Welcome the Stranger (Catholic theology & Church history against illegals)

Inside Catholic ^ | 5/5/2010 | John Zmirack

[markomalley]

One thing we Catholics have known since almost the beginning: Most statements in the Bible can be misread, misapplied, and torn out of context to serve as the pretext for hysterical balderdash. Martin Luther famously used his private reading of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans to invent a whole new theology of salvation, personalized to soothe his aching scruples. Before that, poor Origen, the first great theologian of the Church, applied "If your hand causes you to sin, then cut it off" (Mk 9:43) to his problems with chastity . . . bless his heart! Today some of our bishops are telling us to do the very same thing to our country.

 

The subject is mass, unskilled immigration, and the phrase its enablers like to use (they titled one of their interminable, inevitable USCCB documents after it) is "Welcome the stranger" (paraphrasing Matthew 25:31-46). As someone who has actually studied the empirical effects that two million or so mostly uneducated immigrants are having on poor and working-class Americans, I am constantly confronted with this scrap torn from the New Testament, which earnest, otherwise orthodox Catholics wave around like snake-handlers justifying their latest romp in the piney woods with an ice cooler full of copperheads.

 

Marshal a series of rational arguments that demonstrate that our current immigration policy (designed by that great Catholic thinker Edward Kennedy) is a sin against prudence, and out will come the proof-text. Show that Catholic nations have for centuries, with the acquiescence or encouragement of the Church, restricted the influx of aliens in accord with the common good of their societies (St. Augustine, for instance, wanted the barbarians kept out of the Roman empire), and slurp -- somebody whips it out again. Point out the fact that one of our once-richest states, California, has essentially been bankrupted by the tidal wave of undereducated non-English speakers -- and whoop, there's that hoary paraphrase. I've gotten so sick of this Bible abuse that I've lost every scrap of patience. Instead of engaging such proof-texts, I counter with my own. "'You shall not suffer a witch to live' (Ex 22:18). That's in the Bible, too. Come on, let's pass a law!"

 

But the goal of argument by Bible scrap isn't rational discourse. People who wield autistic scripture snippets aren't trying to further the conversation; they want to end it. Whatever rational processes were going on in your mind are supposed to screech to a halt the moment they chant the mantra, as you blush and admit that the "call of the Gospel" is meant to "bring us to a place beyond narrow calculations" of the common good, justice, patriotism, or prudence. Instead of using the brains God gave us, you're meant to swoon, feel guilty for thinking in the first place, and secrete a miasma of vaguely generous sentiments -- which reward you by making you feel really good about yourself. Aren't you being charitable . . . not like those nasty, hateful fill-in-the-blanks: "rednecks," "bigots," "Arizona voters." I call this phenomenon the "pink cloud," and it's the main pollutant emitted by the Amazing Catholic B.S. Generator.

 

 

Let me huff and puff once more in the hopes of dissolving this smog. A majority of Americans, as every survey taken on the subject indicates, believe that it simply isn't prudent to admit millions more unskilled workers into a country that has outsourced its factories to Asia, mechanized its farms, and otherwise dried up opportunities for unskilled native workers to earn what the Church calls a living wage. The evidence bears this out: Adjusted for inflation, wages for working-class Americans of every race have stayed flat for more than 30 years -- while Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the entertainment industry have multiplied salaries for even their mid-level workers. The law of supply and demand says that when you flood the market with something, the price goes down. We flooded the market, and the price went down -- and American workers are suffering.

 

At the same time, our taxes and deficits are rising, as communities struggle to care for uninsured hospital patients, to expand or maintain their infrastructure to accommodate rising populations, and to offer bilingual education in up to 15 languages (as in Los Angeles). As Harvard economist George Borjas documents, the only social class gaining from mass, unskilled immigration is . . . the investor class. That is, the people who make their livings by clipping stock coupons. The upper-middle class is not much affected (they can move to gated communities with private schools), while the middle class and the working poor are suffering. It's that simple. (If you want the long form with all the links to exhaustively support these claims, check out my two previous detailed articles on this topic.)

 

The case is proved. Nobody argues that a mass influx of cheap labor is helping America's poor, making our society more cohesive, or in any other substantive way benefiting America. Open-borders types are typically reduced at this point in the argument to pointing out how much they enjoy eating out at ethnic restaurants and paying somebody $2 an hour to mow their lawns.

 

Since they have no rational case, proponents of de facto open borders, such as Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop Jose Gomez, and Archbishop Charles Chaput are reduced to Bible abuse. They chant, "Welcome the stranger" as if this were one of the Ten Commandments -- not that even those can be rightly read out of context . . . unless you agree with the Iconoclasts, and want to rip all the images out of our churches.

