From Robert Klein Engler -
Cardinal George and the Illinois bishops have come out in favor of so-called comprehensive immigration reform. They are hoping that whatever influence they have among Chicago and Illinois Catholics, they can use that influence to further another law that runs more than 1,200 pages. Evidently, they did not have enough of a betrayal with healthcare reform. Here are five reasons why the Cardinal and Illinois bishops ought to change their mind about support for immigration reform.
1. The Cardinal and Illinois bishops have misled Catholics scripturally about immigration. There are many passages in the Bible that encourage us to welcome the stranger. (Deuteronomy 10: 19, or Hebrews 13:1) Yet, none of these passages encourage us to welcome an invading army of poor people intent in draining our health care system, debasing our school, stealing our legal identities and our territory, diminishing our sovereignty, refusing to speak our language, using their children as human shields, and destroying our neighborhoods. Illegal immigration from Mexico, encouraged by the corrupt Mexican government, does all that to Illinois. To hide these sinful activities by using quotations from the Bible about not welcoming strangers is misleading. Furthermore, there is much evidence that those who are in the United States illegally from Mexico are not assimilating. The position of the Illinois bishops on immigration will end by dividing the United States into a Spanish speaking and an English speaking nation and creating more social unrest, not less. The late Professor Huntington of Yale University claims, “Mexican immigration poses challenges to our policies and to our identity in a way nothing else has in the past.” There is a world of difference between welcoming a stranger and welcoming an invading army of foreigners.
2. The Cardinal and the Illinois bishops have misled Catholics morally. The Catholic moral principle of subsidiarity requires us to recognize that solutions to the problems caused by illegal immigration are not always to be found on the national level, but on the level of the local community, instead. To solve Mexico's social problems illegal immigrants must accept their moral responsibility of returning to Mexico (Ireland and Poland, too) and working to change conditions in their own country. Illinois Catholics, and especially the Cardinal and bishops have the moral responsibility to encourage that return, and to administer charitable programs in Mexico that change conditions there. To do otherwise, is to encourage greed both in US employers and in illegal aliens. To do otherwise is to have the Church encourage a sin it is set up to discourage. Furthermore, amnesty is not mercy. Amnesty is to illegal immigration what enablers are to alcoholics. Amnesty only gets more of the sin of illegal immigration. Undocumented immigrants are citizenship thieves. When someone steals your car you do not dismiss the theft by calling it undocumented ownership. Unfortunately, many Illinois bishops believe in "social justice" and in the Babylonian Heresy. They have lost the traditional teachings of the Church in favor of contemporary meanings. The consequence of their actions will be to create social upheaval instead of peace between nations.
3. Immigration in 2013 is not like immigration in 1895. The US immigration experience we read about in books like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," or Willa Cather's, "My Ántonia" no longer apply, today. The US frontier with cheap land for settlement has been closed for over a century. There are more than enough poor people already in our cities. Corporate greed must not feed on foreign poverty. The high tech industries should train local workers first before encouraging immigration. The twenty-first century must not repeat the mistakes of the nineteenth century when it comes to immigration. Mexico cannot solve its twenty-first century social problems by exporting poverty to Chicago. Catholics must understand that the Democrat Party in Illinois needs a permanent underclass to survive. Illinois Catholics have a moral responsibility to not support policies that perpetuate an underclass and continued poverty.
4. There are cultural differences between the United States and Mexico that are not dissolved by moving people across borders the way money is moved around. The Catholic Church has effected an incomplete cultural and religious conversion in Mexico and cannot resolve that incomplete conversion by preaching immigration reform to parishioners in Chicago. Because of cultural differences, many Mexican Catholics involved in the immigrant rights movement are mostly Mexican Marxists. They are not peace loving and pious. Look at the Mexican Revolution of 1910 or the drug cartels today as example of the incomplete conversion of Mexico to the teachings of Christ. Do the Illinois bishops want to bring these bloody problems to Chicago for the sake of filling pews in failing churches or to increase the Sunday offering so they can pay the cost of sexual abuse cases? The Catholic Church would do better if it had policies that completed the conversion of Mexico, and then went on to evangelize in the urban ghettos of Chicago, the most segregated city in the United States.
5. What is preventing Illinois bishops and the Cardinal from realizing Catholic policies and social teaching when it comes to welfare and immigration? The real answers to immigration and welfare have been in scripture and Catholic morality for centuries. The fact of the matter is Illinois bishops and the Cardinal are in the thralls of the Democratic Party, which is a structure of evil. This enthrallment is the obstacle to true Catholic charity. If we want Catholic immigration reform in Illinois, then we must first have Catholic political reform. Cardinal George must be converted to see how the Irish, Catholics Democrats of his youth have become the same-sex marriage Marxists of his old age. The Illinois bishops must come to see that the Democrat Party in Chicago stands for everything that Catholics know as sinful and damnable. Is this conversion possible? Probably not. Political reality is that many Illinois Catholics are liberals and progressives first, then Catholics second. If the Illinois bishops and the Cardinal would look closely, they will see they may have given their belief in immigration reform first to the Democrat Party and Babylonian Heresy. Many may become blind shepherds, who lead their flock into the jaws of the wolf and not even know it.
REFERENCES
"Are US Bishops doing a Mexican Hat Dance?"
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/are_us_bishops_doing_a_mexican_hat_dance.html
"From Mexico City to Rome: Illegal Immigration and the Vatican"
http://www.familyfriendsfirearms.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-35635.html
"Roman Catholics and Illegal Immigration"
http://www.alipac.us/f12/roman-catholics-illegal-immigration-39537/
"Illegal Immigration and the Bible"
http://www.alipac.us/f9/illegal-immigration-bible-80063/
"Greenbacks and Wetbacks"
http://www.banderasnews.com/0505/edop-greenwet.htm
"Mexico and the Fundamental Transformation of the United States"
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49185
"Illegal Immigration and Black America"
http://cfirdallas.blogspot.com/2004/05/illegal-immigration-and-black-america.html
"Social Justice at the University"
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49390
"Open Borders, Closed Minds"
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-klein-engler/open-borders-closed-minds/paperback/product-20978853.html
