As a follow to the discussion below re: the Catholic bishops and immigration, here's a column I wrote last year on the subject of religious duty in the face of illegal immigration. What sparked the column was a sermon by the Catholic then-bishop Charles Grahmann, saying that if the Holy Family were strangers in our land today, they might not find a place to lay their head, owing to the anti-illegal immigrant sentiment here. His sermon, if memory serves, was sparked by an effort by the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch to make it illegal to rent housing to illegal aliens.
That's the context of what follows. Excerpt:
Whatever else the church's leadership might be teaching new immigrants, respect for American law doesn't seem to be a high priority. Father Richard John Neuhaus, the First Things editor who is generally pro-immigration, has pointed out that for all their talk about justice in the immigration discussion, the bishops are conspicuously silent about law and order. "Law and order does not guarantee justice," he writes, "but there can be no justice without law and order.Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, in First Things, adds that it's important for bishops to recognize "the need for a highly diverse, rule-of-law society to be careful about the messages it sends to persons who wish to become part of that society." Ms. Glendon, a leading Catholic intellectual, quotes Pope John Paul II's teaching that holds all members of society, not just the strong, to account: "Those who are weaker, for their part, in the same spirit of solidarity should not adopt a purely passive attitude, or one that is destructive of the social fabric, but, while claiming their legitimate rights, should do what they can for the good of all."
Could the pope's words have meaning in the Farmers Branch controversy? Is the growing influx of illegal immigrants in our area "destructive of the social fabric" in ways that make it morally problematic for Catholics and other Christians? Do people concerned about the stability and integrity of their neighborhoods have no claim on justice? These are all legitimate and important questions, and they deserve a thoughtful response, not sentimental speechifying and back-of-the-hand moral preening from prelates.
Bishops, priests and clergy of all faiths could and should play a constructive role in the wrenching and divisive public debate over immigration. We need the prophetic voice of the church to help all of us – immigrants and citizens – navigate between the demands of justice and the call to mercy.
But those bishops and other church folk whose idea of moral leadership is to write off immigration skeptics as nothing more than nasty nativists who make the baby Jesus cry aren't helping.
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It's not worth trying to reduce the border traffic until the demand is reduced. When it is, 99% of the industry will die, and the rest will be easy to stomp out.
Very sensible, DavidTC, one of the most sensible things that's been said on this thread. Raise the demand high enough, nothing will stop it. Lower the demand enough, sensible measures will choke it off.
See, and here's where the goofiness sets in. Democrats are not opposed to actually carding employees, despite the fact they fight such measures.
They may not be, but I am. I ain't got to show no stinkin' badges! The end of that road is the Netherlands, where my daughter, a citizen of an EU country, has to get a PERMIT to live where she lives. So they can keep track, dig? and come after you when the mood strikes them. Europeans are accustomed to such outrages, but I'm guessing it won't go over here.
Shouldn't, whatever other fears, realistic or otherwise, move us. Because the Governing Class, you see, doesn't care about illegal immigrants really (in fact they're in favor of cheap labor) but they'd like to use that lever to get control over you too.
/paranoia
They may not be, but I am. I ain't got to show no stinkin' badges! The end of that road is the Netherlands, where my daughter, a citizen of an EU country, has to get a PERMIT to live where she lives. So they can keep track, dig? and come after you when the mood strikes them. Europeans are accustomed to such outrages, but I'm guessing it won't go over here.
Everyone assumes I'm talking about having the government in everyone's business, with special ID cards that have to be run through databases and stuff. I'm not...a trivial amount of work on the part of the government using data they already have could discover which companies are hiring hundreds of people here illegally.
You don't need to check government IDs, you just need all employers to report social security numbers, the city the employer works in, and roughly the number of hours they work. All of which they already do.
Any social security number working jobs that are more than two hundred miles away, or totaling more than 140 hours a week? It's obviously a fake. If a company has more than 10% fake, they need to be investigated. Same with names not matching the numbers.
ID and names not matching SSNs because someone got married, or someone stealing a real SSN and causing the person who legally has it to get in trouble, will count as 'fake', but that doesn't matter if you're just using that for statistics to figure out which companies are probably breaking the law. If there's a company of 1000 people and 3 of them have dodgy SSN, it's probably a typo and a name change and someone hiding from child support. If, however, 724 of them have dodgy SSNs, the company need investigating.
And once you catch them, you put them on 'parole' and look over their hiring practices and every new person they hire...but only for those companies that do that in the first place.
And, of course, some companies will just lie about their employees and try to keep them completely off the books, but at that point they've passed being able to legitimately claim that 'they lied to us, we thought they were legal', and should be hit with whopping fines.
I feel there's not a way of controlling it when the incentive is so high. If demand was low enough, a wall would help.
While we might disagree regarding the efficacy of a walls, I agree that, WRT wall vs. employer sanctions, I it's more a matter of "both/and", as opposed to "either/or". I suppose it would be interesting to try one or the other, but there's something to be said for "defense in depth".
Something seems nuts here. If only we legalize the current crop of illegals, that will free up the Democrats to prevent more illegals from coming and staying in our country? I don't buy it. I think the pre-condition is actually the real goal - legalize the current crop of illegals. Very clever. And the real effect will be an incentive for even more illegals to come and stay.
The easiest way to reduce employer demand for undocumented workers is to raise the minimum wage to a living wage and then get serious about enforcing it. At that point, there would be more than enough English-speaking American workers to keep all the employers happy. In the process, we'd be solving a bunch of other problems too, of course.
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