I had intended to complete a series on the faux outrage surrounding Pope Benedict XVI. I may yet return to the topic. Since my last blog, another scandal among certain members of the clergy has broken. Only, the pundits and editorialists aren’t wringing their fists over this one.
Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles is the focus of this scandal. Mahoney, a consummate disappointment, wrote in his blog that Arizona’s new immigration law is, “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law.” The boobishness of this statement shall become apparent if it is not already. On initial reflection, I wondered why something so “useless” is, at the same time, so enraging.
“The tragedy of the law,” Mahoney wrote, “is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.” Illegal aliens (The term “illegal immigrant” being, most assuredly, nonsense) without a doubt “consume” public resources. Since they consume far more public resources than the amount of income taxes they contribute, “rob” seems to be an apt term (though a bit inflammatory, we must admit). “Plunder” is a term that is just rather illustrative and fun.
“[T]he present immigration system,” Mahoney went on to say, “is completely incapable of balancing our nation’s need for labor and the supply of that labor.” Our nation has reached its highest unemployment rate in almost thirty years. Which “need for labor” would that be?
Mahoney lamented, “[the] Census Bureau reports that every day a minimum of 10,000 baby boomers retire.” A lot of baby boomers standing outside of Home Depot looking for work, are there? Indeed, how many baby boomers on the brink of retirement are working at minimum wage or below? How many are working as day laborers?
Is this clown serious? Last month, the United States added 471,000 jobless claims (or, more than 10,000 per day). Which need for labor is Mahoney babbling about? There isn’t one. Not unless one believes that companies have a need for cheap labor that will push out more skilled (read: more expensive) American citizens.
This point ought to be the focus of the discussion whenever do-gooding bleeding hearts like Mahoney preach about “comprehensive immigration reform” (in contradistinction to forty years of the Fed’s “half-assed border control reform”). What they are saying is, in effect, in response to an apparent (if not imagined) need for fast-food workers, farm hands and day laborers, let us import a class unskilled, non-English speaking serfs who will work for a pittance. Liberal compassion: Creating slaves and second-class citizens since 1933.
In the midst of this mindless drivel, Mahoney’s most irresponsible moment came with this: “I can’t imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation.”
Last month, the state of Arizona passed SB 1070, a law prohibiting businesses and landlords from harboring illegal aliens. The law does no more than make federal laws enforceable by Arizona police (who must report illegal aliens to the proper federal authorities). Police officers may, when under reasonable suspicion that a suspect is an illegal alien, and in the course of a traffic stop or other police action, stop suspected-illegal aliens and ask for identification.
Today, at this very instance, police may, in every state in the nation, pursuant to forty years of Supreme Court decisions, stop anyone where a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is in the course of committing a crime. Under SB 1070, police may stop a person where they obtain reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien. They may ask the suspect for identification. Under federal law, all legal aliens are required to carry proof of citizenship: Such has been the law since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in 1940.
This law is not unique to America either. Nearly all European Union nations have similar requirements that aliens keep their documentation on them at all times. In Mexico, immigrants are required to provide their own health care, and authorities can keep track of every immigrant by demanding to see their papers. If you don’t produce your papers or if you produce false papers, you can be fined, imprisoned and even deported. Illegal immigration into Mexico is a felony. If a Mexican were to marry a foreigner with the sole intent of gaining residence in the country for that foreigner, he can be imprisoned for five years.
In American, we have anchor babies.
Arizona simply attaches a state penalty where one fails to abide by a federal law. And the penalty is, when all is said and done, a misdemeanor. The means by which officers are allowed to enforce the new state law is 100% compatible with well-established constitutional precedent (“reasonable suspicion” of a crime in progress extends no more than the power to “stop” a suspect).
Also, for federal law to pre-empt a state’s immigration law, it would need to do so expressly. Thus, Arizona’s 2007 law, prohibiting businesses from hiring illegal aliens, was already upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Barring the jurisprudence of a wise Latina, this precedent will obviously be upheld.
The law explicitly states that police, “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” for the purpose of determining immigration status. This provision is fully in keeping with constitutional precedent. It has never been held that race cannot be a factor in establishing reasonable suspicion; it has been established that race cannot be the sole determining factor.
