The USCCB has released a powerful video expressing the American Catholic bishops’ opposition to the inhumane and illegal treatment of immigrants in this country. The video also outlines what has been the Church’s consistent call for comprehensive immigration reform that protects this country and also provides protection for immigrants from traffickers and those who would prey on them.
The bishops stated that the source of their teaching in this matter is the simple reality that all human beings possess what Thomas Jefferson called “unalienable rights” and that these rights are based on the fact that each one of us is made in the Likeness and Image of God. The published statement on the USCCB website puts it well: Human dignity is not dependent on a person’s citizenship or their immigration status.
The video is in agreement with the Gospels, and the teaching of every modern pope, up to and including Pope Leo. You cannot be a sincere Christian and support the wanton persecution, illegal imprisonment and terrorizing of millions of people that God has made. At the same time, every nation has a right and a self-preserving requirement to enforce its borders.
The thing that has been missing in this debate all along is sincere elected officials of good will who put America before their political party while refusing to spit in the eye of God while they do it. Immigration has been nothing more than a political football.
The Republican Party has been basing its campaigns on a smelly brew of pretend religiosity, mixed with racism and hatred of women, for decades. They use sloganeering and flat-out lies to access the frustrations ordinary Americans feel in the face of huge numbers of immigrants moving into their neighborhoods, taking over their schools and shoving them out of the communities where they have lived all their lives.
The Republican Party targeted this understandable frustration, not to solve the problem, but to use it. They’ve exploited this frustration and used it as a tool to enrage and embitter people. Every election cycle, they use racist rhetoric and slogans alongside ridiculous lies to raise public anger and resentment to a white hot fever.
The voters weren’t the only ones who fell for this ploy. Democrats were — as usual — gobsmacked by the virulent racism and outrageous lies the Republicans were telling. They focused on the Rs blatant dishonesty and demagoguery instead of publicly addressing the very real problem that gave grist to the propaganda mill.
The truth is, ordinary people on both sides of the situation are victims. One thing I learned in 18 years in public office is that when someone is doing something that seems stupid, destructive and inexplicable, and they won’t stop doing it and they won’t listen to reason and they won’t quit, and they change their reasons for why they are doing it every time you answer what they’re saying, look for who’s making money out of it. Then, with a few rare exceptions, it will all make sense.
Who’s getting the money out of the immigration problem? Corporations and billionaires who want cheap labor. Not only that, but, it gives them a double benefit. They can use public outrage to elect their stooges who will give them control of the public treasury. The immigration problem is not a problem for these guys. It’s a win-win for them.
Meanwhile, good people on both sides of the debate are being demonized and ignored. Immigrants are not all criminals and rapists. And hard-working, salt of the earth Americans are not all race-baiting thugs.
People who come to this country are often desperate. They are also usually very decent. On the other hand, the people who are already here are well within their rights to object to losing their neighborhoods and being shoved out of their churches by a tsunami of immigrants, with no one in our government trying to help them. They aren’t being racist when they say they don’t like that and want their government to listen to them.
Solutions that ignore the displaced communities that are being shoved aside by large numbers of immigrants are not solutions. Labeling people as racist when they are expressing a just and reasonable concern and then ignoring them does not help anybody.
What it does instead is set up a large part of our population for easy manipulation by amoral demagogues. These demagogues play to the frustrations of beleaguered Americans, and deliberately incite them to hatred in order to gain power for themselves.
In truth, immigration — both legal and illegal — has been running hot since the Reagan administration opened the floodgates in the 1980s. It reached the point years ago where it was destabilizing the country.
It is understandable that changes of this magnitude frighten people and make them angry. But when public officials deliberately inflame this frustration with hate speech and offer ungodly — I use the word “ungodly” advisedly — solutions such as occupying our cities with armed troops, and randomly grabbing people off the streets and incarcerating them without charges or a trial, housing them in what amount to concentration camps and then deporting them — again without charges or trial — to foreign prisons in countries where they have never been — then they have gone way too far.
The bishops are correct to call for a comprehensive solution that recognizes the legitimate needs of all the people. I know that sounds like a long reach, but it is necessary. A solution that is based on a clear recognition of the value of every viewpoint is the only kind of solution that can work longterm.
American democracy is moving toward a death spiral. Much of the reason why is that We the People have been ignored, patronized, preyed upon, lied to and manipulated for decades. We’ve been continuously flogged with lies and propaganda. We’ve been deliberately kept enraged and outraged so that we could be manipulated to vote for charlatans who work for the best interest of a few billionaires instead of us.
This has gone on for so long that a kind of hysteria has set in. It’s reached the point that millions of us are willing to follow any lying showman who seems to hear us, even if he’s corrupt, cruel and crazy.
Putting a bunch of sadistic moral degenerates in control of our government is never the answer to any problem we might have. We need to stop electing trash and elect the best people we can get. Then, we need to hold them accountable to high standards of morality, integrity and patriotism. We need elected officials who will work for just solutions to all of our problems, including border security and immigration.
Hispanics are people. Most of them are good, family-oriented people who work hard, tell the truth (unlike Trump and the members of his regime) and love their kids. There’s a reason ICE keeps raiding church services and rounding up parishioners. These people go to church.
It is true that some immigrants are criminals. That’s true of any population of people. I haven’t seen a statistical comparison on this, but I think that there’s probably a much higher percentage of rapists, pedophiles, extortionists and on-going bribery within the Trump regime than there is in our immigrant population. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t want my granddaughters — or my grandson, for that matter — anywhere near a Trump cabinet meeting.
I am very glad the USCCB released this video. The Gospels are clear. The Pope has spoken. The previous Popes have spoken. Our American bishops are speaking with one voice in unison with Peter.
Now it is up to us — We the People — to purge our government of the rapists, pedophiles and bribe takers.
It’s up to us — We the People — to stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated.
It’s up to us — We the People — to elect honest men and women who will defend our democracy instead of plundering it like the Vandals sacking Rome.
It’s up to us — We the People– to demand that the men and women we elect care about all of us and govern in our interests instead handing everything over to a handful of greed-sick billionaires.
Immigration has become a serious problem for America. But that does not give us the right to suspend the Gospels. We the People need to fix this problem. And we need to do it without sending ourselves to hell in the process.
Here is our bishop’s video. It is beautifully done.
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