Illegal Immigration and the Church

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Just_wondering said:
Do you have any proof whatsoever as to the immigration status of the people importing heroin? Because it strikes me that it’s way easier for legals to do it than illegals - legal immigrants just need to find a way to hide it as they cross the border. I was under the impression that drug mules tended to be either citizens or legal immigrants who look squeaky-clean but are hiding their dark side.
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Recently Hannity’s America had a special on it. There have been other news reports as well. Illegals that are smuggled across the border are often made to transport the drugs. What choice do they have? They want to cross over and will do anything to get here. So again I say, you can’t honestly claim that heroin doesn’t enter this country along with some of the illegals.

As for drug mules that are US citizens and legal immigrants that transport drugs into this country, they are law breakers too along with illegal immigrants. They need to face prosecution and sometimes lose the citizenship that they were granted and then abused.
 
Certain crimes are malum prohibitum and not particularly harmful individually, but are harmful collectively. Pollution, counterfeiting, and illegal immigration have this character as crimes that are bad en masse. So asking how did illegal immigrants hurt me or anyone else is not the right question, though illegal immigrants do clearly create certain social harms by bringing with them in spite of themselves all of the problems of the poor: higher crime, higher illegitimacy, lower levels of education, communicable diseases, etc. These problems through a variety of means–international cooperation, charity, economic development, free market reforms–should be alleviated. But it is wrong to create or endorse a system of crimes designed to hurt one group–native-born Americans–to benefit another–big corporations and poor immigrants themselves. Justice requires taking into account the interests of all constituencies, including the interests of Americans in preserving their hard-fought economic and social system, as well as their cultural unity.

We are not supposed to abuse immigrants; but the abuse that illegal immigrants face is largely brought about by their own doing, no different than the fact that fugitives from justice must “live in the shadows.”

Nations have a right to preserve their character. The Catechism says:

1910 Each human community possesses a common good which permits it to be recognized as such; it is in the political community that its most complete realization is found. It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies

In other words, we can’t ignore the common good of Americans and allow its distinctive character to be destroyed in order to help individuals from other countries wily enough to avoid the border patrol. We should also ask in considering the supposed good of mass and illegal immigration how this hurts countries like Mexico and India by prolonging their deplorable economic and social conditions and depriving them of their most enterprising people. This is not just for the citizens of other countries left behind, nor is it just to American workers (and recent immigrants themselves) whose wages are pushed down by the constant influx of folks from the Third World.

Our gap in wealth from other countries is not random, but a product of our superior economic and social system based on free markets and free government. But the gap is enormous. Our conditions and those of the Third World will equalize over time if we do not control our borders. Our culture will be destroyed. Our unique economic and social conditions will be eliminated. The benefit of American life even to immigrants themselve will dissipate in a few generations. This is not something to be dismissed lightly.

I believe it is a cynical policy of many Bishops to promote illegal immigration in order to keep their membership up without any regard to the common good of America, their communities, or their citizen-faithful. When it is not this, it is largely naive and confused, even if well-meaning. Catholics can and I believe should oppose illegal immigration for the benefit of the country and our posterity.
 
Mansizedtarget said:
Our gap in wealth from other countries is not random, but a product of our superior economic and social system based on free markets and free government.
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Well, let’s see. A great deal of our initial weath as a nation came on the backs of slaves. A strange form of illegal immigration where strangers enter and steal you from your home.

A huge explosion in wealth came as a result of westward expansion and railroads. That one came at the expense of state sponsored genocide and the horrific exploitation of cheap immigrant labor (the same filthy immigrants volunteered by the tens of thousands and held the nation together in the Civil War).

Post WW-II, we build weath by investing extensively in the returning veterens (largest GI bill in history) and capitolized on being the only industrialized nation on earth that had not been extensively bombed and dismantled. That properity came at the loss of 50,000,000 lives world wide.

But, by all means, tell yourself that it is clean living, hard work, and regular flossing… :rolleyes:
Mansizedtarget said:
I believe it is a cynical policy of many Bishops to promote illegal immigration in order to keep their membership up without any regard to the common good of America, their communities, or their citizen-faithful. When it is not this, it is largely naive and confused, even if well-meaning. Catholics can and I believe should oppose illegal immigration for the benefit of the country and our posterity.
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In case you are wondering - Catholicism in the US is the result of unwelcome immigration period. The nation was overwhelmingly WASP, and Catholic discrimination was overt and rampant. So it seems fitting that the changing demographics is benefiting Catholicism in numbers.

But, more importantly, Catholics are Christian. Jesus spoke repeatedly about aliens to one’s state. This is where he clashed extensively with the Pharisee’s, who were extremely xenophobic. In the Gospels, how we treat the strangers among us is a condition on which we will be judged for salvation.

Xenophobia is fine for the culture of hate that pervades US politics, but it is fundementally un-Christian. When Catholicism purges Christ from it’s teachings, it will no longer be Christian, it will be a pagan cult.
 
Give me a break. Yes, bad things happened in the past, including to slaves and Indians. These admittedly cruel crimes happened in Mexico, Brazil, and Honduras too, but for some funny reason we’re an order of magnitude more orderly, more wealthy, and more stable as a country. Slavery didn’t invent the Model T Ford, or put a man on the moon, or invent the IBM PC. These are recent additions to our wealth, and the great majority of it is of recent vintage.

