Immigration - Thank-You Cardinal O'Malley

[Theo520]

How is it that Mexico can’t fulfill their responsibilities … turn on the 6:00 news. In reference to your comments regarding the CCC quotes, I would advise you to delve deeper into what the church teaches

I would advice you to better understand the UN Refugee program, along with the Church position on it, and how our requirements are in allignment.

The church advocates supporting refugees, not economic migrants looking for $15/hr.

Please also respond to my specific question on subsidiarity, repeated below.

how is it that Mexican families and their communities cannot fulfill their responsibilities?

It is fundamental to implementing subsidiarity. I am responsible to help my neighbor when they can’t fulfill their responsibility to their family. I’ve stated that it appears both the families and supporting organizations, and Church, are in place and capable.

edit - i just saw your comment about the 6 pm news. I find that a bit too vague, but I’ll bite and respond:

• our evening news shows it’s own share of crime and violence, it doesn’t justify people from Chicago’s bad area moving to Canada.
• The mexican families, church and other related ‘subsidiarity’ organizations have the ability to work on that problem. We can’t fix the problem for them from 1,000 miles north.
• don’t assume that the 6pm news violence is what your ave person sees. Most americans don’t see the Chicago shootings in their communities. As in the US, just don’t get in the drug trade, mind your manners and move to a safer community. Leading a Christian life insulates you from most of that risk.
• Violence among the cartels may be justification to elect a new mayor or president (subsidiarity in action), but it’s usually not justification for immigration as a refugee (again, you should study the history and requirements). However, if a journalist or someone was specifically targeted for that violence, we have immigration visas to help them flee.

 

[whyeyeman]

Our GNP has risen constantly since immigration has started to increase in the 1970’s, as has the standard of living.

That’s false. The real wage rate in the US hasn’t increased for decades.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Loud-living-dogma:

Our GNP has risen constantly since immigration has started to increase in the 1970’s, as has the standard of living.

That’s false. The real wage rate in the US hasn’t increased for decades.

FYI – that was pnewton who said that.

 

[Ender]

The point is, Jesus, as a man, sure hit a lot of liberal talking points with his life and his teaching. How could it not be that today, at least on some topics of social justice we would receive teaching from the bishops here that seem liberal?

The real difference between Jesus’ remarks and those of the bishops today is that Jesus told us the goals we should work to achieve while the bishops presume to tell us how best to achieve them.

There is nothing in all of scripture, or in any of the writings of the Fathers or Doctors of the church to tell us whether or not to build a wall, whether or not to have a higher or lower minimum wage, whether or not more or less gun control is needed, how the budget should be apportioned, or indeed that provides any direction on any of the myriad political issues we face. That a bishop recommends we implement this or that specific policy represents not the church but his opinion alone.

There are virtually no moral or immoral policies, only moral or immoral reasons for advancing them.

 

[Ender]

But the studies you cited do not show the opposite of what I claimed. They show something about the opinion of employers. The connection between that and an actual effect on job prospects for US citizens is only a supposition not supported by any data.

How about this data presented to Congress in 2013? (See post #111)

Putting aside economic theory, the last 13 years have witnessed an extraordinary situation in the U.S. labor market — all of the employment gains have gone to immigrant workers.

 

[whyeyeman]

Mass immigration destroys nations. My beloved Britain was once a stable, small, Christian, community driven society. For the past 50 years we have had non stop mass immigration and the country has been destroyed.

Ok, perhaps immigrants may benefit fat business men who benefit from their cheap labour, but woe to the rich! The poor working class suffers at their hands.

 

[joemel]

Going back to the article, there it mentions the difficulties encountered by Fr. Pineda regarding ordination and and his undocumented status. Granted the whole story is not known, but I’m siding with the priest that he has and is pursuing every avenue possible. He has every good reason to be allowed citizenship. Religious workers (ordained or non-ordained) are not 100% guaranteed permanent residency even with added employer sponsorship-it does not guarantee it. You also mistake our immigration system for reliability and accuracy, however there are plenty of examples of inconsistencies.
Matthew 22:34-40 offers some more good advice

 

[Theo520]

So the article confirms he’s well used to his visa uncertainty.
We have no idea what avenues he or the church perused,
just a shared observation that the church has some experience in getting visas for immigrant priests.

Stop putting words in my mouth, I’ve never said our system was 'reliable; and ‘accurate’, I’m not even sure what you mean by that interjection. I expect the process is very bureaucratic, with the associated problems - lots of paperwork and no mistakes allowed.

Regarding your Matthew 22:34-40 quote, I interpret it as helping my actual neighbor ,while you focus on your metaphorical neighbor.

Let me illustrate, I work with at risk foster kids on the weekend. These are kids with behavioral problems and histories of abuse and addiction, all in their teens. I want to see job prospects for them, I know they are the least desirable employees, the last hired and first fired. They frankly need more TLC and direction from their manager if they are going to learn good work ethics and how to be a valuable employee.

I also know there will be more entry level positions, more employers willing to take a risk on them only if our local labor market is tight. Put them up against an industrious illegal and they lose out. The illegal traveled a thousand miles to take the fish processing job, and would likely be a much better employee on the line.

