Welcome the Stranger (Why Mass, Unskilled Immigration is Not Social Justice)

One thing we Catholics have known since almost the beginning: Most statements in the Bible can be misread, misapplied, and torn out of context to serve as the pretext for hysterical balderdash. Martin Luther famously used his private reading of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans to invent a whole new theology of salvation, personalized to soothe his aching scruples. Before that, poor Origen, the first great theologian of the Church, applied "If your hand causes you to sin, then cut it off" (Mk 9:43) to his problems with chastity… bless his heart! Today some of our bishops are telling us to do the very same thing to our country.

The subject is mass, unskilled immigration, and the phrase its enablers like to use (they titled one of their interminable, inevitable USCCB documents after it) is "Welcome the stranger" (paraphrasing Matthew 25:31-46). As someone who has actually studied the empirical effects that two million or so mostly uneducated immigrants are having on poor and working-class Americans, I am constantly confronted with this scrap torn from the New Testament, which earnest, otherwise orthodox Catholics wave around like snake-handlers justifying their latest romp in the piney woods with an ice cooler full of copperheads.

Marshal a series of rational arguments that demonstrate that our current immigration policy (designed by that great Catholic thinker Edward Kennedy) is a sin against prudence, and out will come the proof-text. Show that Catholic nations have for centuries, with the acquiescence or encouragement of the Church, restricted the influx of aliens in accord with the common good of their societies (St. Augustine, for instance, wanted the barbarians kept out of the Roman empire), and slurp – somebody whips it out again. Point out the fact that one of our once-richest states, California, has essentially been bankrupted by the tidal wave of undereducated non-English speakers – and whoop, there's that hoary paraphrase. I've gotten so sick of this Bible abuse that I've lost every scrap of patience. Instead of engaging such proof-texts, I counter with my own. "'You shall not suffer a witch to live' (Ex 22:18). That's in the Bible, too. Come on, let's pass a law!"

But the goal of argument by Bible scrap isn't rational discourse. People who wield autistic scripture snippets aren't trying to further the conversation; they want to end it. Whatever rational processes were going on in your mind are supposed to screech to a halt the moment they chant the mantra, as you blush and admit that the "call of the Gospel" is meant to "bring us to a place beyond narrow calculations" of the common good, justice, patriotism, or prudence. Instead of using the brains God gave us, you're meant to swoon, feel guilty for thinking in the first place, and secrete a miasma of vaguely generous sentiments – which reward you by making you feel really good about yourself. Aren't you being charitable… not like those nasty, hateful fill-in-the-blanks: "rednecks," "bigots," "Arizona voters." I call this phenomenon the "pink cloud," and it's the main pollutant emitted by the Amazing Catholic B.S. Generator.

Let me huff and puff once more in the hopes of dissolving this smog. A majority of Americans, as every survey taken on the subject indicates, believe that it simply isn't prudent to admit millions more unskilled workers into a country that has outsourced its factories to Asia, mechanized its farms, and otherwise dried up opportunities for unskilled native workers to earn what the Church calls a living wage. The evidence bears this out: Adjusted for inflation, wages for working-class Americans of every race have stayed flat for more than 30 years – while Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the entertainment industry have multiplied salaries for even their mid-level workers. The law of supply and demand says that when you flood the market with something, the price goes down. We flooded the market, and the price went down – and American workers are suffering.

At the same time, our taxes and deficits are rising, as communities struggle to care for uninsured hospital patients, to expand or maintain their infrastructure to accommodate rising populations, and to offer bilingual education in up to 15 languages (as in Los Angeles). As Harvard economist George Borjas documents, the only social class gaining from mass, unskilled immigration is… the investor class. That is, the people who make their livings by clipping stock coupons. The upper-middle class is not much affected (they can move to gated communities with private schools), while the middle class and the working poor are suffering. It's that simple. (If you want the long form with all the links to exhaustively support these claims, check out my two previous detailed articles on this topic.)

The case is proved. Nobody argues that a mass influx of cheap labor is helping America's poor, making our society more cohesive, or in any other substantive way benefiting America. Open-borders types are typically reduced at this point in the argument to pointing out how much they enjoy eating out at ethnic restaurants and paying somebody $2 an hour to mow their lawns.

Since they have no rational case, proponents of de facto open borders, such as Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop Jose Gomez, and Archbishop Charles Chaput are reduced to Bible abuse. They chant, "Welcome the stranger" as if this were one of the Ten Commandments – not that even those can be rightly read out of context… unless you agree with the Iconoclasts, and want to rip all the images out of our churches.

So let me challenge theologians on their home turf. What would it mean to take this biblical mandate seriously? Instead of conducting an elaborate thought experiment, let me turn to the riches of Church history to show how it really has worked. I've written before of the dangers involved in trying to pervert the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience) into universal commands – and the toxic side-effects of using the rhetoric of the theological virtues to violate the natural ones.

