Editorial
Last week was a recent attempt for the Roman Catholic Church to lobby in the U.S. immigration debate. Unlike their approach in pro-life legislation, and traditional marriage legislation, the Roman Catholic Church's position on immigration seems to focus only on the U.S. accepting an increasing amount of immigrants, this policy does not apply to other nations such as Mexico, or to the Vatican itself!
Again, consider contacting key Roman Catholic bishops about this, whether you are Catholic or not!
Showing posts with label Thomas J. Olmsted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas J. Olmsted. Show all posts
Monday, September 16, 2013
Friday, September 13, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
From Under The Rubble | Catholic Bishops On Immigration—Here We Go Again!
A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about the Roman Catholic Church’s push on hurting America’s poor by encouraging more immigrants to compete with them for jobs and wages. This follows this post about GOP Representatives that FACEBOOK analyzes as leaning towards amnesty with all of their microtargeting. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.
From Under The Rubble | Catholic Bishops On Immigration—Here We Go Again!
[See earlier Is the Rule of Law Immoral? Ask Archbishop José Gomez!]
According to the New York Times, America's Catholic bishops are counting on the persuasive power of the pulpit this month to push "comprehensive immigration reform"—also known as amnesty for illegal aliens.
Unfortunately, we've already seen this movie, and it has an unhappy ending. Back in January 2010, our beloved shepherds launched a similar campaign supporting another amnesty bill.
Bishop John C. Wester chaired the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference (USCCB) at the time. He told the Catholic News Service that "the church will prod lawmakers take action on the issue, beginning with a postcard campaign to members of Congress and prayer vigils across the country." [CNS, January 8, 2010].
Hey, wait a minute. Wasn't something else going on in January 2010?
Oh, that's right—Obamacare! But Obamacare wasn't a problem. After all, it never would have gotten off the ground, had the bishops not supported "universal health care" as "a basic human right" for years.
So the confident bishops focused on amnesty, announcing a nationwide "Justice for Immigrants" campaign in January 2010. They planned to distribute millions of postcards to parishes throughout the country urging Catholics to demand that Congress "enact immigration reform as soon as possible."
Then ObamaCare passed with abortion funding intact. The betrayed bishops expressed shock and chagrin.
They had good cause. The Nobel Peace Prize winner with an honorary degree from Notre Dame—whose election so many of them had supported in 2008—had lied to them.
It's shocking, I know. Simply shocking.
Then the most pro-abortion president in history betrayed them again, directing HHS to issue its notorious "Contraceptive Mandate." And today, dozens of bishops, Catholic universities, businesses, and individuals—among them Notre Dame—find themselves suing Obama, whose "universal health care" regulations threaten to force thousands of Catholic institutions nationwide to close.
The Experts Flunk Out
"We want to try to pull out all the stops," says Kevin Appleby, [Email him] the director of migration policy at the bishops' conference.
But, to paraphrase Samuel Huntington, "Who Are We?"
Richard Doerflinger, [Email him] Appleby's colleague on the USCCB staff, answered that question in 2010. He said that "one organization in particular [the USCCB] has the role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church on these matters and also have [sic] the policy expertise of figuring out when legislation is acceptable to the Church's interests and our convictions…."
"We're not just an interest group that has an opinion," he continued. "We've actually researched the facts…. That's something that no other Catholic group can do in the depth that we've done it."
Oh, really?
On the face of it, this bluster blends in with the arrogant noise that echoes among the thousands of "experts" who populate Washington's bureaucracies.
The USCCB is, alas, "just another interest group," but Doerflinger has a point. It's different in one critical aspect: the laughable notion that no one else in America can do competent research reflects not just hubris—it represents a form of errant elitism unique to the Church that has been practiced, and condemned, for centuries.
It's called "clericalism."
Isn't This Supposed to be the "Age of the Laity"?
Such theological errors have real-world consequences. Clericalism has diluted the genuine authority of the American Church to the point where most bishops are afraid to exercise it—as though they had lost the authority to teach anything at all.
Witness the Church's trying to oppose homosexual "marriage" or the Contraceptive Mandate without being able to address homosexuality or contraception on moral grounds.
USCCB President Timothy Cardinal Dolan is right—the bishops have had "laryngitis" regarding the magisterial teachings of the Church on sexual morality for fifty years. But they've filled the vacuum with the political agenda of the welfare state, and have used their "role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church" to pass off their opinions as official Catholic teaching instead.
