Catholic Church's immigration stance: A knife in the backs of America's unemployed

Anybody who has followed the immigration issue in recent years knows that the Catholic Church, which has watched its membership steadily decline, has been a leading proponent of amnesty for illegal aliens.

This comes as no surprise because three fourths of the nation’s illegal population comes from Spanish-speaking countries where Catholicism is the primary religion.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops routinely reminds parishioners that we have an “obligation” to “welcome the stranger.”  Words, like “humanity,” “understanding,” “compassion,” fill their press releases and quotes that appears in what these days passes for “news stories” about illegal immigration. 

The most insulting part of this piece for me is this: “The immigration debate is hardly driven by science or even “facts”. It’s a political and emotional debate where facts can get in the way.”

Well, Fr. Joyce, the facts are these:  Your church is joined at the hip with the Obama administration that is allowing 7 million aliens to keep their nonfarming jobs and every month issuing 125,000 work permits to foreign workers while 20 million Americans, many of them poor and with no more than a high school education, cannot find full-time employment.  Where is your compassion and humanity for them?

On the same day that Fr. Joyce’s blog appeared, Radio Iowa ran a story about three Catholic bishops who lobbied members of that state’s legislature asking them not to support the idea of requiring Iowa employers to use E-Verify, the free federal computerized program that prevents illegal workers from entering our workforce.  In other words, protecting American workers, you know, as in citizens.

The arguments they made were the usual:  E-Verify would “complicate the hiring process” and put an “increased burden on law enforcement.”   However, one of the bishops, Marvin Amos of Davenport, at least at the courage to admit that illegal aliens should be allowed to remain here.

For the record, I’m Catholic and regularly attend mass, but these days I am left wondering why I should even bother.  Every Sunday we Catholics “offer up our intentions” that include prayers for our elected leaders, the sick, travelers, military service members and their families, and – “those looking for work.”

During a recent homily, our pastor noted a conversation he had with a lay member of the church who expressed dismay that illegal aliens living here in Wisconsin are unable to get drivers licenses so they can look for work.  The unemployment rate in “America’s Dairyland” is 7.1 percent and in December led the nation in job losses.

When leaders of the Catholic faith, as well as other religions, ask their flocks to look into their own hearts to determine whether they are doing all they can to help those down on their luck, one word comes to my mind:  hypocrisy.  These clerics will claim to be “doing God’s work,” but since when did such work include contributing to the economic misery of so many and helping to destroy the nation that allows them to live as well as they do and – most importantly – worship as freely they do?