Suppose a cop walks into a bank, and a teller pops up from behind the counter yelling ‘eight Chinese men just robbed us and went out the back door thirty seconds ago!’ If the cop walks out the back door and spots three Japanese men, two Chinese men and five black women, would we call it “ racial profiling” if he grabbed the three Japanese men and the two Chinese men? Possibly, but surely the time and location mattered as well.
Pulling up to the local check cashing store and demanding identification from every brown-skinned patron would more than likely exceed the powers granted by SB 1070. What about stopping a speeding van heading northbound twenty-five minutes from the Arizona border? If the cop looks inside and sees twenty-three pasty-white men wearing berets and speaking French, would it be “racial profiling” if the officer decided to let them go? What about eighteen brown-skinned men speaking Spanish?
Are we insane? We’re not looking for French-Canadians in the American southwest. But there is no reason to think that every brown-skinned person walking the streets has become a target. And even if a legal immigrant or naturalized citizen is stopped under reasonable suspicion, they will be let go as soon as identification is provided. It is only the illegal alien who should worry about 1070…. and that’s sort of the point.
Mahoney is right. The Arizona law is exactly like Nazism, except that the Nazi’s were keeping people in the country while Arizona is trying to enforce existing federal laws that require deportation. And, minus the racism and ethnic cleansing, yes, SB 1070 is precisely like Nazism. Surely, if the ten to fifteen million Jews and Catholics who were slaughtered in Hitler’s death camps were here today, they would agree with the wise Cardinal and his Marxist ilk. (Celebrating May Day protests ought to, at a minimum, qualify one as a Marxist.)
Mahoney has been a massive disappointment as Cardinal of Los Angeles. He is the worst example of a clergyman who would choose radical ideology over his Church. For popularity, fame, and adoration, Mahoney has fashioned himself a “Progressive.” For example, when the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops and even Catholic Democrats in the U.S. Congress were standing firm against federal funding for abortion in Obama’s health care bill, Mahoney triangulated. When asked if he agreed that the bill funded abortion he responded: “This is way beyond my field. My field is immigration. I really haven’t kept up on that, and I spend all my time on this other. You have to get somebody who spends time on that.”
Immigration is his field? Pardon me, I thought salvation was his field. Mahoney is comfortable discussing immigration law (which he clearly does not understand), the economics of labor and immigration’s effects (which he clearly does not understand), and the history of Nazism (which he clearly does not understand). Yet, strangely, he is not comfortable taking a position on an issue which the USCCB, the US Congress, and most of the country has taken positions on? Could he not have at least taken it on the wisdom of the USCCB that the bill might have funded abortions and stated that if the bill did fund abortions he would strongly oppose it? No, no, that’s not his field.
The closest he came was when asked whether he thought the bill should fund abortion: “No, but that’s what the president said, too.” So, Obama championed the restrictions on federal abortion funding? Mahoney takes the word of a president who overturned the Mexico City policy in his first week in office, promised Planned Parenthood the Freedom of Choice Act (repealing all state abortion restrictions with federal preemption), said he doesn’t know when “babies” have human rights, said he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished” with a baby, proclaims himself pro-choice, and appoints pro-choice after pro-choice candidate to every executive post and board that opens up; yet, Mahoney can’t assume the USCCB knows what it is talking about regarding abortion funding?
Interestingly, Mahoney was asked all of this while speaking at an event funded by the leftwing Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress considers abortion to be one of many “reproductive” rights (it’s the one that stops “reproduction” dead in its tracks).
The Catechism is quite explicit about abortion. [Catechism n. 2270-2272.] While immigration is a natural right as defined in the Catechism [Catechism n. 2241], at no point has the Church ever taken the position that a sovereign nation may not regulate immigration. Now, it is immoral to willingly enforce and abide by immoral laws. [Catechism n. 2242.] Therefore, if a Catholic hospital were required to provide abortion services, the hospital must disobey the law or close its doors.
Mahoney has chosen to wash his hands of the abortion issue: That’s not his field. On the other hand, he has no problem throwing in with May Day protestors in the face of a “useless” law that does nothing to disturb existing Constitutional precedent.