As a result, America's bishops have inverted the Church's priorities. Eternal truths are ignored, while personal political agendas are canonized. They have become "just another NGO," lobbying on issues ranging from inflation, welfare, taxes, and budgets to the price of tomatoes in Florida.
Amnesty for illegal aliens fits right in with a clerical agenda that has become increasingly partisan, radical, and secular.
It is especially distressing to see politicized bishops cloak their agenda in religious language, as though no good Catholic—or good person!—could possibly disagree.
Catholics in my diocese are asking their pastors, in and out of the Confessional, "Is it a sin to oppose amnesty?"
Countless bishops would apparently like them to think so. Roger Cardinal Mahony once told an immigration rally that supporters of current law were "fanning the flames of intolerance, xenophobia and, at times, bigotry."
Curiously, the Rubble can find no record of Mahony or his successor, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez—or any other bishop or USCCB official, for that matter—condemning the blatant racism of La Raza—"The Race"—or that of many other pro-amnesty agitators who march alongside them in amnesty rallies.
Instead, the Cardinal implies that everyone who disagrees with him is irrational.
Such self-serving moral posturing is hardly pastoral. It ill serves—and even perverts—the Church's mission to "go and teach all nations"; it misinforms the public, scandalizes good Catholics; and is thoroughly lacking in charity.
It is also often lacking in truth. Good bishops and priests consistently refer to the Catholic Catechism's teaching that prosperous nations should strive to "welcome the foreigner" [CCC 2241]; however, they rarely mention what follows: "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."
The Church's amnesty advocates routinely criticize businesses for exploiting the immigrant; they rarely mention that lobbyists for those same businesses are swarming Capitol Hill, supporting amnesty because they want cheap labor.
The Church's amnesty advocates often bemoan the sins of amnesty opponents. But how many of them teach the immigrant that falsifying Social Security documentation is a federal felony as well as a violation of the 7th and 8th Commandments? That the same goes for "working the system" illegally to max out on education, medical, and food programs (among dozens of other welfare programs)?
Amnesty advocates want to bring illegals "out of the shadows." Shouldn't we bring the truth "out of the shadows"?
This refreshing approach would honor immigrants as fellow human beings, and not as mere incompetent wards of the Church or the State. It would affirm the immigrants' dignity, their worth, and their ability to be fully human. It would constitute an act of charity and justice, as well as simple common sense.
Towards A More Positive Pastoral Plan
Clericalism is condemned by the Church because it is an error in theory and a disaster in practice. In 2010, amnesty distracted the bishops and their "experts" until it was too late. Today, it distracts them from teaching the fundamental truths of Humanae Vitae regarding marriage and morality that our drowning culture is literally dying to hear.
The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium makes it clear that the layman, not the cleric, is responsible for the particulars of legislation.
Which brings up an important point. The bishops' clericalism would be just as egregious if they opposed amnesty and deficit spending and supported tax cuts for the rich.
Practical politics is the laity's responsibility. The responsible layman should just tell the bishops, "Please, do not endorse my legislation: politics divides us. Tell us the truths that unite us."
As Cardinal Dolan points out, since the bishops went silent on fundamental morality half a century ago, some thirty million Catholics have left the Church. Pope Francis wants us to reach out to bring them back. It's a slam dunk that preaching politics isn't going to do it—but preaching Christ crucified just might.
Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Manion. This column is distributed by www.fgfBooks.com.
According to the New York Times, America's Catholic bishops are counting on the persuasive power of the pulpit this month to push "comprehensive immigration reform"—also known as amnesty for illegal aliens.
Unfortunately, we've already seen this movie, and it has an unhappy ending. Back in January 2010, our beloved shepherds launched a similar campaign supporting another amnesty bill.
Bishop John C. Wester chaired the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference (USCCB) at the time. He told the Catholic News Service that "the church will prod lawmakers take action on the issue, beginning with a postcard campaign to members of Congress and prayer vigils across the country." [CNS, January 8, 2010].
Hey, wait a minute. Wasn't something else going on in January 2010?
Oh, that's right—Obamacare! But Obamacare wasn't a problem. After all, it never would have gotten off the ground, had the bishops not supported "universal health care" as "a basic human right" for years.
