USCCB Condemns Separating Immigrant Children from Families

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jeannetherese said:
Hi Leaf,
I was thinking that the statistic might be a way of thinking about validity of claims. if 92% of the claimant have invalid claims, then there seems to be an issue of trustworthiness.
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An applicant for asylum does not know ahead of time if his application will be granted. The fact that it has not been granted is not a sign of untrustworthiness. The applicant may very well have told the whole truth about his case. But the judgement can still go against him if the things he is fleeing are not judged to be on our list of things for which we grant asylum. For example, the list was just recently restricted even further a few weeks ago. Having a judgement go against them is not an indication that the mommy is not real. That’s why I said we need reasonable statistically-based judgement. Just tell me how many who claimed to be mommies actually turned out to be sex trafficking fake mommies.
 
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I know. It’s the all are equal but some are more equal than others and get to cut in line issue. There is a huge demand to come to this country and quotas in place to help control/direct this flow. Cutting in line will move some to the front and into the States but this may merely shift the burden of waiting onto others.
 
Ridgerunner said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Wouldn’t you rather have protestants than atheists?
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I would have preferred that the illegal immigration proponents in the U.S. had not, by their actions, caused the infection of Protestantism to spread to formerly Catholic countries.
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What? Now you are blaming proponents of immigration for the spread of Protestantism in Central America? I don’t see how the two things are at all causally related.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
Apparently the (former?) gangsters can get out of their gang lifestyle by joining a Protestant church, but the Catholic Church doesn’t inspire them the same way? Or something?
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Most people in Latin America are Catholic from birth and by default. If they are going to join a different church, they are going to be expected to straighten up and fly right.

If they don’t straighten up, they remain Catholic.

I’m sure you would find an opposite situation in a country that was predominantly Protestant and you were looking at Catholic converts.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
What? Now you are blaming proponents of immigration for the spread of Protestantism in Central America? I don’t see how the two things are at all causally related.
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I absolutely do.

I have known Hispanics from there (and Mexico) who came here, converted to Protestantism, then went back to their home countries to convert people. The world HQ of the Assemblies of God, for instance, is not far from where I sit. They have an entire school for those missionaries, and it’s not small.
 
That’s a good explanation. I wasn’t really able to make sense of it in my mind. Thanks!
 
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Ridgerunner said:
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LeafByNiggle:
What? Now you are blaming proponents of immigration for the spread of Protestantism in Central America? I don’t see how the two things are at all causally related.
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I absolutely do.

I have known Hispanics from there (and Mexico) who came here, converted to Protestantism, then went back to their home countries to convert people. The world HQ of the Assemblies of God, for instance, is not far from where I sit. They have an entire school for those missionaries, and it’s not small.
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I see. You are likening Protestantism to a disease (since you use the word “infect”). It is a disease that is rampant in the US, but until recently it was not common in Central America. Well, let me ask you something. If there was a real biological disease in the US that actually threatens one’s soul, wouldn’t you want to leave the US if you could and move to Honduras or one of those countries where the disease had not taken hold before raising your children and risking their exposure? Did you try to emigrate to Honduras 20 years ago? No? Then why are you satisfied staying in the US and risking the eternal salvation of your children and theirs?
 
This may be one of the most ridiculous things I have read in quite some time.

There is no comparison between the vulnerability/invulnerability of 19th Century or early 20th Century immigrants from Europe and today’s Central Americans who might not have seen a priest in their village in 20 years and, in any event, don’t have a catechism written in Mayan that they can’t read anyway.

And Protestantism was rampant in the U.S. before there were enough Catholics here to amount to anything. Have you not read the history of Catholicism in the U.S.?

I really am astonished that American Catholics, especially clergy, don’t see what massive immigration has done to Catholicism among Hispanics both here and in Latin America. I don’t know where you live but there are many, many Hispanic protestant churches here now. Thirty years ago, there were none.

I’m going to make a distinction that some might not like. It’s not quite as bad with Mexicans. I’m not sure why except that “Guadalupana” is part of their culture and racial self-understanding. They don’t turn loose of that readily. Central Americans don’t have that.
 
Hi Leaf,
It seems a bit unrealistic to expect those crossing the border to engage in illegal activities to self-identify as such, thus it will be difficult to come up with a number. I think you might be interested in data pointing to the problem of human trafficking though and that you might consider United Nations reports to have a degree of credibility.


This is older data (2010-2012) but the maps and graphs are interesting. Page 35 shows El Salvador as a source of illegal adoption and child selling.
The regional overview for the Americas begins on page 70 and I am excerpting:
"Regional overviews

71
traffickers in the Americas is also relatively high, ranging
around 40 per cent for prosecutions as well as convictions.
These shares are similar in both subregions, even if some-
what higher in South America. A closer look reveals that
Central American countries record higher shares of female
involvement in the trafficking process (which may be
related to the profile of the victims detected there),
whereas Canada in North America reported a much lower
female conviction rate.
Profile of the victims
The profiles of the victims detected across the two subre-
gions of the Americas are similar. Child trafficking
accounts for almost 30 per cent of the total number of
detected victims, with adults making up the other 70 per
cent. These shares are similar to those found for the 2007-
2010 period.
A closer look at the two subregions brings to light some
differences in terms of the profiles of detected victims.
While in North America and in the South Cone of South
America, adult trafficking accounts for a larger share of
victims than the regional average, the share of detected
child trafficking is relatively high in Central America and
in the northern part of South America.
Most of the detected child victims are girls. Out of every
three children detected as victims, two are girls and one
is a boy. This breakdown applies to the whole region. The
females also dominate among the adults. Adult women
account for approximately half of all detected victims in
the Americas, whereas some 20 per cent are men.
There is a clearly increasing detection rate of children in
North and Central America and the Caribbean. "
I hope this will help with our conversation.
May God bless you.
jt
 
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Leaf,
I am also adding some information from the profile of the offenders from the same pages (70-71) of the U.N. report.
“Regional overviews
II
71
Overall, the share of women among the total number of traffickers in the Americas is also relatively high, ranging
around 40 per cent for prosecutions as well as convictions.
These shares are similar in both subregions, even if some-
what higher in South America. A closer look reveals that
Central American countries record higher shares of female
involvement in the trafficking process (which may be
related to the profile of the victims detected there),
whereas Canada in North America reported a much lower
female conviction rate.”
The map on page 37 also offers a sense of the problem of child trafficking in El Salvador relative to other countries.