This is not a debate about whether immigration is good; or whether brown-skinned people are equal or inferior. The demagogues like Mahoney, Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon who define the debate as such are worth less than dog feces. This is about the Rule of Law, and the protections it provides. If law were followed, legal immigration would allow persons to enter this nation in the light of day under the protection of law. Legal immigrants are given proper documentation, registered with proper authorities, given background checks, receive vaccinations, are inspected for disease, are in some cases given access to the vote (legally), do not live in fear of civil authorities, and would have bargaining power in the workplace. On the flip-side, if immigration law were enforced, American citizens would not live in fear of violent criminals flooding across their borders (Arizona is now the kidnapping capitol of America, and prisons throughout the Southwest are warehouses of Mexican drug traffickers and murderers. Hint: Mexico’s lawyers, doctors and aristocrats generally don’t make up the majority of our illegal alien community). American citizens would not have to fear the Balkanization of the Southwest. Americans didn’t worry about Ireland or Italy annexing New York during the immigration waives of the Nineteenth Century. Today, we meet righteous indignation whenever it is recommended that English be the sole language of government or that our schools teach American history and American Exceptionalism. May Day protestors don Mexican flags as they march through Los Angeles, and students get sent home from school for wearing American flags on Cinco de Mayo.
With proper immigration, we can enforce language requirements, American civics testing, and denunciation of one’s citizenship to other countries. Mahoney and his leftwing brethren prefer economic chaos, undocumented criminal elements, race wars, group identification, the disunion of a peaceful nation, and defiance of the Rule of Law.
Surely, Cardinal Mahoney is also aware that political authorities are morally obligated to regulate private ownership for the sake of the common good. [Catechism n. 2406]. In this country, the political authorities have extended hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded social services through tax and spend wealth redistribution, providing an incentive for millions to flood across a sovereign border in search of work, services, health care and education; all on the backs of tens of millions of American citizens (and their children) who are either loosing their bargaining power for low-skilled work or working to fund the difference for insolvent, irresponsible social service programs.
In Mexico, the political authorities are encouraging the citizenry to engage in this practice: the money being returned to relatives of illegal aliens has been a boon to the Mexican economy. Will Mahoney criticize our southern neighbors for fostering an environment where “Coyotes” kidnap, intimidate, rape, extort and kill immigrants attempting to escape to a better life? Is rape and murder not his field?
Mahoney and his leftwing ilk is the clergy scandal the NY Times won’t wring their fists over. He’s a disgrace, inasmuch as our president, his cabinet and his shills in the U.S. Congress are disgraces for giving a standing ovation to Mexican President Felipe Calderon as he stood before them denouncing Arizona.
Felipe Calderon is also a disgrace. This man presides over a nation in disarray, plagued by corruption, graft, human trafficking on its northern border, and abysmal poverty. His immigration laws are Draconian. This week, he gave the word “hypocrite” new meaning as he stood before the U.S. Congress criticizing Arizona’s new law. Our president, his cabinet (most of whom has claimed to have not read the fifteen page Arizona law; most of whom have claimed to have read the 2,400+ page health care law) and most of the senate applauded Calderon’s disgraceful display.
(If John McCain had any sense, he would have locked up his primary against J.D. Hayworth by walking out right there on live television. I am actually dumbfounded that the senators who were not applauding stood by. Was there any reasonable alternative to walking out of that room booing and hissing? I can’t see it.)
An especially stunning moment in this spectacle was when Attorney General Eric Holder stood and applauded: This disgrace claims to have not read the law, and yet he applauded Calderon as he lambasted the state of Arizona for passing the law. What was he applauding? Does he often oppose things he’s never read? Better yet, does he often lie to the U.S. Senate about not reading things?
We’ve reached the point where the highest level of government is joining a foreign diplomat in lambasting a state government for enacting a law that is 100% Constitutional and still less Draconian that the laws of the foreign diplomat’s own country. November cannot come quickly enough. If this nation has any luck left, we’ll replace the U.S. Congress with the Arizona Legislature.
http://cardinalrogermahonyblogsla.blogspot.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/opinion/29kobach.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54397
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/09/more_than_a_choice.html
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/14/local/la-me-0514-arizona-wiesenthal-20100514
http://factreal.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/mexico-vs-united-states-mexican-immigration-laws-are-tougher/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/felipe-calderon-gets-stan_n_583471.html