So the confident bishops focused on amnesty, announcing a nationwide "Justice for Immigrants" campaign in January 2010. They planned to distribute millions of postcards to parishes throughout the country urging Catholics to demand that Congress "enact immigration reform as soon as possible."
Then ObamaCare passed with abortion funding intact. The betrayed bishops expressed shock and chagrin.
They had good cause. The Nobel Peace Prize winner with an honorary degree from Notre Dame—whose election so many of them had supported in 2008—had lied to them.
It's shocking, I know. Simply shocking.
Then the most pro-abortion president in history betrayed them again, directing HHS to issue its notorious "Contraceptive Mandate." And today, dozens of bishops, Catholic universities, businesses, and individuals—among them Notre Dame—find themselves suing Obama, whose "universal health care" regulations threaten to force thousands of Catholic institutions nationwide to close.
The Experts Flunk Out
"We want to try to pull out all the stops," says Kevin Appleby, [Email him] the director of migration policy at the bishops' conference.
But, to paraphrase Samuel Huntington, "Who Are We?"
Richard Doerflinger, [Email him] Appleby's colleague on the USCCB staff, answered that question in 2010. He said that "one organization in particular [the USCCB] has the role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church on these matters and also have [sic] the policy expertise of figuring out when legislation is acceptable to the Church's interests and our convictions…."
"We're not just an interest group that has an opinion," he continued. "We've actually researched the facts…. That's something that no other Catholic group can do in the depth that we've done it."
Oh, really?
On the face of it, this bluster blends in with the arrogant noise that echoes among the thousands of "experts" who populate Washington's bureaucracies.
The USCCB is, alas, "just another interest group," but Doerflinger has a point. It's different in one critical aspect: the laughable notion that no one else in America can do competent research reflects not just hubris—it represents a form of errant elitism unique to the Church that has been practiced, and condemned, for centuries.
It's called "clericalism."
Isn't This Supposed to be the "Age of the Laity"?
"I want to get rid of clericalism."Like the layman, the bishop has the right to hold private political opinions regarding issues on which good Catholics (and bishops) can disagree. The problem arises when the bishop attempts to elevate his personal agenda to the level of authoritative Church teaching. This constitutes an abuse of the prelate's authority and confuses not only the faithful, but the public as well.
--Pope Francis at World Youth Day,
Rio de Janeiro, July 2013
Such theological errors have real-world consequences. Clericalism has diluted the genuine authority of the American Church to the point where most bishops are afraid to exercise it—as though they had lost the authority to teach anything at all.
Witness the Church's trying to oppose homosexual "marriage" or the Contraceptive Mandate without being able to address homosexuality or contraception on moral grounds.
USCCB President Timothy Cardinal Dolan is right—the bishops have had "laryngitis" regarding the magisterial teachings of the Church on sexual morality for fifty years. But they've filled the vacuum with the political agenda of the welfare state, and have used their "role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church" to pass off their opinions as official Catholic teaching instead.
As a result, America's bishops have inverted the Church's priorities. Eternal truths are ignored, while personal political agendas are canonized. They have become "just another NGO," lobbying on issues ranging from inflation, welfare, taxes, and budgets to the price of tomatoes in Florida.
Amnesty for illegal aliens fits right in with a clerical agenda that has become increasingly partisan, radical, and secular.
It is especially distressing to see politicized bishops cloak their agenda in religious language, as though no good Catholic—or good person!—could possibly disagree.
Catholics in my diocese are asking their pastors, in and out of the Confessional, "Is it a sin to oppose amnesty?"
Countless bishops would apparently like them to think so. Roger Cardinal Mahony once told an immigration rally that supporters of current law were "fanning the flames of intolerance, xenophobia and, at times, bigotry."
Curiously, the Rubble can find no record of Mahony or his successor, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez—or any other bishop or USCCB official, for that matter—condemning the blatant racism of La Raza—"The Race"—or that of many other pro-amnesty agitators who march alongside them in amnesty rallies.
Instead, the Cardinal implies that everyone who disagrees with him is irrational.
Such self-serving moral posturing is hardly pastoral. It ill serves—and even perverts—the Church's mission to "go and teach all nations"; it misinforms the public, scandalizes good Catholics; and is thoroughly lacking in charity.
It is also often lacking in truth. Good bishops and priests consistently refer to the Catholic Catechism's teaching that prosperous nations should strive to "welcome the foreigner" [CCC 2241]; however, they rarely mention what follows: "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."
