Posted on 09/05/2013 8:12:16 AM PDT by haffast
A Call for Fair and Realistic Immigration Reform
A Statement from Pennsylvania’s Catholic Bishops
Most Pennsylvanians have immigrant roots. Each family has a unique story, but so many stories include hard working, faith-filled ancestors who came to America to pursue a dream and worked hard to fulfill it.
Immigrants have significantly contributed to the growth of our country. The Catholic Church has always provided spiritual and social services to immigrants out of a strong belief that immigrants deserve the same basic rights and freedoms owed to every child of God. Our Church is an immigrant Church, built by our ancestors who left difficult situations abroad to establish communities where they could work, support their families, and be free to worship and live in accordance with their beliefs. Today’s immigrants seek the same opportunities.
Millions of undocumented immigrants live in the United States today. Many left their home countries because of poverty and persecution. The overwhelming majority is hard-working and poses no threat to anyone. Americans are rightly concerned for our nation’s public safety, respect for the law and the solvency of our public institutions. As a sovereign state we have a right to control and secure our borders. But these legitimate issues do not absolve us from fixing a broken immigration system that often fails to protect the basic dignity of immigrant men, women, and children seeking a better life.
The Church seeks fair and realistic immigration reform that upholds the God-given dignity of every human being. As Jesus taught us, “what you do for the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” (Matt. 25: 35 – 41). Therefore, we the Catholic Bishops of Pennsylvania urge support for reforms that:
- Provide a reasonable path to citizenship for undocumented persons living in the United States.
- Preserve and strengthen family unity as a cornerstone of our immigration system.
- Offer legal avenues for low-skilled immigrants to work in the United States.
- Restore and respect rights of due process for individuals caught up in the immigration system.
- Promote efforts to address the root causes of migration, such as poverty and persecution.
People of goodwill can legitimately disagree about the specifics of immigration reform, but the time is clearly long past due for America to fix its broken system. Please send a message to your elected officials today by going to www.pacatholic.org and clicking on “Pass Immigration Reform,” or call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask to be connected to your Congressional Members’ offices.
May God give us the courage to recast our immigration system in a spirit that secures the safety of our nation, but also welcomes and respects the strangers among us.
_______________
Click here to send a message in support of immigration reform to your elected officials.
- See more at: http://www.pacatholic.org/a-call-for-fair-and-realistic-immigration-refor/#sthash.fmY8Zi9B.dpuf
Do the above for 5 or so years, then lets see who is still left to deal with and we should then talk about this issue again.
Refusing benefits would cure most of the problem. Its rare that someone comes here simply to work without looking for a handout too. If you cut of the benes, the freeloaders won’t come and that would solve a huge part of the problem.
It's been provided. It leads out the door.
- Preserve and strengthen family unity as a cornerstone of our immigration system.
Since when did this, and not what benefits America generally, become the 'cornerstone' for immigration policy?
I have ZERO problem with immigrants who will make our country stronger. Someone that “signs the gurest book” on the way in and works hard without looking for a handout sounds like an asset. Take away those attributes and all you have is another housing project resident.
Key word here is "immigrant." Unfortunately, this country is trying to give away benefits to SQUATTERS!
The Catholic Church as been pushing the socialist immigration agenda and healthcare agenda for years. As soon as I got to the phrase “undocumented” I knew where this was going.
They have no right to be here, we owe them nothing.
The Catholic Church knows that most of these people are Catholics and they have been helping them get here for years.
With the Catholic Church pushing the socialist agenda I hope the homosexuals make them marry gays in their churches, I’ll be damned if I stand with the Catholic Church then, or on healthcare for that matter, screw them.
"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." (emphasis added)
A call for the Bishops of Pennsylvania to issue Pastoral Letters instructing illegal aliens to return to their countries of origin and begin the process of legally immigrating to the United States.
Are the Bishops prepared to accept the eternal consequences of condoning and enabling criminal activity; both misdemeanors and felonies, and the commission of mortal sins; violations of the 7th and 10th Commandments?
Immigration reform: seal the borders, enforce the law, illegals should be deported. Of course it will never happen.
How can amnestinians claim illegals WILL pay taxes when 42% of legal Americans DON’T even pay taxes?
I don’t want to revisit the issue of legalization for those who are here illegally.
Ever.
End of story.
Non citizens who have registered and voted illegally in the past should not even be considered for a path to citizenship as they have committed felony election fraud on top of illegal entry - possibly combined with ID theft.
Applicants who register falsely and vote for democrat deconstruction of the nation should be booted immediately.
McCain, Ryan and Rubio do not agree!
There is a difference between an immigration policy.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiachand supporting and promoting a policy of anarchy
and lawlessness.These are followers of haSatan.
I doubt you've read the following which was written by a Catholic Priest:
47% don’t pay federal income taxes.
Will these same bishops lobby for grocery store reform? Why should I have to pay for food, or work for the money to pay for it? Its just sitting there on the shelves. I’ll just take what I need, well, maybe a few extra snacks too.
Why do we need laws, government, or borders anyway? If a little lawlessness is good, let’s go full anarchy.
That is impossible, and it wouldn't stop immigration, the world has many hundreds of millions of people who want to come here just to move to a better place with law and infrastructure and wealth and medicine and clean water, hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds of millions, and they become voters.
America should never have changed it's immigration laws in 1965, the democrat party and the American left as it exists today, only exists because of that 1965 change.
Democrats wrote a law to replace the American voter.
From unionizing government, to Vietnam, to the 1965 Immigration Act, JFK was the end of us.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.