On Illegal Immigration
One of the distressing things about being on Facebook is seeing what people think. There is a gross hostility to Mexicans in particular and Hispanics in general. People will claim that their hostility only extends to illegal immigrants, but that is nonsense. In my area, we have a number of Laotian (Hmong) refugees. For those unfamiliar, this traces itself to the Vietnam War. While the immigrants have made significant progress economically, I don’t believe members of the Hmong community would consider themselves significantly welcome in Wisconsin, despite our witnessing the 2nd generation coming of age now.
While one can understand that communities tend to be closed and as a consequence outsiders don’t perceive themselves as welcome, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the cases of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California vis-a-vis Mexico. Mexicans aren’t outsiders in those states. As Sam Rocha offered in a personal anecdote, historically we are roughly speaking of one people. Admittedly, we shouldn’t stretch the concept too much. While the Okies that settled California were all Americans just like the Californians, there was significant hostility. I imagine this is somewhat the case in the current illegal immigration debate, where longtime Hispanic residents of places like Arizona aren’t as sympathetic to the illegal immigrants for the reason that they aren’t the right kind of Mexicans. A number of the illegal immigrants are from central Mexico, are grossly poor, and their families trace many of their roots through native tribes. In short, US settled Hispanics don’t necessarily see themselves in solidarity with the illegal immigrants until things like Arizona’s law remind them that they are perceived and should be treated the same as the those illegal immigrants.
They are breaking the law is a rejoinder I hear often. So what? People break our drug laws everyday. We don’t break someone’s door down and rip a baby from his mother’s breast over a joint. Why would we do it because one overstays his visa or enters the country illegally? Where is the sense of proportionality? When I hear people talk about addressing illegal immigration, I hear things that make me think we are talking about detering murder or something. People want to put armed guards and dogs along walls. Goodness. You’d swear we were at war with Mexico or something. But, do I want open borders? What is it to you if I did? Certainly I don’t think creating a vast diaspora of Mexicans is a good thing. That doesn’t make preventing it at the end of a gun a good idea. I don’t support marijuana use. I’m not for legalized marijuana. That doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of our drug laws and assess them as a failure. I can imagine a number of things worse than having dope smoking neighbors or a Mexican neighbor who was forced by economic necessity to leave family, friends, culture, and heritage. I have tendencies toward authoritarianism, but the visions of people in this country of the police states they’d create to address these issues scare me. Prudence is not a 4-letter word.
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“There is a gross hostility to Mexicans in particular and Hispanics in general.”
My observation is that a good part of this is racial.
I live in California in an area with a large immigrant community including Hispanics (from Mexico & elsewhere), China, Taiwan, India, Afghan, Philippines etc.
Because of business, church, and racially-mixed family, I interact with many from those groups, and I do see a racial component against Hispanics. And it is from across the spectrum of the above immigrant groups I mention and sadly from church members.
Having lived in California during the whole Prop 187 thing, this is literally déjà vu all over again for me. The issue is black and white: these people are criminals and breaking the law, they’re destroying our school systems and hospitals, they’re not assimilating like other generations of immigrants… The list of myths and complaints is practically endless. It really starts getting sad when white Catholics start attacking the Church itself for allowing these “criminals” to sit in the pews like good Catholics. What next? Exclude the undocumented from Holy Communion? They’re good at stuff like that. They want to be left alone in their semi-vacant, middle class pews with a clergy that’s dying off and a congregation getting increasingly geriatric. Hey, at least they don’t have to deal with all of those brown children running around.
But then all of this rhetoric starts to degenerate into what could only be called disgruntled white conservative snuff porn: a Berlin-style wall on a two thousand mile border, towers with machine guns ready to mow down any Mexican who gets 100 feet of the wall, a border zone that makes the Korean DMZ look like a meadow full of daisies, thousands of dollars in fines and time in prison for business owners that employ the undocumented… all to defend OUR American culture (?), our American language (?????) and all of those jobs so coveted by Americans: nanny, field worker, dishwasher, small time construction worker, and disembodied hands that trim our hedges. Because the only time these people care about the little guy is when they want to turn him against other little guys that they like even less.
Don’t like anti-immigrant rhetoric? Just wait a few years. This stuff is as perennial as the sunrise. Within a year or so, the ADD American public will forget the whole immigrant issue, let them quietly sneak across the border, and do all of the jobs “real Americans” have become too proud to do. That’s only been happening for the last hundred years. As a Mexican-American, I have become used to it.
