Illegal Humans
I have been a pro-life activist since I was a kid. Most pro-aborts assume my family got me involved but that is not the case. I got MY family involved. I was so horrified to see broken baby bodies and even more horrified when I discovered people justified those broken baby bodies.
My pro-life convictions do not stop with babies. I believe my pro-life convictions began with my education in history. As I have mentioned, my father has an outstanding library. As a child, I grew up reading his books on the Holocaust that tried to explain how such a terrible evil could have been allowed and justified by an educated society. I always asked myself when I read the books about The Righteous, those who saved Jews and others targeted by the Nazis, if I would be brave enough to do that. I was horrified at the stories of desperate people trying to flee and they were not given sanctuary by other countries. That lack of sanctuary was a death sentence for people. Worse, though, was that normal every day people completely agreed to and justified the Holocaust.
The whole concept of human beings being “illegal” makes my skin crawl. Whether they are unwanted unborn children, citizens who have had their citizenship stripped from them, or the latest craze in society, undocumented immigrants, what folks like to call “illegal aliens” as if they are some other species from a different planet, the rhetoric never changes. People will rightly point out that unlike unwanted babies or Jews in Nazi Germany, illegal immigrants are not sentenced to death. Although, how anyone can make such a claim since most of these immigrants are from the poorest regions of Mexico and Latin America, is beyond me. The distinction is a big one. But for those who are being hunted until they are caught by law enforcement, I imagine the fear and uncertainty are similar.
Since unborn children are not persons under the law, they are not entitled to the rights under the law. Since undocumented immigrants did not obtain legal papers, they are also not entitled to the rights under the law. That is the law. Women also argue that the fetus did NOT obtain that woman’s permission to reside in her womb. The law agrees with her.
About three years ago, my husband & I were visiting family in LA when we were stopped by a random police check point. They were asking drivers for identification. I was outraged that in the United States of America we would have id checks in the street! And then, as a newly married woman, I became aware that my last name was Hispanic. By marriage I became the suspected. The only way to tell a legal human from an illegal human is to ask, and since most illegal humans in our society have brown skin and speak with an accent, any Hispanic is a target. My husband gave the police officer his military id. Thankfully, my husband is a white Hispanic so he is not as targeted as much as the brown ones are.
My friends, when they make any human being illegal, we all can be illegal. It is arbitrary. We either have human rights or we do not. The Constitution does NOT give me my rights. My right are INALIENABLE and GOD given. For what ever reason, humans NEED to have “the other.” Someone to pick on, someone to eradicate. I don’t know why we have this need. But watching the news lately about the illegal human being crackdown that DENIES HOUSING, FOOD, TRANSPORTATION to HUMAN BEINGS, in my old college town where I lived for FOUR years and elsewhere around the country makes me sick. And as the illegal human beings in my city gather in private homes to pray the Rosary and beg God’s protection on them from being targeted by the city police as one Assemblyman wants to do, I feel helpless. So I join them in prayer.
The day that human beings can cross nations’ borders as easily as a bag of chips or a pair of Nikes, will be a blessed day indeed.
I think Christians can have principled debates about immigration law and economics and come to different conclusions about the current situation in the US. But what is indefensible is the xenophobia that accompanies the debate, and the nomenclature for undocumented workers is intended only to incite phobia. What sounds scarier than “Illegal Aliens”?
On top of its moral problems, the term is asinine. A person who drives recklessly isn’t an “Illegal Driver”. The people who hire undocumented workers are not “Illegal Employers”. Who you are is what your creator intended you to be, no label should try and negate that, no matter what your position on US immigration policy.
Thank you for your powerful testimony, RCM.
There is a reason that our Lord holds up a Samaritan as an example of true neighborliness in the parable of the Good Samaritan. To a devout Jew, Samaritans were “the other”: they were illegitimate, quasi-Jews. Jesus also makes a point of speaking to a Samaritan woman at the well (and she is shocked that he does). Finally, in tomorrow’s Gospel reading at Mass, it is only the Samaritan out of nine lepers healed who returns to thank our Lord.
Get the message? People considered “scum” are especially loved by God. As Fr. Benedict Groeschel would say, “Watch out.”
One more thing: God gave us “otherness” so that love would be possible. There is otherness within God Himself: three persons. It is good that we have the other. It is very, very bad when, instead of loving and welcoming the stranger, we come up with all kinds of noble and “proper” reasons to hate him and make his life miserable.