The Church's amnesty advocates routinely criticize businesses for exploiting the immigrant; they rarely mention that lobbyists for those same businesses are swarming Capitol Hill, supporting amnesty because they want cheap labor.
The Church's amnesty advocates often bemoan the sins of amnesty opponents. But how many of them teach the immigrant that falsifying Social Security documentation is a federal felony as well as a violation of the 7th and 8th Commandments? That the same goes for "working the system" illegally to max out on education, medical, and food programs (among dozens of other welfare programs)?
Amnesty advocates want to bring illegals "out of the shadows." Shouldn't we bring the truth "out of the shadows"?
This refreshing approach would honor immigrants as fellow human beings, and not as mere incompetent wards of the Church or the State. It would affirm the immigrants' dignity, their worth, and their ability to be fully human. It would constitute an act of charity and justice, as well as simple common sense.
Towards A More Positive Pastoral Plan
Clericalism is condemned by the Church because it is an error in theory and a disaster in practice. In 2010, amnesty distracted the bishops and their "experts" until it was too late. Today, it distracts them from teaching the fundamental truths of Humanae Vitae regarding marriage and morality that our drowning culture is literally dying to hear.
The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium makes it clear that the layman, not the cleric, is responsible for the particulars of legislation.
Which brings up an important point. The bishops' clericalism would be just as egregious if they opposed amnesty and deficit spending and supported tax cuts for the rich.
Practical politics is the laity's responsibility. The responsible layman should just tell the bishops, "Please, do not endorse my legislation: politics divides us. Tell us the truths that unite us."
As Cardinal Dolan points out, since the bishops went silent on fundamental morality half a century ago, some thirty million Catholics have left the Church. Pope Francis wants us to reach out to bring them back. It's a slam dunk that preaching politics isn't going to do it—but preaching Christ crucified just might.
Christopher Manion, Ph.D., [send him mail] is Director of the Campaign for Humanae Vitae, a project of the Bellarmine Forum. He served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College.
This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum, and distributed by Griffin Internet Syndicate and FGF Books.Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Manion. This column is distributed by www.fgfBooks.com.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Monday, September 9, 2013
Walk Out? Argue? A Patriotic Catholic Ponders What To Do If His Priest Pushes Amnesty On Sunday
A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about a Roman Catholic’s perspective on immigration lobbying during Mass. This follows this post about Syria and Immigration. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Walk Out? Argue? A Patriotic Catholic Ponders What To Do If His Priest Pushes Amnesty On Sunday
It has been widely reported that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling on U.S. Catholic bishops and priests to turn their prayerful pulpits into political bully-pulpits this Sunday, September 8th. Patriotic American Catholics—of whom I count myself one—must think about how to respond to this indignity should they be subjected to it.
The USCCB’s immigration-mad professional bureaucrats want bishops and priests to harangue the faithful—who come to Mass to worship their God and Savior, not to be a captive audience at political pep-rallies—with stump speeches in favor of the nation-destroying Gang of Eight bill the Senate so recklessly passed and that now looms in the House.
Of course, the mass-immigration dogmatism of U.S. Catholic bishops is not the Magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on immigration and the right of countries to defend their national character.
A look at what the Church has consistently taught about nations and peoples—teachings grounded in Scripture and almost 2,000 years of tradition—must lead any honest reader to conclude that no nation is compelled as a Christian duty to throw open its borders to the point of seeing its distinctive culture and character drowned by a flood of foreign migrants.
The liberal fetish for diversity, something most of America’s Catholic bishops have adopted, is nowhere found in Holy Writ. Indeed, the dissolution of nations and their distinctive cultures into a monoculture—the end-state for Open-Borders fanatics, who see America as a “proposition nation” rather than an organic ethno-cultural entity—is exactly what we are warned against in Genesis’s story of God’s confounding the arrogance of the builders of the Tower of Babel.
No faithful Catholic is obliged to suffer in silence misguided proselytism for Amnesty and Open Borders from any priest, no matter how eminent. On the political, economic and, yes, racial issues that immigration raises, bishops and priests are not arbiters. Their pronouncements cannot bind the faithful. These are matters of prudential judgment, not of faith and morals.