But there is one group in the Church that has made its business living out the evangelical counsels to the letter and pursuing the theological virtues rigorously: monastic communities. Indeed, the Church holds up religious as the very people called by God to witness to the next life through their embrace of the "hardest sayings" that came from the mouth of Our Lord. The first major monastic order in the West, which preserved Western culture through the Dark Ages, was the Order of St. Benedict. Conveniently for this case, the Benedictines did more than simply embrace poverty, chastity, and obedience. They also took literally the very mandate we're considering here: "Welcome the stranger." Across the world, the Benedictines are famous for offering hospitality to visitors – who, to this day, can drop in unannounced at Benedictine communities and receive a warm bed and hot meals, no questions asked.

You know what the Benedictines don't do? They don't let large groups of strangers move in permanently, flout the rules of the community, claim the status of monks, and help elect a new abbot. Had that been part of Benedictine hospitality, the Vikings wouldn't have needed to batter down the walls of places like Lindisfarne in order to steal all the sacred vessels. They could have simply turned up, moved in, eaten the monks' food and drunk their wine, and waited till they had the numbers to vote in Bjorgolf as abbot. Sure, he might change all the monastery's rules, loot its treasury, and divide its land among his warriors…

But that's the price of "welcoming the stranger" in the style that's being demanded of us today. In a mass democracy where new citizens can vote to raise our taxes, confiscate our property, subject us to discrimination through affirmative action, force us to adopt bilingual laws, and otherwise remake our life as a community, mass immigration threatens to transform America against the wishes of its citizens. And foreign governments are complicit in the process – as Mexico purposely shoves across our borders the citizens with whom it doesn't wish to share the wealth. It's as if a mischievous fraternity had decided to flood a Benedictine abbey with its pledges, until they could vote in one of their members as the abbot, and turn the monastery into a really awesome gothic tequila bar.

Convents have historically proved even more reluctant to offer unconditional and permanent welcome to strangers. Especially males. When a band of helmeted, undocumented Scandinavian migrants in search of hospitality arrived at the women's abbey of Coldingham, England, in 879 – and announced their proposed changes to the community's rule of chastity – the abbess Ebbe gathered the nuns and told them about this proposal. Then she sliced off her nose in the hope that it would deter the Vikings from raping her. All the other nuns did the same, and Ebbe led them through the gate to confront the ruddy warband. Appalled, the Vikings didn't rape the nuns but sent them swiftly, en masse, to heaven. She is now known as "St. Ebbe."

So when people tell me that Arizona voters have cut off their nose to spite their face, it reminds me of good St. Ebbe. Let's invoke her intercession for the citizens of that state under siege. Viva Arizona! Sancta Ebbe, ora pro nobis.

John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor and is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He writes weekly for InsideCatholic.com.

A thoughtful article. I would only say, it is high time all those of the Jewish and Christian faiths should pay a bit more attention as to where their offering go and distributed by whom.
Such articles cannot divorce them selves from the issues regarding how the many Socialist and yes Communist driven organizations over the years have used the "church" for their hidden agendas. I'll leave it go at that.

it is the steady flow of cheap migrant labor which destroys job opportunities and depresses wages for poor blacks and other American minorities...

It's legitimate, though, to ask whether successive waves of low-wage foreign workers have played a role in keeping our own "welfare class" socially demoralized and unemployable...

The degradation of the wages of those who are already the poorest-paid workers in America, and the disappearance of jobs for unskilled youth, is having a catastrophic impact on our "permanent underclass."

Throw minimum-wage and minimum-age laws on that pile and you've indeed got the makings for a "permanent underclass" - which serves well the perverse desires of both (A) those doling out the welfare charity and (B) those in the working class who want to feel they're at least above SOMEBODY on the social scale.

The (B) situation isn't so much different from the poor whites in antebellum America who opposed abolition because, well, at least they weren't on the bottom rung of society so long as there were slaves below them. And those in the middle rungs need the cheap labor which slavery provided then and illegal immigration provides now, in order to make their own earnings purchase more. Not to mention the necessity of importing cheap labor to fund our nation's old-age-care promises. So there are several groups which need/want/approve the exploiting of illegal immigration AND the welfare class.

Aside from creating a permanent underclass, this welfare culture wreaks untold destruction on the lives of its victims. I can't speak much for women; but as a man, created for work, I'd much rather have snuck across the border and be working hard for $2 an hour than a baby-daddy sitting in the projects watching TV and living off my girlfriend's welfare check.

Welfare destroys men. And if you want to destroy an entire class/race/nation of people, destroying its men is a darn good start.

Yes, I love the “they’re just doing the jobs Americans won’t do” crap. Well, no, we WON’T do those jobs for illegal immigrant wages, would you? So as long as there’s illegals, you won’t find any Americans willing to take the jobs. But if you had to pay the kind of wages that were the norm when we weren’t being overrun, you’d find Americans willing to do them. Don’t create the problem, then claim the problem is holding you hostage.