 

 

So let me challenge theologians on their home turf. What would it mean to take this biblical mandate seriously? Instead of conducting an elaborate thought experiment, let me turn to the riches of Church history to show how it really has worked. I've written before of the dangers involved in trying to pervert the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience) into universal commands -- and the toxic side-effects of using the rhetoric of the theological virtues to violate the natural ones.

 

But there is one group in the Church that has made its business living out the evangelical counsels to the letter and pursuing the theological virtues rigorously: monastic communities. Indeed, the Church holds up religious as the very people called by God to witness to the next life through their embrace of the "hardest sayings" that came from the mouth of Our Lord. The first major monastic order in the West, which preserved Western culture through the Dark Ages, was the Order of St. Benedict. Conveniently for this case, the Benedictines did more than simply embrace poverty, chastity, and obedience. They also took literally the very mandate we're considering here: "Welcome the stranger." Across the world, the Benedictines are famous for offering hospitality to visitors -- who, to this day, can drop in unannounced at Benedictine communities and receive a warm bed and hot meals, no questions asked.

 

You know what the Benedictines don't do? They don't let large groups of strangers move in permanently, flout the rules of the community, claim the status of monks, and help elect a new abbot. Had that been part of Benedictine hospitality, the Vikings wouldn't have needed to batter down the walls of places like Lindisfarne in order to steal all the sacred vessels. They could have simply turned up, moved in, eaten the monks' food and drunk their wine, and waited till they had the numbers to vote in Bjorgolf as abbot. Sure, he might change all the monastery's rules, loot its treasury, and divide its land among his warriors . . .

 

But that's the price of "welcoming the stranger" in the style that's being demanded of us today. In a mass democracy where new citizens can vote to raise our taxes, confiscate our property, subject us to discrimination through affirmative action, force us to adopt bilingual laws, and otherwise remake our life as a community, mass immigration threatens to transform America against the wishes of its citizens. And foreign governments are complicit in the process -- as Mexico purposely shoves across our borders the citizens with whom it doesn't wish to share the wealth. It's as if a mischievous fraternity had decided to flood a Benedictine abbey with its pledges, until they could vote in one of their members as the abbot, and turn the monastery into a really awesome gothic tequila bar.

 

Convents have historically proved even more reluctant to offer unconditional and permanent welcome to strangers. Especially males. When a band of helmeted, undocumented Scandinavian migrants in search of hospitality arrived at the women's abbey of Coldingham, England, in 879 -- and announced their proposed changes to the community's rule of chastity -- the abbess Ebbe gathered the nuns and told them about this proposal. Then she sliced off her nose in the hope that it would deter the Vikings from raping her. All the other nuns did the same, and Ebbe led them through the gate to confront the ruddy warband. Appalled, the Vikings didn't rape the nuns but sent them swiftly, en masse, to heaven. She is now known as "St. Ebbe."

 

So when people tell me that Arizona voters have cut off their nose to spite their face, it reminds me of good St. Ebbe. Let's invoke her intercession for the citizens of that state under siege. Viva Arizona! Sancta Ebbe, ora pro nobis.

 

[ansel12]

You clearly know nothing about the productivity of the American worker or the lack of quality of the Mexican worker.

As a Southern California contractor, I know something about both and I really regret the decline that Mexicans have brought to the trades over the last 40 years.

Americans built the greatest nation on earth through having a great work ethic, Mexicans created a dirty little hell hole of a country with a lousy work ethic.

Unfortunately their grubby, inferior standards have now polluted our nation and drag down the quality of every field that they enter.

[ansel12]

As an aside, I doubt that Mexicans have taken more than 2% of the good jobs, versus the 98% of the good jobs that were sent overseas.

Your ignorance is incredible, construction, machine shops, manufacturing, processing plants, city and county government, road work, Americans have been pushed out of all.

It is extremely difficult to find "good jobs" that Mexican immigration has not taken over, restaurants, drywalling, brick laying, concrete work, roofing, electrical, increasingly carpentry and plumbing, and the quality of those fields declined as the Mexicans took them over.

[Leoni]

98% of the good jobs have gone overseas, that is a fact. The Mexicans can’t take anywhere near the jobs that have gone to the world. There are not enough Mexicans in the USA to do that.

[ansel12]

98% of the good jobs have gone overseas, that is a fact.

Anti-American newby, show me your source for that claim.

Then tell me what that has to do with Americans losing tens of millions of great jobs as entire segments of American work are conquered by Mexican immigrants, who do inferior work.