A reading of the USCCB’s posted position on immigration makes that clear—it is far too incoherent and unintelligent to be an authoritative statement of Church doctrine. Others have dissected this mish-mash of fallacies and emotionalism, so I won’t belabor it here. One of its clauses, however, is particularly noteworthy as a remarkable combination of left-over ‘60s-style liberalism wedded to a peculiarly American arrogance:
Even more divorced from reality, and smacking of Americanist hubris, is the notion that “Congress should examine the root causes of migration … and seek long-term solutions.”
So the U.S. government, at Americans’ expense, should so enrich countries that send America immigrants that the locals won’t want to leave? And how is it the duty of the U.S. Congress to examine and solve the problems of scores of other countries? Isn’t that just what America’s Founding Fathers warned their fellow-citizens against?
Lord knows (Catholic bishops should too), America has problems by the score of her own—and none will be solved by inundating America with the indigent of the Third World.
We can’t know until after this Sunday’s Masses just how enthusiastically America’s Catholic priests will respond to this call from the United States’ Catholicism Central.
I am a member of the Pastoral Council of our Catholic parish in a Northeastern town. Our pastor is quite liberal; his number two less so. Our bishop has a reputation for being very liberal. I went to the diocesan website to see if there were any announcements about pro-Amnesty events for this Sunday. To my pleased surprise, I did not see any (although there are links to pro-Amnesty articles from the USCCB web site).
Neither of our parish’s priests has said anything about special homilies or events in response to the USCCB appeal. There is nothing on our parish web site.
I take those to be good signs. I hope to worship at Mass this coming Sunday undisturbed by pro-“immigration reform” politicking.
Nevertheless, heavyweight Catholic prelates are certainly out there right on cue beating the drums for Amnesty. Just today (September 6) Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the USCCB, has an overbearing column in New York’s Daily News: Immigration reform: A moral imperative. “Immigration reform” of course means the Gang of Eight’s disastrous scheme. In Dolan’s view, America must remain a “welcoming nation”; the cost to Americans doesn’t matter.
Dolan’s column is not really worth quoting. Anyone used to Open-Border propaganda could recite most of it sight unseen: America the nation of immigrants; the “undocumented” in “the shadows,” whom Dolan insists on calling our neighbors instead of more accurately describing them as trespassers; etc. Dolan even works in the “Rev. Martin Luther King.” (I’m surprised the Daily News editors let him get away without including the usually obligatory “Dr.”).
So what should a faithful and patriotic Catholic do this Sunday if the priest at Mass does insist on delivering a pro-amnesty pitch instead of a real homily?
Some suggest that congregants get up and walk out. That appealed to me at first, but I think it would backfire. The primary reason for attending Mass is to take Communion—and that happens after the homily. Should one walk out and then walk back in? Pretty awkward and not very respectful to our Lord, whose house a church is.
Also, it’s very likely one’s fellow-congregants would find such a move disrespectful—and those on our side of the issue should not be doing anything that might give offense and make the priest pitching amnesty appear the aggrieved party.
So I will not do that. Nor will I interrupt the homily—that would be a serious breach of etiquette and even more potentially alienating.
However, in our church, the priest greets the congregants individually as they leave the church after Mass—a receiving line in reverse. I believe is a nearly universal custom in American Catholic churches.
What I’ll do, should the need arise: politely yet firmly tell the priest that I disagree with the substance of a pro-Amnesty message and that I believe that the Mass is not the place for political activism.
I will not make restrictionist arguments. There won’t be time, and it would be rude to others waiting their turn to greet the celebrant. I will follow up with a letter to our bishop—in it I would state the basic restrictionist case—saying that I disagree with the message and the misuse of the Mass to propagate it. I will send a copy of that letter to the USCCB.
Catholic immigration patriots are not questioning the bishops in areas where they have legitimate authority. But we have the right and duty to protest an improper intrusion of politics into worship—and to defend our nation.
Henry McCulloch (email him) writes regularly for VDARE.COM.
The USCCB’s immigration-mad professional bureaucrats want bishops and priests to harangue the faithful—who come to Mass to worship their God and Savior, not to be a captive audience at political pep-rallies—with stump speeches in favor of the nation-destroying Gang of Eight bill the Senate so recklessly passed and that now looms in the House.
Of course, the mass-immigration dogmatism of U.S. Catholic bishops is not the Magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on immigration and the right of countries to defend their national character.
