Reader comments
Going Bishop Wester's way

What about the legal immigrant who has lost his job to an illegal,apparently the do not count.

If I lose my employment to an illegal do I get compassion, I too an one of God's children.

Thank you for a sane, heartfelt,Christian article.

It is nice to know there are still people in the background doing God's work while others sit and do nothing but complain and live in mortal fear about ... everything.

Again the DMN ignores the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. To call enforcing our borders against illegal immigration "draconian" is unbelievable. Do we have the right to secure our borders or don't we???

Of course we have the "right" to secure or borders, "Ratman."

What you are advocating is more division between people and this no longer works in our world today.

What does "Comprehensive bill," mean? It seems to mean open borders, amnesty, and then continuing with the status quo, the same as the 1986 immigration bill. It also means continued depressed wages for our unskilled workers, which requires the taxpayers to make up the difference (through welfare, medical and other support) of those paid below subsistence level wages. Therefore, depressed wages ends up being a taxpayer subsidy for the employer. You may think you like getting your grass cut cheap or lower room rates at the motel that hires illegal aliens, but you pay in the end through taxes that support legal workers paid below subsistence level, as well as illegal aliens. What is the end game of those that support open borders and illegal immigration??

If "Average Joe public" doesn't have a job busing tables, cleaning hotel toilets, or working in a sweat shop, I would say his worst fear in unfounded.

I find it hard to characterize America's present enforcement of its immigration and border laws (which make Swiss cheese look watertight) as "draconian" or unjust.

I do not believe it is in the interest of the United States to allow itself to be the safety valve for a dysfunctional state. The first consideration in setting immigration law ought to be whether the level of immigration allowed benefits the U.S., with benefits to individual immigrants and other countries a secondary concern.

The U.S. takes in over a million immigrants each year. That is a huge number. Arguably, it is larger than is beneficial. The practical effect of most "comprehensive" immigration "reform" will be to increase this number. The half-hearted efforts at enforcing existing law, over the past decades, have gone well beyond merely avoiding injustice, all the way to almost total ineffectiveness.

What the Bishop is effectively saying is that even the present minimal efforts to enforce an extremely generous immigration law are "unjust." The only conclusion to be drawn is that what the Bishop really wants is for there to be no substantive restrictions on immigration at all.

It is impossible to seal off our borders and round up every illegal immigrant to "satisfy the law."

The sooner people can come to grips with this fact the better off we will all be.

The Bishop is to be commended.
It is comforting to know true Christian ideals are alive and well in today's polarized society.
This should be an inspiration to all Christians and wake-up call that somebody is looking at the problem other than from a poisonous political view.

On the illegal immigration issue the DMN is wrong again. Perhaps the Catholic Church which already dominates Mexico and other poor countries should go into those countries, do something about ruthless rulers and raise taxes on the wealthy elite to provide good public services and schools, health benefits, other social services, etc. which would enable people to stay in their homelands rather than sneak across our borders. American workers who have been displaced and taxpayers who have their hard-earned wages confiscated through multiple taxing systems to pay for services for illegal immigrants who should be the responsibility of other governments are tired of getting the shaft. We are already over using water and other natural resources due to over population. Are we really open to 400 million people in the US in the near future with more than 100 million of them new immigrants and most of them unwilling to assimilate?

We certainly don't want to appear to be weak-kneed if George Bush and is Bush Doctrine would put pressure on the Mexican officals to provide a better life for their people would we?

And when they are ALL here, then what, deep thinkers? Then what?

That's hilarious "santiago"!

I'm quite sure that is exactly what the Native Americans' concern was when the white man kept moving in.

I guess the law of karma really does exist.

But most people only leave their homes and family because they have to. I'm sure our Decider president and his GOP will come to the rescue, work with Mexico (or maybe invade that country too to emancipate its citizens)

Bishop Wester stands head and shoulders above the other modern-day Christians!

Laws, in-laws, out-laws, by-laws, whatever ...
in the end there are some people who know what the right thing to do is.

I note that the usual suspects don't have quite the same ardor for keeping religion out of politics, when religion supports their side.

Last time I plowed my way through the Bible, I didn't see anything like "Thou Shalt Institute A Guest Worker Program" or "Thou Shalt Not Check People's Social Security Numbers Too Closely."

The Bible has a general mandate to deal justly with the "strangers" in our country, but religious open-borders advocates unpack a lot more specific policy content from that general principle than is justified by any stretch of the imagination. Render the details of immigration policy unto Caesar, whose job it is.

The next time I hear someone relish injury to America as "karma" for alleged past sins (with the implication that Americans have to sit back and accept what's coming to it), I'm going to ask my "dogma" to bite him.

"Don't worry - Be happy" -- Or working construction, or working in any job that the people who previously *did* bus tables, clean hotels, and do low-skill manufacturing (before illegals displaced them) are now competing for.

You seem to think nobody cleaned hotels, sewed clothes, etc. before the 1970s, and that illegal immigrants merely stepped into an empty landscape of "jobs Americans won't do."

Not so. Americans did those jobs before illegals arrived in large numbers, and plenty of them are eager to do them once illegals leave (as was demonstrated when several meatpacking plants were raided recently; there was no shortage of applicants for the recently-vacated jobs).

The point is that importing a large class of low-skilled labor that unscrupulous employers are able to hire off the books (and thus free from regulatory mandates) lowers the tide beneath all boats, not just the jobs illegal immigrants directly enter. Because if Joe Sixpack's roofing job is filled by an illegal worker (at half Joe's cost), Joe has to go looking for work himself -- and if he gets one, he displaces the guy who would otherwise have gotten it if Joe were still up on the roof.