God help us.
Amen to both posts.
My friends, when they make any human being illegal, we all can be illegal. It is arbitrary.
No, its not. A political order must be built on an underlying reality, such as kinship. Common ancestry, a common homeland and a shared history are not arbitrary. A nation is like a large, intermarrying extended family, and family ties are ties that bind. It is actually well nigh impossible to kick someone out of your family. That is why a stable free amd democratic form of government can only be based on the shared interests of a dominant ethnic group. People need some palpable, concrete link to each other in order to co-operate and built communities. It may not be pretty, but it is a much more stable basis for a humane society than airy words about universal human rights. Politics means working with human material as it is, not as we wish it would be.
Of course, small numbers of individuals can be adopted into the tribe, but they must intermarry and give themselves over totally to their new loyalties. Importing large numbers of minorities is a recipe for disaster. They, quite naturally, want to stick to their own kind. Once a critical mass is reached, they don’t intemarry and don’t assimilate, even when heavily pressured to do so, as in France. Like it or not, people’s groupness often matters more to them than their individuality. This is deeply ingrained in human nature and cannot be wished away. Any political order that tries to totally overcome this instead of working with it, does so at its own peril.
The assumptions behind this post are dangerously utopian, perhaps even heretical. We cannot achieve the City of God here on earth; we can only achieve smaller, local goods. Trying to achieve the former often endagers that latter. There are billions of people who would like to come to North America. We cannot save them all. Basing our political rights on shared ethnic (i.e. familial) ties may not be a perfect fulfillment of our obligation to love all mankind, but it produces a concrete good which we should not blithely throw away in pursuit of heaven on earth.
The day that human beings can cross nations’ borders as easily as a bag of chips or a pair of Nikes, will be a blessed day indeed.
You take too much for granted. The order and prosperity of North America are the result of a long historical process and deeply ingrained cultural values. These are not a given. You don’t get to assume they will always be there. Importing millions and millions of people from all over the world is much more likely to transform North America into a Third World hellhole than North American residence is to transform these immigrants into relatively peaceful, orderly Americans. They will bring their cultural problems with them. It is foolish to think we are able to remake the values of millions and millions of people just becasue we wish it. Aren’t there enough horrible places already that we need to turn the U.S. into one?
Someone to pick on, someone to eradicate.
Which is why, given a sinful world, the safest option is to have different peoples live in different countries. Good fences make good neighbours.
That is the law.
You are much too cavalier towards the benefits of the rule of law. Order, even an unjust order, is preferable to chaos. Slavery was unjust, yet St. Paul advised Christians to accept it. That does not mean one cannot try to change things, but it does not justify total upheaval of the temporal order.
The more I think about it, the more this post makes me angry. The complete shortsightedness and refusal to think things through is apalling. It is deeply irresponsible. Morality demands thought not just feeling.
Here are some articles to provide a reality check:
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/070701_diversity.htm
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/070507_interracial_marriage.htm
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/070318_diversity.htm
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/061210_diversity.htm
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/061119_wage.htm
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/060716_diversity.htm
So, Thursday, are you essentially saying that people from other cultures will, if they come here, corrupt America, fill it with chaos, and bring it to ruin? Now, I agree that a mixing of cultures can bring conflict. But that it must bring conflict? No. I think not. There is such a thing as charity in this world, and charity can overcome dividing walls.
Your dismissal of the language of human rights as airy suggests that you haven’t thought the issue through sufficiently. Sin (in this case greed) can never be the basis for a stable and prosperous civil society. It will always make only part of that society rich and (for a while) stable, but in the end that society will implode. But, what about a society that bases itself on human rights? Well, such a society will never quite form on earth, but isn’t it better to try than to slip into some Calvinist despair about the evils of human nature? Just because the Kingdom of God cannot come now does not mean that God cannot bless a society with moderate peace for a time.
Overall, your view of society seems to be quite Machiavellian, albeit probably unconsciously and unintentionally. Your sentence Politics means working with human material as it is, not as we wish it would be. might have been lifted directly from the Prince. Even the idea of comparing humans to material seems excessively reductionist, although that may not have been your intention.
Thursday, I hope you keep visiting. Your blog is one of my favorites.