A look at what the Church has consistently taught about nations and peoples—teachings grounded in Scripture and almost 2,000 years of tradition—must lead any honest reader to conclude that no nation is compelled as a Christian duty to throw open its borders to the point of seeing its distinctive culture and character drowned by a flood of foreign migrants.
The liberal fetish for diversity, something most of America’s Catholic bishops have adopted, is nowhere found in Holy Writ. Indeed, the dissolution of nations and their distinctive cultures into a monoculture—the end-state for Open-Borders fanatics, who see America as a “proposition nation” rather than an organic ethno-cultural entity—is exactly what we are warned against in Genesis’s story of God’s confounding the arrogance of the builders of the Tower of Babel.
No faithful Catholic is obliged to suffer in silence misguided proselytism for Amnesty and Open Borders from any priest, no matter how eminent. On the political, economic and, yes, racial issues that immigration raises, bishops and priests are not arbiters. Their pronouncements cannot bind the faithful. These are matters of prudential judgment, not of faith and morals.
A reading of the USCCB’s posted position on immigration makes that clear—it is far too incoherent and unintelligent to be an authoritative statement of Church doctrine. Others have dissected this mish-mash of fallacies and emotionalism, so I won’t belabor it here. One of its clauses, however, is particularly noteworthy as a remarkable combination of left-over ‘60s-style liberalism wedded to a peculiarly American arrogance:
Addressing Root Causes: Congress should examine the root causes of migration, such as under‐development and poverty in sending countries, and seek long‐term solutions. The antidote to the problem of illegal immigration is sustainable economic development in sending countries. In an ideal world, migration should be driven by choice, not necessity.“Driven by choice” indeed—but the bishops obviously believe that the native-born who must bear the influx of immigrants should have no choice about that.
[Catholic Church's Position on Immigration Reform, The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, August 2013]
Even more divorced from reality, and smacking of Americanist hubris, is the notion that “Congress should examine the root causes of migration … and seek long-term solutions.”
So the U.S. government, at Americans’ expense, should so enrich countries that send America immigrants that the locals won’t want to leave? And how is it the duty of the U.S. Congress to examine and solve the problems of scores of other countries? Isn’t that just what America’s Founding Fathers warned their fellow-citizens against?
Lord knows (Catholic bishops should too), America has problems by the score of her own—and none will be solved by inundating America with the indigent of the Third World.
We can’t know until after this Sunday’s Masses just how enthusiastically America’s Catholic priests will respond to this call from the United States’ Catholicism Central.
I am a member of the Pastoral Council of our Catholic parish in a Northeastern town. Our pastor is quite liberal; his number two less so. Our bishop has a reputation for being very liberal. I went to the diocesan website to see if there were any announcements about pro-Amnesty events for this Sunday. To my pleased surprise, I did not see any (although there are links to pro-Amnesty articles from the USCCB web site).
Neither of our parish’s priests has said anything about special homilies or events in response to the USCCB appeal. There is nothing on our parish web site.
I take those to be good signs. I hope to worship at Mass this coming Sunday undisturbed by pro-“immigration reform” politicking.
Nevertheless, heavyweight Catholic prelates are certainly out there right on cue beating the drums for Amnesty. Just today (September 6) Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the USCCB, has an overbearing column in New York’s Daily News: Immigration reform: A moral imperative. “Immigration reform” of course means the Gang of Eight’s disastrous scheme. In Dolan’s view, America must remain a “welcoming nation”; the cost to Americans doesn’t matter.
Dolan’s column is not really worth quoting. Anyone used to Open-Border propaganda could recite most of it sight unseen: America the nation of immigrants; the “undocumented” in “the shadows,” whom Dolan insists on calling our neighbors instead of more accurately describing them as trespassers; etc. Dolan even works in the “Rev. Martin Luther King.” (I’m surprised the Daily News editors let him get away without including the usually obligatory “Dr.”).
So what should a faithful and patriotic Catholic do this Sunday if the priest at Mass does insist on delivering a pro-amnesty pitch instead of a real homily?
Some suggest that congregants get up and walk out. That appealed to me at first, but I think it would backfire. The primary reason for attending Mass is to take Communion—and that happens after the homily. Should one walk out and then walk back in? Pretty awkward and not very respectful to our Lord, whose house a church is.
Also, it’s very likely one’s fellow-congregants would find such a move disrespectful—and those on our side of the issue should not be doing anything that might give offense and make the priest pitching amnesty appear the aggrieved party.
