On Border Chaos . . . USCCB Casts Its Lot With Obama, Not The U.S. Voter

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — To hear the dominant media and other elites tell the story, the Republicans were on the wrong side of issue after issue leading up to the midterm elections, including immigration, environmentalism, and “health care.”
However, reality-based voters in November rewarded the GOP with bigger numbers not only in the U.S. House and Senate, but also at state capitol executive offices and legislative chambers. The Democratic Party grew weaker.
Voters rejected the illegality, deceit, and disorder that Barack Obama’s political party clearly represents on a number of fronts, including repeated serious lies about Obamacare and defiant massive illegal immigration that places the overwhelming burden on the United States, not native countries, to embrace wanderers careless about respecting U.S. law.
It’d be fair to say the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has a traditional preference for liberal Democrats. Even though the November election results illustrated that this puts the USCCB out of alignment with U.S. voters, people saw the USCCB only doubling down in its support for left-wing power plays instead of reaching out to politicians who correctly took the public pulse.
The week after the November 4 elections, The New York Times posted an article on November 13 quoting a USCCB official urging Obama to press forward with his go-it-alone “executive action” for illegal immigrants. Under the headline, “Obama plan may allow millions of immigrants to stay and work in U.S.,” the Times reported:
“‘This is his last chance to make good on his promise to fix the system,’ said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. ‘If he delays again, the immigration activists would — just politically speaking — jump the White House fence’.”
Although “jump the fence” was an unfortunate word choice by Appleby about respecting border law, it seemed to convey the threat that advocates of massive illegal entry couldn’t be expected to contain themselves any longer about getting what they stridently demand.
Among various online sites, the Jesuits’ liberal America magazine posted a Religion News Service story on November 12 citing the words of the chairman of the USCCB’s migration committee, Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, that, “given the urgency of the immigration crisis and the electoral gains by Republicans who have thwarted earlier reform efforts, ‘it would be derelict not to support administrative actions…which would provide immigrants and their families legal protection’.”
Even the liberal Washington Post and New York Times recently pointed out that Obama himself had repeatedly said he had no authority to take a wide-ranging “executive action” on illegal immigration, but that didn’t prevent the USCCB from cheering on the lawlessness as Obama seemed poised to announce it.
On November 19, the White House said Obama would make a statement on his executive action on November 20, as this issue of The Wanderer went to press, followed by a rally on November 21 in, of all places, high-rolling Las Vegas.
Whatever the details turned out to be, the USCCB had cast its lot with Obama’s divisive overreach.
A rawly partisan bishops’ conference was taking sides against the Republican Party and the U.S. people to try to shove through its ill-advised advocacy.
The Religion News Service story began by saying, “The nation’s Catholic bishops are jumping into the increasingly contentious battle over immigration reform by backing President Obama’s pledge to act on his own to fix what one bishop called ‘this broken and immoral system’ before Republicans assume control of Capitol Hill in January.”
A Catholic News Service (CNS) story paraphrased Elizondo that taking action is important now “because the majority control of Congress has shifted to the Republican Party, where there are more members who may be inclined to block efforts at immigration reform” when the next Congress convenes.
USCCB activists had pressed the White House to commit this rupture from constitutional requirements.
The CNS story said that in September, “the bishops’ migration committee and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network wrote to key staffers at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security urging various actions to assist immigrants. Among suggestions were the type of executive actions Obama has said he would enact before the end of the year.”
Also, the USCCB’s “Justice for Immigrants” program urged that people express their support for Obama’s executive action.
On November 11, the liberal Crux site said Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who heads the Diocese of Tucson, saw a role for Obama taking his executive action. Kicanas’ remarks showed the USCCB’s familiar stubborn elisions, evasions, and refusal to deal with root issues regarding massive illegal immigration.
Crux quoted Kicanas: “The preference would be to have a bipartisan solution, and a comprehensive solution. But it seems as if for whatever reason there is a paralysis existing right now, and in the meantime, people are hurting, families are being separated. It may be necessary for the president to step up and to act in a way that addresses the needs of families.”
Long known for his strongly open-borders stand, Kicanas even had a photo of himself once in his diocesan newspaper, showing him in Altar, Mexico, blessing illegal immigrants as they prepared to sneak into the U.S.
Conservative Republican Rick Santorum has been plain about his fidelity to Catholic moral teaching, even when liberal media attacked him. However, Santorum knows that the bishops’ purely political actions for illegal immigration aren’t part of Catholic doctrine.
On Hugh Hewitt’s national radio program on November 14, Santorum said that signatures were flooding into his Patriot Voices website against Obama’s amnesty. He added that illegal immigration drives down U.S. workers’ wages.
Liberal Catholic commentator Cokie Roberts, noting that Republicans had even picked up more minority votes in the midterms, emphasized the need for Democrats to act fast on “immigration.”
Roberts said on National Public Radio that “with Hispanics, [Democrats’] vote went down nine points, from 71 percent to 62 percent. And with Asians, it went down 24 points, from 73 percent to 49 percent. The Democrats have got to do something fast on immigration to get back those votes because they’re never going to get the white vote.”
Cokie might deserve a prize for indulging thoughts of racist politics. Democrats are never going to get the white vote back?
Even strong longtime supporters of “comprehensive immigration reform” like Sen. John McCain and The Wall Street Journal cautioned Obama against his “executive action.” And New York Times columnist David Brooks, who often has been a friendly voice toward Obama, warned that the president is playing with fire.
“I sympathize with what Obama is trying to do substantively, but the process of how it’s being done is ruinous,” Brooks wrote. “…This is the sort of change we have a legislative process for. To do something this seismic with the stroke of one man’s pen is dangerous.”