This is a link to an article about Nicaragua’s complete abortion ban and it’s effect on the women of that country. What is your reaction?
But that it must bring conflict? No. I think not.
Evidence, evidence please. What multi-ethnic state anywhere has been nearly as functional as the U.S.? Maybe Switzerland, off in the mountains with its almost entirely independant cantons. And I can name many, many disasters. Why would anyone want to take a chance on those odds?
There is such a thing as charity in this world, and charity can overcome dividing walls.
But if charity fails, as it often does, the downside is huge. We’re dealing with people lives on the other side too.
Is it unjust to kick out somebody who has squatted on your own property without your knowledge or consent? If it is just to punish an “illegal trespasser” in the smaller case, why is it not just on the scale of a nation?
Thursday, it is fascinating to me what your assumptions are here. Over at my blog, a gentlemen who believes in the right to an abortion took issue with the pro-life part of this, while you took issue with the immigration. Something for everyone, huh. Don’t worry, people were so outraged over what Jesus said, they killed him. I hope what I wrote disturbed you to the point that you are reflecting on the state of your fellow Catholics who live here and live in fear. Maybe volunteering with your local Catholic Church will help you identify with the stranger in your land and you will show more mercy towards them. I suppose as long as you are not an unborn child, disabled, or undocumented you can live in your comfort zone.
How about the US as evidence of a successful multi-ethnic state. Not without conflict, but conflict can and does ease. Does anyone in the US now care whether you’re Irish or Italian as opposed to English? How about the Romans and the Greeks as evidence. Those cultures fused and cooperated with amazingly good results. I’m sure if I plumbed deeper I could think of more examples.
I dislike the terminology ‘illegal aliens’ it leaves conotations as if the people spoken of were ‘not quite one of us’ this then leads to the thought, ‘they are not quite human enough’ what’s next?
This may sound outlandish but Hitler didnt start killing the Jews when he first took power NOR was he voted in by a majority. He slowly and methodically ingrained into the German people that Jews were sub-human, little more than vermin. It took years before ‘The Final Solution’ too affect.
Australia apart from it’s indigenous population is a country of Migrants, what is America?
Good and valid points Radicalcathmom
Peace to you:)
Marie
“Since unborn children are not persons under the law, they are not entitled to the rights under the law. Since undocumented immigrants did not obtain legal papers, they are also not entitled to the rights under the law. That is the law.”
Beg pardon if this seems like nit-picking…but the second sentence here isn’t entirely accurate. Although both the unborn and “undocumented immigrants” lack the same plethora of rights available to ordinary American citizens, their legal situations aren’t exactly comparable, either. The unborn, under current law, are what used to be called “outlaws”, i.e., persons who have no protection under the law. Killing an outlaw is not murder. Indeed, one cannot be charged for _any_ action taken against a person deemed an outlaw, because, since outlaws are outside the protection of the law, actions taken against them are not crimes.
Killing an “undocumented immigrant”, by contrast, _is_ murder under American law. Now, one may argue that “undocumented immigrants” are often unwilling to seek the assistance of law-enforcement or the courts, and thus are outlaws _de facto_. Perhaps this is true. But the fact remains that, even though “undocumented immigrants” may be here illegally, they’re still entitled to the protection of the laws. Killing one is still murder. Stealing from one is still theft. They’re still able to sue in court. They might lack many of the rest of the rights that the rest of us take for granted, but they still have _some_ rights under the law.
Kitty,
I am creating a new thread to address that topic.
MI: I argue that the act of deportation can kill immigrants. Most undocumented immigrants are fleeing deep poverty. Their children have no access to health care, and most of the deeply impoverished immigrants I met in Latin America, could barely eat one meal a day, if that. So, no. I cannot go into the streets of America and kill undocumented immigrants, but I can deport them and let them die so I don’t have to watch.
Is it unjust to kick out somebody who has squatted on your own property without your knowledge or consent? If it is just to punish an “illegal trespasser” in the smaller case, why is it not just on the scale of a nation?
False analogy.
False analogy.
Unhelpful reply.
RadicalCatholicMom:
All you can do is accuse me of a lack of compassion, but you do nothing to refute my arguments. If 150 million Bangladeshis moved to America they would turn it into Bangladesh. Explain to me how that does no one any good.