So I will not do that. Nor will I interrupt the homily—that would be a serious breach of etiquette and even more potentially alienating.
However, in our church, the priest greets the congregants individually as they leave the church after Mass—a receiving line in reverse. I believe is a nearly universal custom in American Catholic churches.
What I’ll do, should the need arise: politely yet firmly tell the priest that I disagree with the substance of a pro-Amnesty message and that I believe that the Mass is not the place for political activism.
I will not make restrictionist arguments. There won’t be time, and it would be rude to others waiting their turn to greet the celebrant. I will follow up with a letter to our bishop—in it I would state the basic restrictionist case—saying that I disagree with the message and the misuse of the Mass to propagate it. I will send a copy of that letter to the USCCB.
Catholic immigration patriots are not questioning the bishops in areas where they have legitimate authority. But we have the right and duty to protest an improper intrusion of politics into worship—and to defend our nation.
Henry McCulloch (email him) writes regularly for VDARE.COM.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
***BUMPED & UPDATED*** Catholic bishops spend $3.5 million of anti-poverty funds to increase poverty among American workers
A very interesting post from www.NumberUSA.com about U.S. Catholic bishops increasing poverty among America's poor. This follows this post about the Senate trying to increase the amount of immigrants during this slow economy. This follows this post about the release of illegal alien criminals from jails. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what is happening in the nation now click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Catholic bishops spend $3.5 million of anti-poverty funds to increase poverty among American workers
Blogger's Note: You can contact these four bishops about this.
NY: Timothy Dolan http://www.archny.org/news-events/media-contact/
Philadelphia: Charles Chaput http://archphila.org/contact.php
Phoenix: Thomas Olmstead http://www.diocesephoenix.org/contact.php
Los Angeles: Jose Gomez http://www.la-archdiocese.org/Pages/Help/Contact.aspx
You can also contact the closest diocese to you here
and let them all know what you feel whether you are Roman Catholic or not!
By Roy Beck - posted on NumbersUSA
I have no doubt that America's Catholic bishops are nice people and that they mean well. But their callous indifference to America's unemployed and low-wage workers is astounding when it comes to their lobbying on immigration policy.
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to expend another $800,000 of its anti-poverty funds to help pass a bill that will add millions more foreign workers to compete for scarce U.S. jobs.
The bishops’ anti-poverty program in the past year has invested more than $3.5 million in grass-roots immigration reform.
The organization of U.S. Catholic bishops said it would make $800,000 in grants available for projects aimed at mobilizing regular Catholics to push for the bishops’ immigration platform.
-- Washington Post, March 5, 2013
Wow. Not only are the bishops taking more than $4 million away from anti-poverty efforts in little more than a year, but they are investing it in a policy that will further depress wages in the occupations where the extra foreign workers will compete. And those occupations are disproportionately ones where the American workers in them already are making poverty or near-poverty wages.
Fortunately, our own polling has long found that most Catholics in the pews reject the bishops' priority of helping corporations gain more visas for foreign workers and of helping foreign citizens who have broken our immigration laws.
The Post seems to lament the fact, noting:
A recent Pew poll showed just 32 percent of churchgoing Catholics had heard about immigration issues at church. Among Catholics overall, just 7 percent said religion was the main force in shaping their immigration views.
That suggests that most priests are not as blind to the needs of their working-class parishioners as are the bishops, and that the priests refuse to preach the glories of a loose labor market.
About the 7% figure, I don't take the result to mean that Catholics' immigration views are uninformed by moral concerns. It may just mean that they use a moral compass that is stronger and different from the open-borders pronouncements of their bishops.
OK, my comments are harsh. I don't believe at all that the bishops WANT to help employers make more money on the backs of workers drawing lower wages. I don't believe the bishops WANT the gigantic economic underclass of Black and Hispanic Americans to grow. I don't believe the bishops THINK that loose labor markets that encourage greater and greater income disparity in our society are a moral good.
Really, I don't believe the Catholic bishops think those things at all -- even though those are the logical results of their preferred immigration policies.
But it doesn't seem like the bishops even THINK about the possibility of the results of their actions because they have made an idol out of immigration and a fetish out of concern for immigration lawbreakers as their priority concern. And they have allowed that to blind them to the pain and suffering of this country's most vulnerable citizens.
