What kind of punishment would you suggest for those priests? Putting them in jail for helping the homeless and/or the needy?
Churches will tell you, and quite rightly, that Jesus said to help the needy without regard to status, legal or otherwise. Getting the government to interfere with that (and in a very religious country as we are) is inviting big trouble from the masses. When it comes to choosing between a mandate from God to help the needy and a mandate from the government to stop, the churches will tell the Feds to go to hell.
Your solution is impossible in a practical sense.
People on this thread are putting too much blame on the Mexicans. The problem is with Joe and Jane America, who are doing all the hiring. That's where your anger needs to be directed, folks.
Nobody minds churches helping homeless and needy. I do mind churches assisting and encouraging criminal activity. Illegals are here illegally. To provide them with assistance is to encourage more to break the law, and provide aid and comfort to those who’ve already broken it. It’s no different than a church opening its doors and hiding a rapist. They have a responsiblity to support the law of the land.
“Churches will tell you, and quite rightly, that Jesus said to help the needy without regard to status, legal or otherwise.”
Representatives should know the Bible well enough to remember to “render onto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”.
“What kind of punishment would you suggest for those priests? Putting them in jail for helping the homeless and/or the needy? “
They can help the needy all they want. They just have to report them if they are illegals and stop making an open policy of offering them protection and anonymity. If not, they should be treated the same way any other citizen would be treated for being an accomplice to a federal crime, i.e. aiding and abetting the violation of our border laws.
“Churches will tell you, and quite rightly, that Jesus said to help the needy without regard to status, legal or otherwise.”
Fine. Help them and send them back where they came from. Mathematics will tell you we can’t be an asylum to the entire world. Christ also said render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and the enforcement of border laws is an issue of national defence and socio-cultural identity.
Do you support open borders? Your law-breaking clerical friends apparently do and they have no company in any other nation except a few degenerate western socialist European “democracies” and we see what that has gotten for them.
“Getting the government to interfere with that (and in a very religious country as we are) is inviting big trouble from the masses.”
What you are proposing is that churches should interfere with governmental laws.
“When it comes to choosing between a mandate from God to help the needy and a mandate from the government to stop, the churches will tell the Feds to go to hell. “
Churches have no more authority to ignore state law or enforce their own law than anyone else in a civilized society. We settled that one once and for all with Henry II and Thomas A Becket. Remember?
“Your solution is impossible in a practical sense. “
My solutions are QUITE possible and eliminate the problem without the hassle of hunting these people down individually and deporting them - almost a physical impossibility thanks to the failure of the current administration to enforce the laws President Bush swore to uphold when elected President. The function of a President is to enforce laws enacted by Congress, not to selectively ignore those with which he disagrees. Bush’s actions in this regard exceed incompetence, in his collaboration with the Mexican authorities they border on treason, and they certainly fit the description of high crimes and misdemeanors.
“People on this thread are putting too much blame on the Mexicans. “
I’m not blaming Mexicans.
Most Mexicans are decent people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families by escaping from the hellhole that a handful of wealthy Euro-elites have created in Mexico, often with the connivance of American corporate interests. I’m also blaming those American employers who create an inducement for these people to come here by vioalting our laws, the churches and other “sanctuary groups” who offer them protection by breaking our Federal laws, the lawyers who actively advocate for their cause, the Administration which seeks to create a permanent class of exploited, disinfranchised peons to serve the corporate interests it panders to, and people like yourself whose sympathies are misplaced and views on this subject are exceedingly myopic, superifical and emotional rather than analytical and logical.
“The problem is with Joe and Jane America, who are doing all the hiring. That’s where your anger needs to be directed, folks.”
I agree with you there and several of points are directly at them. They are the root cause of the present problems and should be punished first. Stop them and the illegals will be forced to leave.
If the Mexicans want to be Americans, then we should annex Mexico and make them all Americans.
We all come out ahead - the Americans and the Mexicans. The Mexicans are freed from oppression by their pseudo-aristocratic elites, provided decent jobs and educations and medical care. LEARN ENGLISH, and we receive a great country with a lot of material wealth and an incredible tourist potential with income generating beaches, resorts etc. We also get a much shorter borderline to defend - the Isthmus of Tehauntipec.
The ONLY people who come out losers are those American corporate interests which want a pool of exploitable slave labor while burdening the taxpayers with the social costs, and the Democrats who want an influx of an exploited underclass to attempt to subvert to their own needs.
You can’t have both - you can only have one or the other.
Either we Americanize Mexico, or we close the border, reduce the infux of Mexicans and make sure new arrivals come from every part of the world and are adequately assimilated into Anglo-American culture.
The latter is why American grew stronger from immigration in the past and why this new form of “immigration” is destroying us.