I see helping these local kids get a start as my priority while your globalist approach has them out of work, while you are helping people from another country be successful. You choose to help the economic migrants.over the abused and imperfect Foster kids.

I think I’m the only one of us actually practicing subsidiarity.

 

[pnewton]

Mass immigration destroys nations. My beloved Britain was once a stable, small, Christian, community driven society. For the past 50 years we have had non stop mass immigration and the country has been destroyed.

I must of missed the news that day when England was destroyed. As far as the United States, it did not destroy us in the past. We are not currently destroyed, despite what you and Reverend Jeremiah Wright think.

 

[Arkansan]

Arkansan:

Bringing in low-skill immigrants drives down wages and drives up unemployment. It may be good for the owners of big business, but it’s not good for ordinary people.

Studies have shown that common assumption to be false.

You know that’s not true right? There’s no evidence, whatsoever, that importing low-skill labor increase wages.

 

[whyeyeman]

Ever heard of hyperbole?

 

[whyeyeman]

As far as the United States, it did not destroy us in the past.

Your country was created by immigration. There was no country there before Europeans immigrants went over. There is a difference between immigration creating a country, and mixing cultures inside a country that has already been created.

England, on the other hand, has had more or less the same population for thousands of years. We had stable communities. Now we don’t. We had peaceful cities. Now we don’t.

 

[godisgood77]

Your country was created by immigration. There was no country there before Europeans immigrants went over.

There most certainly was a country here before Immigrants came to the US. European colonialist aggression took the country from its native peoples…

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

Not entirely true.

There were several hundred tribal civilizations, there was no concept of a “country”.

European settlers bought some land, and then due to differences in concept of ownership it led to violence, and that coupled with a deficient immune system on the natives part led to old world diseases unintentionally wiping out huge populations of natives leaving vast expanses of land empty and uninhabited, which European settlers then populated and made use of.

On top of that, before the Europeans arrived, the natives were slaughtering and enslaving each other, so another group of people coming along and doing the same hardly changed moral landscape of the new world, not that it makes it any better.

 

[whyeyeman]

Lol. It wasn’t a country, it was just native tribes wandering the land. That’s not a country.

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

A lot of them weren’t nomadic and did have settled lands that they farmed and resided on permanently, but again, there were no defined borders outside of their direct villages, some overarching treaties of allegiance, but that still doesn’t make a country.

 

[whyeyeman]

Even if it were the case that native Americans had a country (which they didn’t), that doesn’t mean the country of the USA wasn’t created by European immigrants.

 

[JanSobieskiIII]

Agreed. I just really hate the myth of the noble savage and that life in North America was so peaceful and great before evil whitey came along and screwed it all up for those poor natives.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Agreed. I just really hate the myth of the noble savage and that life in North America was so peaceful and great before evil whitey came along and screwed it all up for those poor natives.

The nobility of the native Americans (or lack of it) has nothing to do with this. If that were the standard, the current occupants of this land would have lost their moral right to it long ago. The fact that they fought with each other does not diminish their moral right to continue living here. The natives having a different societal organization does not diminish their moral right to continue living where they were. So talk about how they were nomadic or that they fought among themselves is a deflection.

All that said, whyeyeman’s statement that the US was created by immigration is true. So I guess this observation of mine does not matter to that point.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

But the studies you cited do not show the opposite of what I claimed. They show something about the opinion of employers. The connection between that and an actual effect on job prospects for US citizens is only a supposition not supported by any data.

How about this data presented to Congress in 2013? (See post #111)

Putting aside economic theory, the last 13 years have witnessed an extraordinary situation in the U.S. labor market — all of the employment gains have gone to immigrant workers.

This is getting closer to answering the right question, but not exactly. For one thing, this is just one data point. That means some the outcomes of this period of time could very well be the result of characteristics of unique events that happened to occur during this time. The period in question started with a recession in 2001, but was overshadowed by the financial meltdown in 2008. Hopefully this is not an event we plan on seeing repeated going forward.

How might this have impacted the numbers in your quote? The job losses during the Great Recession did not hit every industry evenly. Of course finance was hard hit, being at the very center of the crisis. Also professional and business services, education and health services, construction, to name a few. It is entirely possible that the industries that lost the most jobs were staffed disproportionately by non-immigrants. Certainly immigrants would have relatively little representation in finance and government.
So that could quite possibly explain the numbers in your quote. The biggest variable was the financial crisis, not an influx of immigrants. We have had high immigration rates throughout the 1990’s which was a period of economic growth for everyone. It is no coincidence that the report delivered to Congress that you cite started in 2001 and did not include the 1990’s because it might have told a very different story where most of the job gains were realized by natives.

I can think of several other factors that may have made the change in employment numbers for immigrants higher than the change in the same thing for non-immigrants, but this is the most obvious. I think the way you conduct a study of the effect of immigration on American workers is by looking at periods of time when immigration was high and when immigration was low and seeing how the corresponding employment numbers are affected. When economists do this they conclude there is essentially no effect, positive or negative, on the employment prospects and wages caused by immigration. Here is one such study.