I can sort of understand how the bishops can make a mercy case for the 11 million illegal aliens. But I can't understand at all why they are spending anti-poverty funds to insisting on adding millions more new immigrant workers while 20 million Americans can't find a full-time job.
We should always remember that all these religious leaders who are demanding an amnesty for illegal aliens are also demanding a "comprehensive immigration reform" package that includes huge increases in future immigrant workers.
Would somebody explain to me what the bishops' argument is for increasing foreign workers in the future? If they were willing to care as much about poor Americans as they do about illegal aliens, the bishops would at least be demanding that the amnesty include large cuts in future green cards and worker visas? Why don't they?
Really, I would like to know because I have to believe that this nation's Catholic bishops are good people who mean well.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA.
Catholic bishops spend $3.5 million of anti-poverty funds to increase poverty among American workers
Blogger's Note: You can contact these four bishops about this.
NY: Timothy Dolan http://www.archny.org/news-events/media-contact/
Philadelphia: Charles Chaput http://archphila.org/contact.php
Phoenix: Thomas Olmstead http://www.diocesephoenix.org/contact.php
Los Angeles: Jose Gomez http://www.la-archdiocese.org/Pages/Help/Contact.aspx
You can also contact the closest diocese to you here
and let them all know what you feel whether you are Roman Catholic or not!
By Roy Beck - posted on NumbersUSA
I have no doubt that America's Catholic bishops are nice people and that they mean well. But their callous indifference to America's unemployed and low-wage workers is astounding when it comes to their lobbying on immigration policy.
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to expend another $800,000 of its anti-poverty funds to help pass a bill that will add millions more foreign workers to compete for scarce U.S. jobs.
The bishops’ anti-poverty program in the past year has invested more than $3.5 million in grass-roots immigration reform.
The organization of U.S. Catholic bishops said it would make $800,000 in grants available for projects aimed at mobilizing regular Catholics to push for the bishops’ immigration platform.
-- Washington Post, March 5, 2013
Wow. Not only are the bishops taking more than $4 million away from anti-poverty efforts in little more than a year, but they are investing it in a policy that will further depress wages in the occupations where the extra foreign workers will compete. And those occupations are disproportionately ones where the American workers in them already are making poverty or near-poverty wages.
Fortunately, our own polling has long found that most Catholics in the pews reject the bishops' priority of helping corporations gain more visas for foreign workers and of helping foreign citizens who have broken our immigration laws.
The Post seems to lament the fact, noting:
A recent Pew poll showed just 32 percent of churchgoing Catholics had heard about immigration issues at church. Among Catholics overall, just 7 percent said religion was the main force in shaping their immigration views.
That suggests that most priests are not as blind to the needs of their working-class parishioners as are the bishops, and that the priests refuse to preach the glories of a loose labor market.
About the 7% figure, I don't take the result to mean that Catholics' immigration views are uninformed by moral concerns. It may just mean that they use a moral compass that is stronger and different from the open-borders pronouncements of their bishops.
OK, my comments are harsh. I don't believe at all that the bishops WANT to help employers make more money on the backs of workers drawing lower wages. I don't believe the bishops WANT the gigantic economic underclass of Black and Hispanic Americans to grow. I don't believe the bishops THINK that loose labor markets that encourage greater and greater income disparity in our society are a moral good.
Really, I don't believe the Catholic bishops think those things at all -- even though those are the logical results of their preferred immigration policies.
But it doesn't seem like the bishops even THINK about the possibility of the results of their actions because they have made an idol out of immigration and a fetish out of concern for immigration lawbreakers as their priority concern. And they have allowed that to blind them to the pain and suffering of this country's most vulnerable citizens.
I can sort of understand how the bishops can make a mercy case for the 11 million illegal aliens. But I can't understand at all why they are spending anti-poverty funds to insisting on adding millions more new immigrant workers while 20 million Americans can't find a full-time job.
We should always remember that all these religious leaders who are demanding an amnesty for illegal aliens are also demanding a "comprehensive immigration reform" package that includes huge increases in future immigrant workers.
Would somebody explain to me what the bishops' argument is for increasing foreign workers in the future? If they were willing to care as much about poor Americans as they do about illegal aliens, the bishops would at least be demanding that the amnesty include large cuts in future green cards and worker visas? Why don't they?
Really, I would like to know because I have to believe that this nation's Catholic bishops are good people who mean well.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA.
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