Leaders from four Christian denominations are calling on Mississippi lawmakers to reject an Arizona-style immigration bill that would let officers check during traffic stops to see if a person is in the country illegally.
Bishops from the Catholic, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran and United Methodist churches in Mississippi said Friday residents must be willing to forgive immigrants who enter the United States without permission.
In an open letter to legislators and Gov. Haley Barbour, the bishops said the U.S. immigration system is “broken and outdated,” but should be reformed by the federal government, not by states.
What a laugh. The bill in Mississippi is 95% copied directly from existing Federal law on the issue. All Mississippi is doing to granting itself the power to enforce the laws that the Federal government refuses to enforce. Do church hierarchs actually read any of this stuff?
The good bishops appear to be ardent proponents of underdogma.
Why should I forgive a lawbreaker? I can forgive personal offenses against myself or others close to me whom an offense hurts – but when someone breaks a law, they have offended the state.
Under this logic, people should forgive those who are poor and rob stores or homes.
Under the Constitution, immigration and naturalization issues are exclusively federal. There’s no room for state action here. State and localities have adequate police powers to regulate unlawful activities regardless of the immigration status of the perpetrators. These kinds of proposed laws are political grandstanding and/or constitutional ignorance.
Article. IV. Section. 4. “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”
But what do you do when the Federal government refuses to enforce the laws in this regard? Millions of people are ‘invading’ the States by coming here illegally, without regard to the stated laws of this nation. Some ARE armed criminals and gang members. *
Are the states supposed to roll over and concede “well since they won’t do anything, I guess we won’t either”?
The Constitution gives the states rights to protect themselves, and laws such as these are one way the States can stand up against an impotent Federal Government. When the federal government refuses to obey the Constitution, the States must enforce it.
*
*In Los Angeles, 95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens.
• Some private reports state that 83% of warrants for murder in Phoenix and 86% of warrants for murder in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are for illegal aliens. These reports cannot be verified, of course, because the feds discourage law enforcement agencies from releasing such statistics.
• At any given time, up to 75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.
• 23% of all inmates in LA County detention centers are “deportable.”
• LA police estimate that violent gangs, such as MS-13 and 18th Street Gang, are “overwhelmingly” composed of illegal aliens.
from: Chuck Baldwin, Founder-Pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida.
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin602.htm
The states have laws against homicide and other crimes that they are free to enforce. That the federal government has a busted immigration system and has done a lousy job enforcing what it has (although the present Administration has been far more aggressive than its predecessors) doesn’t cause constitutional powers to spring into being where the Founders clearly did not place them. This issue requires a federal solution. It is probably a fairly complex solution and one that the pols have not seen fit to tackle, but tackle it they must.
I am willing to forgive them, but what has that to do with arresting and deporting them. Forgiveness is not a transmutation of illegal to legal.
Larry
The US needs to dramatically increase the size of the Departments of Deportation and Immigration Control and place them under the Departments of Defense or Security/Intelligence in order to protect our borders, our citizens and the security of our nation.
There also needs to be a grand idealogue hostage swap: send the subversive radicals and those who disagree with the Constitution, laws, values, morals and freedoms (whether native born, naturalized or alien) to countries where they will be most agreeable and at home, and invite Christians and freedom/peace loving people who have been maliciously persecuted in their countries to come here to escape persecution.
Also move the UN to Stockholm or Amsterdam, then to another city every two or three years, but banish it from US soil for at least 50 years.
If we deport persons who “disagree with the Constitution”, large numbers of persons advocating state and local action on immigration would have to go, No. 7. I prefer the paradigm in which we continue to welcome a wide spectrum of opinion, and try to discern the best policy choices from the constructive influences of that somewhat cacophonous discussion.