Interesting article. I have just skimmed it my self. I think its pretty consistent with Church Teaching on this issue. I know there is a tendency to try to put the Church's teaching into political classifications of what Liberal catholics think versus Conservative Catholics. THe real issue is what is the Orthodox Catholic response. Orthodox being that one submits himself to Christ and Christ Teaching and to his Church that expounds them.
Of course, a Catholic can a wide array of views as to specific legislation.
The most powerful argument that comes out this document is in regards to "mixed" families. Those families that might might be split apart. This flys in the face of Catholic Teaching. Especially for it to be done on such a mass level.
Finally, the Church is not promoting illegal activity. I can find nothing in this document that says they wish for illegal immigration to continue. I know there are some people who feel that if the Bishops recommendations were followed that illegal immigration would increase.. However many have a opposite view including myself. But to accuse the Bishops of intentionally promoting an illegal activity I think is wrong
Let us be clear: This is not "Church Teaching",
This is liberal political advocacy that happens to be supported and promulgated by the bishops' political organization in DC.
This position is as wrong-headed and ill-advised as their 1980s foray into opposed Reagan's wise and correct defense policies:
http://www.cmpage.org/betrayal/chapt2.html
"Bishops, obviously not satisfied to merely lead their flocks, have also claimed expertise on American weaponry. Some of the Catholic bishops involved in the 1983 pastoral letter on nuclear arms and defense told a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in 1984 that they did not approve of the MX missile or the Strategic Defense Initiative. They maintained that the MX would not provide protection and the Strategic Defense Initiative would not work. Since trained scientists are still debating the merits of the Strategic Defense Initiative, it is strange that the bishops seem to have informed knowledge on this highly technical subject."
" They later wrote a poor imitation of the Catholic bishops' 1983 pastoral letter about defense, titled "The Nuclear Crisis and the Pursuit of Peace." In it the bishops, like the Catholic bishops, opposed not only the use of nuclear weapons, but also said even "nuclear deterrence" could not "receive the churches' blessing." The bishops did not even attempt to justify their positions with thoughtful, in-depth studies of theology, but largely depended on waving the concept of "shalom" - which they misinterpreted as "harmony between humanity and all of God's creatures" on this earth - and using half-pietistic, half-trendy rhetoric. "But we write also in gratitude for the swelling chorus of those who cry No to nuclear weapons, No to poverty, No to racism, No to sexism - and Yes to the things that make for peace," the letter said. The study document also used the concept of "shalom."
Both the letter and the study document which accompanied it assumed a moral equivalency between the United States and the Soviet Union. They suggested that the nuclear arms race is a disease which afflicts both countries. In doing so they totally ignored the differences in American and Soviet political systems, in effect putting totalitarianism and democracy, and American and Soviet foreign policy, on the same moral level."
Phooey to their wrong and liberal policies on relations with USSR, and phoeey to their wrong and liberal policies on immigration.