.
 
Ridgerunner said:
This may be one of the most ridiculous things I have read in quite some time.

There is no comparison between the vulnerability/invulnerability of 19th Century or early 20th Century immigrants from Europe and today’s Central Americans who might not have seen a priest in their village in 20 years and, in any event, don’t have a catechism written in Mayan that they can’t read anyway.

And Protestantism was rampant in the U.S. before there were enough Catholics here to amount to anything. Have you not read the history of Catholicism in the U.S.?

I really am astonished that American Catholics, especially clergy, don’t see what massive immigration has done to Catholicism among Hispanics both here and in Latin America. I don’t know where you live but there are many, many Hispanic protestant churches here now. Thirty years ago, there were none.

I’m going to make a distinction that some might not like. It’s not quite as bad with Mexicans. I’m not sure why except that “Guadalupana” is part of their culture and racial self-understanding. They don’t turn loose of that readily. Central Americans don’t have that.
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Are the Americas south of the Rio Grande generating ex-Catholics at the rate that the US and Canada are? I don’t just mean converts to Protestant churches. I don’t even mean nominal Catholics of the hatch-match-dispatch persuasion. I mean will-never-darken-the-door-of-a-Catholic-church former.

I mean that as an honest question. I don’t know the answer. I just know it is very bad in the US, Canada and many parts of Europe.
 
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jeannetherese said:
Hi Leaf,
It seems a bit unrealistic to expect those crossing the border to engage in illegal activities to self-identify as such, thus it will be difficult to come up with a number.
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Your difficulty in finding the statistic that supports your point is not my problem. I simply stated that without that statistic, one cannot credibly say that most asylum seekers with what they claim is their children are in fact traffickers. But I think you overestimate the impossibility of finding the needed statistics. There are other ways besides trusting in the testimony of the suspected traffickers themselves. For example, you could examine the traffickers that are discovered and detained by law enforcement. If they can be identified from fingerprints or photographs of people who had previously been granted asylum, that would be one way. I’m sure law enforcement and social scientists could come up with more ways. So keep looking. In the meantime, I maintain that most mommies seeking asylum really are mommies seeking asylum, and so it does not make sense to punish them all like traffickers.
I think you might be interested in data pointing to the problem of human trafficking though and that you might consider United Nations reports to have a degree of credibility.
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Oh, you don’t have to convince me that trafficking is a huge problem. I believe it. But again, it is a misapplication of these statistics to conclude that most asylum seekers are traffickers.
 
Pup7 said:
It is NOT legal to illegally enter and THEN ask for asylum.
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Agreed.

The problem is that legal asylees are legally entering through legal ports and legally petitioning for asylum. I’ve linked to these cases ad nauseum.
Pup7 said:
Statistically speaking, most of these people are not asylees.
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Great. Cite the stats!

Even then, there’s no explaining away the injustice toward asylees.
 
Oh good grief. Do NOT paint Trump as an ally to our faith. :roll_eyes: My son’s homemade slime can stretch farther than that attempt. The man is a womanizer.
 
blackforest said:
It’s not. Sessions admitted that it was just to “get the message out” that they’re not welcome. The feds effectively are using babies and children as political pawns.
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Please don’t quote me when you are changing the subject.

Parents in custody are not told the exact location of their child as a matter of policy, for the child’s protection.
 
Pup7 said:
And as I said, not a “false dichotomy” - a phrase which has become nothing more than a buzzword.
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How would you describe such a fallacy then? I agree that we tend to over use words, so maybe there is a better way to say the same thing. In any case, the economy of a country is not zero-sum, meaning, it is not fixed. More people working can increase the GNP. More efficient means of production can increase GNP. I think every bishop in the United States, who have been considered ignorant and uninformed, understand this much at least.
o_mlly said:
We are broke. Is it virtuous to do good at the cost of others (future generations) or should we bear the burden ourselves?
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No, we choose to spend money elsewhere, specifically, the military, despite the fact that we already are the largest in the world. We are not “largest” enough.
 
Pup7 said:
I read the backlog is 318,000 (and the more I think about it, I think that was from ONE YEAR ALONE) but we’ll go with a figure between the 600K and that one - for grins, let’s call it 500,000 people.

$6,000 over 500,000 people is a whopping THREE BILLION DOLLARS.

Let me say that again.

$6,000 over 500,000 people is a whopping THREE BILLION DOLLARS.
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You are switching figures. The current discussion, for which something like this sort of monitoring was suggested, was for those families with children, not half a million people. Using your own figure of $6000 a year to monitor a parent, it would be cheaper than just 10 days of incarcerating a child, 5 days if there are two children, etc.

This whole idea that we are broke and can’t afford to have immigrants begs the question as to whether immigrants cost, first , and whether they cost more than enforcement, second.
 
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PetraG said:
You cannot morally achieve a just end by using an unjust means. Period.
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That is the problem here. Whatever one believes about immigration can be a matter of “prudence” to use a term misused a lot in this discussion, but it should not be immoral. What is happening now is immoral.
 
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