[Running On Empty]

Where I live, what you say is true, ansel. Very true.
Not only have these “good jobs” been taken over but you are also correct about the decline in quality. I have experienced that personally, in a work I had contracted to be done at my home.

[ansel12]

Not only have these “good jobs” been taken over but you are also correct about the decline in quality.

You should see it intimately over a 40 year period.

How can these people look at the third world construction, unfinished buildings, dirt floors and glass topped walls of Mexico, and think that those people are the ones to replace the American craftsmen of the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s.

Now days I walk into million dollar homes with shabby workmanship, Mexicans don't care, they have never cared, that is why Mexico is the grubby, unfinished place it is.

[Leoni]

First, you've insulted me by calling me ignorant (when you should have used the word "naive"). Now you call me an Anti-American. Please try to be more civil and less hostile, just because we have no physical accountability on the Internet, does not mean that we can insult people. I'm a violent man trying my hardest to reform myself. Help me out here!

re; Then tell me what that has to do with Americans losing tens of millions of great jobs as entire segments of American work are conquered by Mexican immigrants, who do inferior work

I've traveled on business throughout Latin America (I can speak Spanish ), I was an exporter of USA products, machine tools and industrial goods for 23 years. I've been all over the USA, my suppliers were all over, but mainly in the RUST BELT. They are all gone overseas or put out of business by overseas competition. THAT IS WHERE THE JOBS ARE GONE! You can see the empty factories all over, it's a ghostown. Maybe where you live there never was any major industries (Florida, Arizona, Mississippi Arkansas etc) that is why it looks to you like the Mexicans are the problem. The problem is that there are few jobs left, they've all gone overseas.

Now, let me add something, I speak Spanish, and I KNOW, I can tell you that that practically all the illegal Mexican that are coming here, are illiterate IN SPANISH. That is they can't read or write in Spanish! . Forget about the fact that they don't know English. Now, if a person looses his job to an illiterate Mexican who is also illiterate in English, what does that say about that person?

[papertyger]

Now, if a person looses his job to an illiterate Mexican who is also illiterate in English, what does that say about that person?

It doesn't say a thing about him. It DOES say something about the person doing the hiring.

It says that employer wants to locate his business in America to take advantage of the numerous benefits that entails, but does not want to pay for the minimum wage expectations of American workers.

Sure, I can grow a tomato cheaper in mexico....I just can't do it while paying the legally mandated overhead required in America.

When newspapers were caught by a market change and they could no longer get kids to deliver papers for what they had formerly been paying, they had to come up with another distribution plan...not import mexican kids!

There's no such thing as "a job Americans just won't do." There are only jobs Americans won't do for artificially depressed wages in industries where cheating has become "de rigueur."

[ansel12]

First, you've insulted me by calling me ignorant (when you should have used the word "naive"). Now you call me an Anti-American.

You are incredibly ignorant of this topic, I see know reason for you to even try and offer an opinion, you know so little of it.

"Americans today are spoiled, fat, cigarette smoking, unreliable, hungover at work, don’t work on Saturdays, and complainers all day, when it comes to hard labor at say $12 an hour. A Mexican will work without any of those drawbacks."

You are anti-American.

I put you in the category of troll newby, your disgusting anti-Americanism will probably see you run off before your choosing.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Was it necessary for this author to draw bigoted stereotypes of "snake handlers" and fulminate against Fundamentalism in order to make his point? Oh well, I guess it's the only way he could "prove" he is a "real Catholic" even though he is opposed to Mexican irredentism.

And Catholics wonder why Fundamentalist Protestants don't rise to their defense against the secular media!

[Leoni]

re: You are incredibly ignorant of this topic, I see know reason for you to even try and offer an opinion, you know so little of it.... your disgusting anti-Americanism

Like I said: I've traveled on business throughout Latin America (I can speak Spanish ), I was an exporter of USA products, machine tools and industrial goods for 23 years. I've been all over the USA, my suppliers were all over the US, but mainly in the RUST BELT. They are all gone overseas or put out of business by overseas competition. THAT IS WHERE THE JOBS ARE GONE! You can see the empty factories all over, it's a ghostown.

Let me add:

I've PRODUCED out of thin air with my mind, jobs that supported 100's of people in the USA.

Let me add:

that as a traditional Catholic, we don't use birth control, neither do the other families in our congregation, families of blue collar workers with 6, 9, 11, 14, children, all working. I can bring forward one example, a family of 11, the father is a blue collar worker, the children are now pretty much grown up. They are engineers, priests, teachers, construction workers, certified mechanics. They could build a house for you when they were 15.