We have these blessings because of our political and economic system, which we inherited from Great Britain. If you transplanted every American into Mexico and every Mexican into the US, in fifty years which country do you think would be wealthier? (We know this in fact to be true based on European colonies in Rhodesia, South Africa, and Guyana, among other places, compared to their recently-formed ghettos of ex-colonials back in the mainland.)

It is not “xenophobia” to want to preserve one’s country. It is not uncharitable to strangers not to want them to dispossess you and your people of your land. This talk about La Raza is very real; that’s the real homeland and first loyalty of our recent arrivals. Under your logic, the Indians were wrong to resist the illegal immigrants from Britain, correct? But I’m sure you don’t think that.

No, this is basically the familiar logic that the “white man” (or European or Gentile or Catholic or whatever un-p.c. group is involved) is wrong until he exterminates himself or undermines his traditional-role-of-leadership-in-his-own-land talk, and it is ridiculous and suicidal. It is asked and expected of no other people on Earth. We are not harming anyone by preserving our country intact, any more than the door to your home is some great crime against the homeless. Give up the America-hating Marxist history; the eternal enemy of this leftist thinking is the Catholic Church and its longstanding home in Europe among European people.
 
Mansizedtarget said:
We have these blessings because of our political and economic system, which we inherited from Great Britain.
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Actually, the Constitution is modeled after a tribal coalition. The Bill of Rights is England’s principle contribution…

England was a monarchy at the time of the American revolution. Checks and balances, wholly elected (no House of Lords), non-parlimentary, even things like placing the ability to declare war with the Congress, were all intended to significantly differentiate between our system and Englands.

As far as stable, we’ve only been around for a couple of centuries and we have been on the brink several times (examine the socialist movement during the great depression) and clearly over the edge once (a very bloody civil war). At present, we are experiencing some fundemental shifts in power to extremes we have not had since that bloody conflict…

As far as transplanting - how about you relive your life, born black the bad part of Baltimore… :rolleyes:
 
England was a constitutional monarchy, with a bicameral legislature, a bill of rights, a tradition of bearing arms, trial by jury, habeas corpus, regionalism, strong private property rights, etc.

The British as well as the Roman and Greek examples loomed large among the founders in the debate over the Constitution. The Iriqouis Confederation, contrary to the popular myth, did not have anything to do with it. Confederacies of one kind or another were well known to the founders from the history of the Greek and Italian city-states.

Do you really belive what you’re saying? It sounds like stuff you picked up from a KRS-1 video.

America’s a great country. It’s because of the people–educated, middle class, abjuring political violence–and it’s because of our political and social system. Foreigners, particularly from the envy-ridden third worlders coming here today, have none of their traits and their countries have none of these qualities. Look at Mexico by way of example and its unhappy history of revolution, tyrants, anti-clerical violence, and haciendas and mass poverty, and its armies of impoverished peasants. American has no equivalent, with the possible exception of our own would-be aristocracy and impoverished poor in the rural South.
 
Mansizedtarget said:
We have these blessings because of our political and economic system, which we inherited from Great Britain.
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And apparently not us alone: pretty much every English speaking nation in the world has received the same blessing. What a remarkable coincidence.

Ender
 
The issue with the illegal immigrants from Mexico is not whether they deserve help, it is this, the Catholic Church (Bishop) should not take a stand against U.S. Immigration Law.
Yes we all understand the poor and uneducated are coming to this country because the U.S. Government and businesses have been using and taking advantage of undocumented workers. But they only provide what we, the average citizen, ask for. Cheap labor to keep our restaurant bills low and keep our landscaping costs down. So you and I bear the guilt for this abuse.
It is good for business and the economy to have low paid workers that you don’t need to pay benefits. or pay for insurance or unemployment. When the job is over just wave good-bye.
We in America have turned a blind eye to the sub-class created to serve us. That is until it became an drain on our economy. The unchecked flow of poor illeterate Mexicans has now reached, by some estimates 20 million. That is approximatly 7% of our U.S. population. Will you allow Congress to increase your taxes by 50% to cover the cost of their medical, education,…etc.
As a Catholic each of us is commanded to help our neighbor, the poor, infirmed and imprisioned. But that is on a one to one basis. If the Church (Bishop) wants to take a stand let them start by shedding a light on this sub-class of worker in the U.S. and raise the awareness level.
To justify letting all illegal Mexicans stay by saying, “They only came here to make a better life” dosen’t work. You must apply this argument to the entire world then. Will we open our borders to 20 million from Africa, China, Europe, South America and so on…
Our population would double in a years time and everyone would slide into poverty.
Finally, I have never heard anyone say they should not receive the Sacraments from the Church. Make sure you understand the how and why before you make a stand.
 
puzzleannie said:
the Church should be insuring that all Catholics wherever they are are catechized and brought to the sacraments, that all within the territory of the local church (diocese and parish) are sought out and served with its resources and invited to participate in community life, and that non-Catholics in their territory are evangelized. Distinctions between “legal and illegal” have no place in determining who is welcome at Mass, who is catechized and evangelized, who receives sacraments, who participates, and who has access to services and outreach.
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Hola,

Is not it the Church it self who emphasize “legal and illegal” when the Cardinal talks about immigration reform? If what you say is true, the Cardinal is wrong for making that distinction.

DRT
 
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