I can imagine a number of things worse than having …a Mexican neighbor who was forced by economic necessity to leave family, friends, culture, and heritage.
As someone who HAS to live overseas in order to find a population of scholarly, purposeful high school students to teach, and who has an international businessman for a brother who has HAD to live overseas to keep his corporate bosses happy, let me tell you something: eventually YOU or YOUR CHILDREN or some other RELATIVES OF YOURS are going to have to live overseas in order to keep your middle or upper middle class lifestyles going, so get used to welcoming the foreign stranger in our midst; your safety and happiness in HIS country someday may depend upon how you treat him in ours!
I live 200 miles from my nearest relative. My life is a lower class existence though.
Arturo, your perspective on entries like this one is priceless!
Matt Abbott brought forward one of his reader’s comments that is worthwhile bringing to everyones attention, so here it is, lets let Philip speak about immigration, he will help balance out the unbalanced opinions I see written here.
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/abbott/100506
Philip C. Onochié:
I have been following the illegal immigration problem for quite some time. It is a sad state of affairs when the USCCB conflicts with the Catechism of the Catholic Church — that’s always the case when it comes to immigration and health care. I recently took it upon myself to read the CCC and was astounded to see how straightforward the language in it is:
2241 The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.
How our dear bishops draw the conclusion that the above citing commends us to protect illegal aliens who break the law to come into the country is beyond me. When a state is truly burdened by an overflow of people so much so that crime is up and resources to take care of this problem are down, what is the state to do except start cracking down on people who use state services without the ability to pay for it through taxes?
The good bishops have also mentioned one part of the problem. Of course we want to treat people with dignity. But arresting people for breaking the law is not wrong; neither is arresting people for traffic violations and other law infractions, which is what the new law allows enforcers of the law to do.
Make no mistake: This law is basically the same law we have on the federal level. The governor appealed to the regime to help with their problem, but was ignored. She acted well and cautiously, too, so that this law would not give her police force unreasonable power. To fix this problem, perhaps we ought to figure out the tax situation when immigration policies are on the table. We need to move toward removing the federal and state taxes and employing only sales taxes that will provide revenue for the states. That way, we can support our local officials with the means to do their jobs while we protect our states more from a surge of lawbreakers.
Our bishops need to speak to the ordinaries around the borders in Mexico. A message of greed, corruption and stewardship needs to be heard by all. Their faithful need to be told and encouraged to live within and under the law, rather than above it. Where is the accountability there? Why do our bishops always put the government in charge of taking care of us when it is their job to catechize us? People who come here illegally leave their families broken or put the lives of their families in danger by crossing illegally — all for what? With nobody to take care of them, do they resort to begging or stealing? I don’t know.
What I do know is that if there is a chance for me to put my family in danger by crossing illegally, I will not. I am more sympathetic to Cuba for the fact that they are really oppressed, but to come here only to live on the streets or on the run is no way to dignify yourself.
I am a legal immigrant. I know of pain and stress. There is pain and suffering going through the process, but all I suffered was not in vain. I put in my time and I spent the money, but in the end, it was worth it to be able to live in peace. The bottom line is, I am tired of reading columns or articles by the USCCB or the likes (Archbishop Dolan) within the Church who support illegals without seeing the CCC being quoted.
Gregory, according to the Facebook page for the USCCB, the bishops’ support for “comprehensive immigration reform is rooted in…the tradition and magisterium of the Church, including encyclicals by John Paul II and other popes.” (replied at http://www.facebook.com/usccb?v=wall&story_fbid=384072677284)
I’m not an expert on these things, but I wouldn’t think a Papal encyclical is any less authoritative than the CCC, so maybe you’ll get more clarification from those.
The CCC isn’t authoritative in its own right. It’s authority derives from the documents, like the encyclicals, it cites. That is a rough paraphrase of Cardinal Ratzinger.
The CCC must also be interpreted by the proper authority. And one of the confusions being given in the debate is that people act as if the catechism says “there can be borders,” that means it is acceptable to defend them by any means deemed necessary. That, however, is not what the catechism nor Catholicism says. The borders are a relative good, not an absolute end, and must be treated accordingly, and recognized within the domain of the hierarchy of values — that many people, including so-called pro-life people — will defend the dignity of the border over the dignity of the human person says much of their values.