AND you sir call me ignorant? What are your credentials?

[Leoni]

Now, if a person looses his job to an illiterate Mexican who is also illiterate in English, what does that say about that person?

It doesn't say a thing about him. It DOES say something about the person doing the hiring. It says that employer wants to locate his business in America to take advantage of the numerous benefits that entails, but does not want to pay for the minimum wage expectations of American workers. When newspapers were caught by a market change... they had to come up with another distribution plan...not import Mexican kids!

That's a good response. BUT, that's not 100% or even 50%. So let me rephrase that: if an illiterate AMERICAN can take your job what does that say about your job?

It tells me that you've hung around too long in a job that anyone can fill, without progressing and improving yourself, without making yourself something indispensable. The indispensable construction workers became subs, the indispensable subs became contractors, the indispensable contractors became developers and commercial property owners.

I know an illiterate American (legal immigrant) who was not the brightest person, he had NOTHING going for him but brute strength. That person used/parlayed his quality of loyalty to the owner into a life long business. He put his children through college, owns his own home paid for, and rental units, he's up there in years now.

If you don't use the time that you have when you are young to improve yourself, when you are at the entry level jobs, that anyone can fill,WORKING FOR ANYTHING YOU CAN GET(CONSIDER IT A PAID EDUCATION!) you are going to have a rough time the rest of your life. You have to prepare yourself during the Spring and Summer of your life, or you are going to starve in the Winter.

There are two types of people working at McDonald's:

One is working and complaining about his low pay, and buying a six pack on the way home, and sitting around watching television or hanging around with his friends doing nothing.

The other is thinking to himself, these people at McDonald's are crazy, they're paying me and giving me a free education in the restaurant business. I'm going to learn everything there is about this business here, hands on, instead of paying a trade school.

Who do you think is going to succeed?

[papertyger]

“Who is going to succeed” is not the issue here. Gaming “the market” is.

The simple fact is we have many business owners that love the market when supply and demand is in their favor, but think they are entitled to cheat when it tilts against them.

How many years did car dealerships try to get away with paying highly trained automotive technichians like they were the relatively unskilled “grease monkeys” of the previous generation?

I am not attributing this duplicity to you personally, but there are more than a few who talk just like you that will haughtily disdain the unpaid intern for quitting when the only task they’re given is a summer’s worth of scut-work that teaches them nothing after the first ten minutes.

Any fair minded individual knows the kid was getting hosed by someone misusing the practice of internship, but because the employer doesn’t have to justify himself to anyone but himself, he excuses his own deceitfulness by blaming the kid’s lack of work ethic.

Bottom line: The only excuse for hiring Mexicans is having your business located in Mexico. Anything else is an attempt to cheat the labor market.

[Leoni]

re:Bottom line: The only excuse for hiring Mexicans is having your business located in Mexico. Anything else is an attempt to cheat the labor market.

It is illegal to hire illegals. The real and MUCH bigger problem are all the jobs that went overseas.There is no illegal or otherwise that can fill those jobs, they are gone.

[Leoni]

re:there are more than a few who talk just like you that will haughtily disdain the unpaid intern for quitting when the only task they’re given is a summer’s worth of scut-work that teaches them nothing after the first ten minutes.

Employers like that are fools, will only retain fools for employees, and will not last long in business. A young man should not work anywhere where he is not learning and improving every day.

[ansel12]

You are so ignorant that you thought you were listing qualifications, and you didn't even catch mine, You are one of the more ignorant trolls that I have seen here.

You said, 98% of the good jobs have gone overseas, that is a fact.

Show your source for that figure troll. Your anti-American, pro illegal trolling is too obvious for you to be an effective troll.

[Religion Moderator]

Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.

[papertyger]

Employers like that are fools, will only retain fools for employees, and will not last long in business.

Now, you are kidding yourself. There is no cosmic rule that declares a fool can't run a business that is at least self-sustaining.

There are many self-employed professionals that are self-employed precisely *because* of the prevelance of foolish employers! Even Rush Limbaugh was fired by eight different radio stations!

I can tell you from first hand experience, there is only so long a competent, professional "x" is going to tolerate being condescended to by an employer whose main business is selling cabbages.

[ansel12]

I forgot this is the religion section, I was thinking immigration politics, sorry.

[papertyger]

The real and MUCH bigger problem are all the jobs that went overseas.

You have no justification for shifting the focus. Americans are complaining about being displaced by illegal workers, how about dealing with the issue of concern before moving to another?