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I am seriously offended by this person dividing Christians into "brown" and "white", as if there were no "red", "yellow" or "black" Christians, as if the law for illegal immigrants in AZ applied only to people of one ethnicity.
The way the law is written (have you read it? You should if you want to comment on it.), it applies to all illegal immigrants. And yet, they automatically assume it will only apply to one and only one group of people.
Our country has a sizeable population of illegal immigrants from Poland, Russia, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean as well as from both Canada and Mexico, not to mention other countries, so illegal immigration isn't a single color. I've casually encountered illegals from all of the places I named in the past year or two - not enough to learn their names or where they live so I could help them become legal immigrants, but just enough contact to either know or seriously suspect their legal status.
Of course, I should be nattering, shouldn't I? My own status is rather murky. I and my immigration attorney have operated on the presumption that I am a legal US citizen, but if Americans choose to get really picky and technical about it, that could change. I do have a US social security card (I received it when I was 13 - the year I started working), and a US passport (I received my first one when I was 10, traveling between Germany and the US) and a US state driver's license. If those are not accepted as legitimate ID proving I am a US citizen, I'm screwed. I do not have a US birth certificate. I was not born in the US. The birth certificate I do have is the only copy available - there is nowhere I can go to get another original copy. I am not going to carry it around with me and risk its damage or loss. Nowhere on that birth certificate does it indicate nationality or citizenship.
Other things that bother me about this article is the presumption that America must align with "Christian values". I have no problem with people, individually or in organized groups, sharing and displaying Christian values of various sorts. But what works for individuals and small, closed groups doesn't work for nations. The morals of a nation must exist outside of and beyond the morals of any single special interest group.
There is nothing in the law that says people can't befriend illegal immigrants, only that they can't hire them or use public resources to succor them. Spend your private funds, your church donations, all you want aiding illegal immigrants, not on political campaigning. Act according to the conscience of your spirit and heart for yourself, and if that act meets with widespread public approbation, then it may change the laws. Modeling the behavior they feel is the moral and ethical anad spiritual behavior they want others to emulate is what religions should do, not not demand the laws change according to their supreme dictates.
Immigration "reform" is not a spiritual and moral matter, it is a civic matter that involves everyone in the country, not just those who belong to a select special interest group, and the laws need to be equitable to those who are citizens already while assisting in the integration of immigrants.
When I came to the US, I learned the common language (English) and I adapted to the country I chose as mine.
We have to ask ourselves - and the illegal immigrants - exactly why they chose to come here rather than stay in their native country or some other country. What - exactly- do they expect when they move to another country?
I know if I had chosen Germany over America, I would have been required to learn German, to integrate into German society, to obey German laws, and to undergo a lengthy process to become a German. I would have required a sponsor and be subjected to surveillance to prove my worthiness and loyalty to Germany. It would have been a long, arduous process.
Switching countries should not be easy. Those who have successfully changed national allegiance have embraced their new homeland with fervor.
Illegal immigrants haven't made that decision, haven't let go of their native land, and don't want to have to obey the laws of the land where they are living and working or speak the language of the natives of that land while reaping all the benefits of being there: higher wages, lower crime, food stamps, free health care, even buying property.
The anger isn't towards the illegal immigrants, per se, it's towards the attitude the illegal immigrants bring that the natives must accommodate the illegal immigrants, must give the illegal immigrants not just the same benefits the natives receive, but more and better benefits, that the natives must learn the language of the illegal immigrants, must allow the illegal immigrants to administer their own laws separate from the laws of the country they've entered, must have classes in the schools taught in their language and not the common language of the country they've entered.
The task of religion is to help the immigrants - legal or illegal - to integrate into the country they've entered, to learn the laws of their new homeland, and to speak the language of that new country. The task of religion is to help illegal immigrants navigate the path to becoming legal immigrants by sponsoring them and to eventually become citizens loyal to their new homeland.
What this article does is cater to the illegal immigrants without offering them sponsorship, or any way to become legal, to become citizens, to integrate into their new society, to learn the new laws under which they will live, and to be loyal to their new country.
This article doesn't propose any of that. It proposes instead that the country change to accommodate the illegal immigrant, to have sweeping reforms to "act on the behalf of the" illegal "immigrants among us" - please note they left the word "illegal" out. We have a good immigration process in place - it's slow, but many, many, many people have gone through that process successfully - I have co-workers who immigrated legally, who are in the process of immigrating legally, I have friends who immigrated legally, I immigrated legally if a bit unorthodoxically.
The illegal immigrants want special concessions made, and that, that is the sticking point. From the way this article is written, it appears that these churches don't support legal immigration and aren't willing to help illegals to become legal immigrants. This article acts as if we don't have a comprehensive and successful immigration policy.
Unless they are directly descended from the colonists, they are themselves the children of successful legal immigrants. They are themselves proof that our immigration process works.
I am uncomfortable with a religion segregating itself by the color of their adherents' skin.
I am uncomfortable with a religion whipping up a frenzy against their country without understanding the laws they are advocating against, without offering a viable and workable alternative, without relaying the truth.
Perhaps we do need to streamline the process up some, but I think hiring more immigration department employees would take care of that much better than foaming-at-the-mouth, divisive rhetoric.
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