I would have to agree that illegals have depressed wages and have added to the unemployment here in the US.

One thing that people aren’t thinking about also is that Mexico has violated the terms of NAFTA. A trade agreement does not include free movement of Labor across borders yet Mexico is encouraging just that. Although as an economist, I am for free trade, NAFTA is invalid because Mexico has violated the terms of the agreement which adds to our perpetual recession.

Dominican Cardinal says tread lightly with Haitian problem

Santo Domingo.- Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez said Monday that the situation with the Haitians in the country is very delicate, as the behavior towards and the problem with them is observed by the international community.

He said even though no one can dispute the country’s capacity and sovereignty to decide on illegal immigration, more migratory controls are needed. “We the Haitian and Dominican people are equal nations but there are differences in our cultures and it’s possible that their immigrants introduce part of those customs, which aren’t seen well by Dominicans.”

In a visit to the National Palace to greet president Leonel Fernandez for the New Year, the prelate said the migratory controls need to be reinforced and at the same time review the migratory regulation, something that is pending from the Executive Branch.

Haiti ambassador

In that same topic, Haiti ambassador in the country Fritz Cineas noted that relations between Dominican Republic and Haiti are at their best moment, but regretted the recent violent incidents involving his compatriots. He added that communities of Santiago and San Juan provinces are even making plans to expel them.

http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/poverty/2011/1/3/38169/Dominican-Cardinal-says-tread-lightly-with-Haitian-problem
Here is a related story

It is such a good article. It’s one that we FR protestants will easily and wholeheartedly agree with.

Umm, some of you will. Do you really agree that your faith life doesn't have to be taken seriously as long as you keep it between you and God? Study the Catholic church's teachings regarding precepts and counsels. Talk about picking and choosing.

I guess I am a heretic, so burn away.

But the goal of argument by Bible scrap isn't rational discourse. People who wield autistic scripture snippets aren't trying to further the conversation; they want to end it. Whatever rational processes were going on in your mind are supposed to screech to a halt the moment they chant the mantra, as you blush and admit that the "call of the Gospel" is meant to "bring us to a place beyond narrow calculations" of the common good, justice, patriotism, or prudence. Instead of using the brains God gave us, you're meant to swoon, feel guilty for thinking in the first place, and secrete a miasma of vaguely generous sentiments – which reward you by making you feel really good about yourself. Aren't you being charitable… not like those nasty, hateful fill-in-the-blanks: "rednecks," "bigots," "Arizona voters." I call this phenomenon the "pink cloud," and it's the main pollutant emitted by the Amazing Catholic B.S. Generator.

This tactic is not limited to just Catholics. It is used by zealots of all stripes.

I just love these idiots who take their Bible verses in to argue with a judge about a speeding ticket or a DUI. It usually gets the idiots off the streets for several months.

The article is about misapplying the biblical admonition to “Welcome the Stranger.” It offers an excellent commentary on that point and provides analysis and examples.

That, of course, is what I mean about acceptability to conservative protestants. Protestants also run into those who want to sling about “welcome the stranger” as if it means you should give them the ranch.

That isn’t what is meant and DrZ, in this article, makes that point very well.

“Martin Luther famously used his private reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans to invent a whole new theology of salvation.”

Right. Christ is not sufficient, and faith in Him is insufficient for salvation. You gotta work hard enough to earn your own salvation, right? You gotta impress the holy Creator with your “acts of righteousness,” right?

These Roman Catholic apologists are laughable, demeaning the sufficient sacrifice of Christ our Savior by saying that He is not enough, that faith in Him is not enough, that Jesus’ sacrifice is a good starting place, but you need to add your works in order to be saved.

As for me, I’m grateful for Jesus my Rabbi and Savior. He is my salvation, not Rome. And certainly not Roman priests.

It’s all too common for unclueful organizations to say they are for “this” or “that” reform without realizing the wide range of meanings the term could take on or who is vying to control the popular perception of it.

“Social justice” as a term gets my goat too. Automatically I ask “OK, what is the ‘social law’ this ‘justice’ is supposed to be based upon? Otherwise this term is meaningless babble.” That law was clear enough in the context of the bible’s Old Testament. The Christian New Testament doesn’t address itself to secular social issues, seeming to prefer specific ministry of Christians to the needy in a pure Christian context. (True religion [literally, ‘godliness’] is to visit widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep one’s self unspotted from the world.)

I get a pretty good idea of how well a Christian named denomination is doing at being a church by watching how it actually behaves at least as much as what it claims theologically. Is it possible to see Christ in its walk? I don’t know enough about the early Lutherans to say anything about them, but Luther got awfully mad and said some foolishly rageful things, while Rome in turn felt for a long time that it was in its job description to control the world by force. Having lost most of their early misguided fire, both now seem to be largely lukewarm, with notable individual exceptions. I’m not going to opine on which is worse.

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