I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I’ll try to enumerate some issues I have with Gerald B’s comment (or the comment in the statement within his comment). I find Gerald’s comment completely un-compelling, if not significant support of M.Z.’s original perspective.
“…balance out the unbalanced opinions” is is a tired Fox News trope which consistently introduces “Ignore facts and logic; we are the real victims here.”
“Matt Abbott brought forward one of his reader’s comments”,… So this is a quote of a quote of something somebody claims on some other web-page. This confuses who’s saying what on whose authority. Kudos to Gerald for putting the link in, so we can see what other interesting “balanced opinions” Matt Abbot has.
“that’s always the case when it comes to immigration and health care.” Universalizing and catastrophising, absurd exaggeration.
No quotes around the CCC quotation. Now we’re three deep in quotations, and without checking the original, no clarity as to where the CCC’s authority ends and Philip’s (or is that Gerald’s) personal opinion begins.
“”…our dear bishops” and “The good bishops” are disingenuous at best. A clear warning of b******* to follow.
“The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able” and “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” carry very different weight: “obliged” is an obligation, like attending Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. “may make” is an option, like whether to receive Holy Eucharist in the hand or on the tongue. Whoever wrote the paragraph (probably Philip) doesn’t respect the difference in weight between “obliged” and “may make”.
“what is the state to do except start cracking down on people…” States are stupid entitities with no capacity to find creative solutions, aren’t they? Or maybe some states are just smarter than whoever wrote the paragraph.
“This law is basically the same law we have on the federal level” is obviously false. Federal law does not require all law enforcements officials “TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON” (capitalized as in the PDF of Arizona’s SB1070s).
“When a state is truly burdened by an overflow of people so much so that crime is up” is more b*******. Try a google search on “border towns say crime rates are” and you see only “crime rates are low”.
Maybe Philip and Gregory feel victimized. Maybe they are having a hard time making ends meet. I don’t know. I do know that feeling victimized is uncomfortable becuase I often feel that as well, when God lacks the good sense to make the world the way I would have made it if I were God. But I am not God. My prayer is that God may relieve Philip, Gregory and me from this burden of feeling victimized. May God release us from this bondage so that we may see more clearly, and do God’s will with whatever God gives us today.
Reply to “dan Says”: I also live in mixed raced central California and have a Mexican-American son-in-law and grandchildren. How many of “those groups” of the races you mention are here having obeyed our laws, got in line, and became citizens? How many of those “groups” are here illegally in the millions? Let me counsel you this way: if the laws do not hold, the powerful will rule your life in ways you won’t like. Why give them the power to bend law as they like?
I am sure the problem for many with some Mexican-Americans is that they are viewed as being here illegally. I can understand that, especially coming from a family who stood in in line, paid a couple thousand dollars, and waited the defined period of time.
I have also seen and heard far too many racially tainted actions and comments towards Hispanics…that is sadly unbecoming, especially, from Catholics. So I conclude for some, they do not want too many Mexican-Americans here be it legally or “illegally. That is the reality of my experience in the immigration debate.
Nancy Pelosi just today demonstrated my point about law and the following thereof: The third from the Presidency is now telling the “Cardinals, Bishops…” that they must conform to her administration’s view of the immigration debate and preach it from their pulpits because it’s bible teaching! To h… with the Federal law.
Dan – what in the adimistration’s view of life and liberty is next? I doubt that you will like it. It was Benedict XVI who told us to beware of the subjective interpretation of TRUTH. If the truth is only subjective, only the powerful will interpret it — as they see fit! (See Pope’s: Conscience.)
Clarence
Your point – was it Beck or Limbaugh’s point? And whether or not she is asking them to preach about immigration reform, you must know that the Church has already been preaching the need for reform.
Does the meltdown of the rule of law in Mexico matter at all in this discussion, or is this comment thread exclusively about how racist we are in the USA?
I mention this because it was not Canada that mobilize its Army to temporarily take over from the police to secure one of its own cities, which had become awash in narcoterrorist murder.
This is not entirely being driven by Americans’ refusal to do their own lawncare.
We will always disagree about the administration in power, but we ought to agree it is important to the US that Mexico has a stable government.
If this is the wrong thread to bring this up, then my apologies.
Hmm, I suppose you would be distresed by this one?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_eLJYs17VN7w/S-lhI5W3UoI/AAAAAAAAA2o/up2e9Ids66c/s1600/border-patrol.jpg