Furthermore, you seem to have no compassion for the poor, especially the black poor, in North America already, who are forced to compete with millions of new poor people for the few unskilled jobs left in North America. Their lives are being destroyed.
Society is a complex system. Introducing large scale changes always has unintended consequences. And for thinking ahead to the possible consequences, I am essentially accused of not being compassionate, if not a quasi-Nazi. The changes you want to make will affect peoples lives. They will undoubtedly hurt real actual people, as real as those you are helping at your church. Taking a broader view does not mean someone lacks compassion. Take this example:
The description of public housing in the fifties is shocking to anyone who’s spent any time in modern public housing. Big item on the agenda at the tenant’s meeting: housewives, don’t shake your dustcloths out of the windows–other wives don’t want your dirt in their apartment! Men, if you wear heavy work boots, please don’t walk on the lawns until you can change into lighter shoes, as it damages the grass! (Descriptions taken from the invaluable book, The Inheritance, about the transition of the white working class from Democrat to Republican.) Needless to say, if those same housing projects could today find a majority of tenants who reliably dusted, or worked, they would be thrilled.
Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.
Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatise unwed mothers. Why shouldn’t they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.
But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.
Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?
People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.
C’mon said the activists. That’s just silly. I just can’t imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.
Oooops.
Of course, change didn’t happen overnight. But the marginal cases did have children out of wedlock, which made it more acceptable for the next marginal case to do so. Meanwhile, women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men. So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded. In the early 1960s, a black illegitimacy rate of roughly 25 percent caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write a tract warning of a crisis in “the negro family” (a tract for which he was eviscerated by many of those selfsame activists.)
By 1990, that rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.
But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle’s absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.
Your accusations that immigration restrictionists lack compassion are precisely equivalent to someone in the fifties saying, “You heartless bastard, how could you think of denying benefits to unwed mothers.” Well, because there are unintended consequences and they are often so bad that the solution is worse than the problem.
Thinking ahead does not mean you lack compassion. Worrying about inintended consequences does not mean you lack compassion. Taking care of problems at home before you try to save the world does not mean you lack compassion.
MK,
It wasn’t that hard to integrate Italians and Irish, because they never were that differerent to begin with. Aside from a somewhat different religion, the Irish are culturally pretty close to other Brits. Italians had an amazing history of banking and entrepeneurship in the High Catholic Middle Ages, before clashes over Reformation and Counter-Reformation sent Italy into cultural decline. There were cultural similarities to work with. Plus, please note, there was a 40 year immigration pause between 1924 and the new 1965 Immigration Act. And, well, we probably lucked out.
Rome eventually fell because of too much diversity. And to survive as long as it did it had to give up its Republican form of government in favour of an autocratic regime. Multi-ethnic societies can survive, but only with an authoritarian government. You need an Augustus or a Tito to keep everybody in line. Futhermore, this is how the Romans did it.
And Classical Greece was full of, well, pretty much just Greeks.
“How about the US as evidence of a successful multi-ethnic state. Not without conflict, but conflict can and does ease. Does anyone in the US now care whether you’re Irish or Italian as opposed to English?”
Doesn’t this attenuation of white ethnic differences mean that the US is no longer a multi-ethnic state, at least within the white population?
Doesn’t this attenuation of white ethnic differences mean that the US is no longer a multi-ethnic state, at least within the white population?
And there always was a solid British base population to integrate with.
Wow… just wow.
Katerina, It is always present. Always and really this is the real issue, isn’t it. It explains quite a bit.
excuse me if I seem a little dim here. But does not God’s Moral Law override man made law if it is in outright contradiction?
God is not Pro-Choice. To murder anyone is to break the Commandments of God, irrespective of the law of the land. The Catholic Church condemns abortion, despite Roe V Wade which is also another man made law.
As sincere Catholics are we not called upon to follow God and His Commandments even IF it means going against the crowd?
Surely, there is a higher Moral Law which we must obey even if it runs against the law of the land. Otherwise, why were the Nazi’s prosecuted? They were simply following their own law of the land at that time?
God bless
Marie
No, Marie, you are not dim. You sound like Antigone 2007.
Tim:)
my stubbornness would make a mule envious lol. I simply cannot compromise my beliefs even if it means I stand alone then so be it. In the end I have to live with me and if my conscience is clear before God, then that alone suffices:).
Peace to you:)
Marie