. The video is no longer on YouTube.
“FACELESS, ANONYMOUS”
State officials in Chihuahua said they were investigating who was behind the messages.
“We cannot tolerate the presence of these type of faceless, anonymous groups,” said Manuel del Castillo, a spokesman for the state government.
Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden said last week that Mexico’s drug violence was possibly a greater problem than Iraq for President-elect Barack Obama. The U.S. Justice Department also says Mexican gangs are one of the biggest threats to the United States.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent tens of thousands of troops and federal police to battle drug gangs but the violence has become worse since he took office in 2006.
At least two other groups calling themselves vigilantes have sent statements to news organizations in the past two months, one in the northern state of Sonora bordering Arizona, and the other in the Pacific state of Guerrero, home to the beach resort of Acapulco.
In Ciudad Juarez, some residents say they would welcome vigilantes. “That way they would stop the gangs, the mafia. People are leaving here because of so many murders,” said David Hinojosa, 30, who shines shoes in the city.
The city has been rocked by gun battles and beheadings by rival gangs fighting over smuggling routes into Texas, despite the presence of around 3,000 troops and federal police.
But local lawmakers say encouraging vigilantes is a mistake. Some residents question whether soldiers are moonlighting as hitmen for drug gangs, a charge the army denies.
“People’s reactions are understandable. But this is not the route we should take to solve things,” said Andreu Rodriguez, an opposition lawmaker and the head of security issues in Chihuahua’s state legislature. (Additional reporting and writing by Robin Emmott in Monterrey; Editing by Kieran Murray)
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LDNCatholic
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Viglianteism is not a true war and so cannot possibly abide by the Just War Theory.
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Mystic_Warrior
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And when people take the law in their own hands, it not only circumvents the legal path of justice, but encourages chaos. If these vigilante groups are the judge and jury and exterminators, it makes a mockery of our judicial system and places innocent people at an even greater risk.
The goal should be the neighborhoods band together and work hand in hand with the local police and border control agents to curb the violence. No citizen should be allowed to form these vigilante groups and kill. To me, they are just as much a criminal as the ones they claim to fight against. And in the eyes of our judicial system, this is also the case.
The goal should be the neighborhoods band together and work hand in hand with the local police and border control agents to curb the violence. No citizen should be allowed to form these vigilante groups and kill. To me, they are just as much a criminal as the ones they claim to fight against. And in the eyes of our judicial system, this is also the case.
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pnewton
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No it does not. But remember that the Just War Theory is only one part of a larger moral teaching on legitimate self-defense. That is allowed in Catholic theology. The difference is between hunting people who have commited violence and killing them and being prepared to kill them as they pose a threat to you or other innocent bystanders. The latter is allowed.
But none of this really has to do with immigration and is nothing but a red herring. Most immigrants are non-violent.
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LDNCatholic
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I agree. Self defence is fine. Hunting human beings as if you have some kind of right from the Almighty to dispense justice as you see fit, is not.
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Ender
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Here is another quote from the article you cited:
"Will Adams, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), an outspoken advocate of stronger immigration laws, called the study an “an interesting intellectual exercise” by liberals that is “useless . . . because no one’s talking about” employing mass deportation as a tactic."
The study assumes that if we do X it will cost Y billions of dollars but since no one is seriously suggesting we do X it doesn’t matter if the estimate is correct or not. We don’t need to have massive hunts for illegal aliens to get the number down to a manageable size - and we don’t need to spend tens of billions a year to accomplish it.
It would be helpful if you could stick to one point at a time without wandering off into grotesqueness. The statement was made that the Berlin Wall didn’t keep people from **wanting **to escape to the west, implying I suppose that a border fence wouldn’t keep people from wanting to sneak into the US. The obvious rebuttal was that the Berlin Wall kept people from **actually **escaping which was its purpose, just as the purpose of a border fence has nothing to do with changing peoples desires but is meant to curtail their actions. Did you really not understand that?
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LeroyCRHP
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I think this thread screams…WWJD.
Who do you see in the answers and comments?
Who do you see in the answers and comments?
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4GBradley
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There is no Just War only murder. Do not excuse yourselves! But there is good and evil, there is right and wrong and as there is a God in heaven, he also would declare the invasion of the United States by forces from the south of its border to be a wrong and an evil act that must be opposed by the forces of the free world.
God and history will record the decisions you make today as either patriotic or cowardly. There will be no fence sitting, no theory, no bible thumping. He will judge and those who were betrayed will glory at His judgment. Those who came before us to fight their battles without hesitation shall see God’s righteousness and they will be vindicated.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace."
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*** William Tecumseh Sherman***
God and history will record the decisions you make today as either patriotic or cowardly. There will be no fence sitting, no theory, no bible thumping. He will judge and those who were betrayed will glory at His judgment. Those who came before us to fight their battles without hesitation shall see God’s righteousness and they will be vindicated.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace."
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*** William Tecumseh Sherman***
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LDNCatholic
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Thats fine then, seeing as patriotism isn’t the path to Heaven.
Read the story of the Sheep and the Goats before attempting to tell Catholics what God will think of their actions.
Also, there is such a thing as a Just War, but your personal vendetta against Latin Americans is not it.
Not all killing is murder either.
Vaya con Dios
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grampben
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The church would disagree.
I gotta be honest, most people here would rather heed what Thomas Aquinas had to say about it than you.
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4GBradley
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So you follow God, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because of a big reward you think you’ll get!!
As God has said many time,: “I’d rather have an honest enemy than a phony friend!”
All killing is wrong! World War 2 should have ended all killing on this planet but people get lazy. Understanding that to prevent war you must prepare for it is the number 1 lesson that countries have always forgotten in their pursuit of wealth.
The only reason people keep using the US borders as a revolving door is because the American people put up with it. It would have stopped years ago, and saved countless lives, if the aroused US citizenry had demanded it.
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4GBradley
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I’ll listen to any American willing to fight for his country. Everyone else is an appeaser.
***“An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”
- Winston Churchill***
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