Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said the following on his blog this week concerning Arizona’s new immigration law:
So we can chart periodic spasms of “anti-immigrant” fever in our nation’s history: the Nativists of the 1840′s, who led mobs to torch Irish homes and Catholic churches; the Know-Nothings of the 1850′s who wanted to deny the vote to everyone except white, Protestant, native-born, “pure” Americans; the American Protective Association of the 1880′s and 1890′s who were scared of the arrival of immigrants from Italy, Poland, and Germany; the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920′s who spewed hate against blacks, Jews, Catholics, and “forn-ers”; the “eugenics movement” of the 1920′s and 1930′s who worried that racial purity was being compromised by the immigrant and non-Anglo Saxon blood lines; and the Protestants and Other Americans United of the 1950′s who were apprehensive about Catholic immigrants and their grandkids upsetting the religious and cultural concord of America.
And, here we go again! Arizona is so scared, apparently, and so convinced that the #1 threat to society today is the immigrant that it has passed a mean-spirited bill of doubtful constitutionality that has as its intention the expulsion of the immigrant.
So there you have it. The law in Arizona, and its supporters, are the new spawn of the Ku Klux Klan.
It’s illegal immigration, not immigration, that is the focus of the law in Arizona. Shame on the Archbishop for not making that distinction.
Whenever a politician, and that’s what the Archbishop functionally is, leaves out the distinguishing detail of an argument, in this case the word “illegal”, he or she is pushing an agenda, not attempting to win hearts and minds.
Opponents of the Arizona law throw the phrase “unconstitutional” around at will, hoping it will stick. However, I haven’t seen one real opinion piece as to exactly why the new law is unconstitutional. Hey, if mandating under the threat of law that we all buy health insurance from a private, hand-picked-by- the-government insurance company is constitutional, I guess enforcing Federal immigration law can be unconstitutional. A little upside down if you ask me.
Between the church’s cover-up of the Priest abuse scandals, to pandering to illegal immigrants for political points, the church has lost its way in my book.
Related posts:
- Immigration Fight Slowly Tearing America Apart
- Obama Clarifies Position On Immigration Reform Ahead Of ‘National Day Of Action’ Protests
- Analysis: Supreme Court immigration case a federal-state test
- Occupy Wall Street’s Official Manifesto
John Romano is the publisher and editor of Yes, But However!, a musician, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio London, and a serial web entrepreneur. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/yesbuthowever or John Romano on Google+John Romano article archive.
