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"Where is it written that I, a Christian, have to subsidize criminality and welcome trespasser’s into my home?"

James 2:14-17

"14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." The vast majority of illegal immigrants are not lawless people. They come for the same reasons our ancestors did, for the opportunity for a better life for themselves and their families. They work incredibly hard for relatively little pay. Were Americans not willing to pay them they would not come. The Church only advocates for a respect for them as humans and children of God.

Hey Natural Law, why don't you wander down to Mexico and meander through a couple of dozen of the Catholic Churches down there. Pick the one's that are in dirt-poor communities (which is pretty much the whole country) and check out all the gold chalices and all the finery and rich accoutrement's therein. Most churches practice socialism/Marxism and the Catholic Church is right up there leading the pack. The Catholic Church is right behind the Government and the Drug Cartels keeping the citizenry poor. Then come back and try to square us all with the notion that The Church isn't a fraud on those poor people. The idea that we, as American's, the most generous nation on the face of the earth, have some "moral obligation" to self-destruct in order that these freeloading members of your faith can have an undeserved "better life" would be laughable if it weren't a deadly serious game.

Yes, “the widow, the orphan and the stranger” are the objects of God’s special concern, as we are taught by the Prophets, and by Our Lord. They and their modern-day equivalents --- husbandless mother, the unborn child, and the vulnerable immigrant --- have a strong claim on our solidarity.

The obligation to respond decently to needy people does not, however, wipe out the obligation to do in a way that doesn't destroy other elements of the Common Good. In fact, justice to these groups must take place in the larger context of justice to all, as far as our prudence can work that out. And that's where the problems arise.

The controversy about the status of those who enter this country unlawfully is difficult in part because many of these millions are simultaneously accessories to, as well as victims of, injustice.

Check out the testimony of Dr. Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University professor of law and political science, who spoke to the House panel on immigration last September. (Good Link Here.) She made a convincing case 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 very well to say, as you did, that Latino new-arrivals may be a better category of workers than our own home-grown welfare class. 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." This is a legitimate argument against the acceptance of massive numbers of newcomers, no matter where they come from. It stems from concern for a vast group of sufferers whose interests are rarely considered: the millions --- particularly young, unskilled, minority males --- who are substantially, and in some cases for a lifetime, robbed of any prospect of gainful employment because they have been displaced by a vast influx of exploited foreign nationals.

That’s why I must ask you to resist reducing this controversy to racism or xenophobia on the part of those who strongly oppose illegal immigration. It's a mistake to assume that present immigration controversy is attributable to unreasonable fears and resentments.

The stand taken by these eight Florida bishops is sufficiently squishy that it will likely have little impact. But to the extent that we pay any attention to it at all, let's notice that they're making the same rhetorical error here that the USCCB made in the "health reform" debate: namely, they're giving a sonorous "Oremus" to the label of "immigration reform", while allowing the content to be substantially defined by President Obama and his legislative allies.

If the so-called "reform" is injurious to the Common Good, no amount of "Oremus" is going to make it "compassionate," "generous" or "just".

My own specific critique will have to wait til later. What I'm doing here, Natural Law, is defending our right as a matter of justice and charity to disagree with Bishops' ill-considered political positions. Charity and justice are always the Church's concern; but public policy is the sphere of lay responsibility in which clergy have neither special competence nor direct ecclesial authority.