By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The U.S. senator was blunt about the serious problems of massive illegal immigration.
With the facts so plain, the senator said “that we all agree on the need to better secure the border, and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants. You know, we are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law.
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country,” he said.
New resources are needed to better deport illegal immigrants, he said.
Who was this extreme right-wing senator? Alabama’s Jeff Sessions before he became Donald Trump’s attorney general? Or perhaps Trump himself, fake-news-ing himself to pose as a senator?
Actually it was none other than Barack Obama as a new U.S. senator from Illinois in 2005, voicing a conventional Democratic view, just as Bill Clinton had, about the damage from unlimited immigration — until the Democrats decided that promoting massive unlawful entry was an important strategy to replace the American voters fleeing from what the Democratic Party was becoming.
This video can be found at “Flashback 2005: Sen. Obama on illegal immigration” at sites including YouTube and Politichicks.
Now take a fast jump forward from common sense about massive illegal immigration in the first decade of this new century to alleged hateful racism, bigotry, and rejection of suffering migrants a few years later.
One problem with feelings-based left-wing politics is that its emotions change with the breezes, with little firm moral foundation.
Conservatives may be accused by the left of mixing politics with religion, but a strong example of mixing left-wing politics with questionable appeals to morality was on display in a meeting hall at the prominent Jesuit St. Francis Xavier Church here on May 25.
Catholic church property once again was used to urge liberal political activism with a patina of moral imperative. In these dark days of Trump, it seems, glistening liberal conscience must rise to the rescue. The gathering of about 300 people was titled, “What do we do now? Acting on our moral values in turbulent times.”
The chosen topics were “immigration” and “health care.” The overheated rhetoric in smooth tones was that to enforce immigration law or to relieve the pressures of devastating Obamacare is to rob people of their dignity.
The Trumpian apocalypse is bringing absolute ruin to the land, it seems — or at least threatening liberal dominance.
The activist liberals in the church hall, many of them older people, pondered what one speaker described as the “burning question: What do I do?” Later in the program, keynote speaker Michael Gerson, a Never Trumper and Washington Post columnist making a return appearance here, was asked from the audience to what extent should a citizen follow U.S. law.
Gerson told a story citing George W. Bush in 2000 saying that family values don’t stop at the border.
The following morning the Post’s home page included Gerson’s opinion column headlined “The conservative mind has become diseased.” The previously “moderate Republican” Gerson seems to be moving leftward.
This church meeting was the third annual “community conversation” sponsored by the Msgr. Edward J. Ryle Fund, named for the late, politically liberal director of the Arizona Catholic Conference, the bishops’ lobbying arm.
Having arrived in Arizona as a youngster in the late 1950s, I was very impressed by this young associate pastor. If Fr. Ryle was a flaming political liberal, I didn’t realize it. However, as the flaming 1960s arrived, many clergy began their personal “social justice” transformations.
It seems very improbable that the Fr. Ryle of 1960 could have been a close friend of a far-out radical pro-abortion Democrat like Janet Napolitano. But, four decades later, Ryle was chums with her while politician Napolitano reached the top levels of Arizona government. It had become business as usual, not a scandal, for Church bureaucrats to pal around with folks like her.
Gerson wondered aloud how many in the audience realized “how important this moment is in the history of our country.” He perceived “a troubling spirit is at work in the president’s budget” because of Trump’s proposed cuts — even though the federal budget is far higher than it was when Obama became president in 2009.
Another speaker, Rev. John Fife, a co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement for illegal aliens and longtime Presbyterian pastor in Tucson, emphasized the wrong the United States does by resisting the arrival of unauthorized border-crossers.
Fife recalled that the Bill Clinton administration had decided on a border strategy still in use today, trying to seal off traditional areas of heavy crossings — but this meant the crossers had to go to the “most hazardous areas of the border,” meaning “the most deadly” areas.
This means the U.S. government uses “the death and suffering of the most poor and desperate” as its border deterrent, Fife said.
His moral contempt in his talk toward U.S. homeland security far outweighed making any serious suggestions about holding Latino lands accountable for their own reforms and improving the lives of their own people.
An ordinary person might think that if there are highly traveled routes for unending numbers of illegal entrants, it makes sense to block them — just as a bank locks its doors every evening in a reasonable way to safeguard people’s investments.
But by Fife’s reasoning, the bank only further endangers the lives of lawbreakers by forcing them to use more dangerous methods like explosives to break into the vault. If the vault was left wide open, the hungry and desperate safely could have all they want.
Why expect Latino oligarchs to do their Christian duty at home with the needy around them? Oh, the oligarchs would stomp their feet and say no? Well, did Fife deal with the stubborn in his Tucson congregation by surrendering to their sins?
“The good news across the country,” Fife said, is the sanctuary movement among churches.
It comes down to standing with the oppressed or serving the agents of oppression, the liberal Fife said, suggesting that the U.S. government “supports the crucifixion of an entire people” and “supports the devastation of families.”
Fife received hearty applause.
To listen to this kind of talk, once again a listener would have the impression the U.S. allows no legal immigration instead of highly generous immigration, which, however, should have firm limits.
Another speaker for extraordinary immigration was Elizabeth Leivas, a teacher in the suburban Tempe Elementary School District, who helps organize clinics for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).
“It’s important to bring our families together, so they don’t feel isolated,” Leivas said, adding, “They’re organizing to learn their rights and to protect themselves.”
Once again, listeners received the message of families who seem incapable of doing anything to organize to improve their native lands but actively working to protect their border-jumping presence in the U.S.
Imam Didmar Faja, director of the United Islamic Center of Arizona, decried “harassment of Muslims” and described an incident when a 21-year-old man from South Africa was ready to cry because he was interrogated for two hours at an airport and had to remove his clothes.
People forget “this society is still based on mercy,” Faja said.
No Outrage
The Diocese of Tucson’s liberal Catholic bishop, Gerald Kicanas, came to town to share the stage with the other speakers, but the generally more conservative Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, wasn’t present.
Everyone wants to have a role “where they’re treated with dignity,” Kicanas said, adding later to “listen to one another and not judge one another so quickly.”
Leonard Kirschner, MD, a former director of Arizona’s Medicaid program, known as AHCCCS, spoke up for government-guaranteed health care as a right. Most in the audience raised their hands to agree.
Kirschner recalled that President Franklin Roosevelt had proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” that included health care.
This means health coverage for “immigrant babies,” too, because they’re U.S. citizens, he said.
Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of the Arizona lobbying organization Children’s Action Alliance, also lauded government-provided health care and pushed for more of it, even though Trump was said to threaten it.
“Medicaid works. . . . Medicaid is affordable, comprehensive health-care coverage,” she said. “. . . There’s a moral need for children and families to have health care.”
Don’t expect to hear facts at this forum about the crushing, unsustainable burden of government Obamacare on singles and families, or obtaining better care without the federal fist.
As the two-hour program drew toward its close, the Trump-averse audience rose, linked their hands or arms and sang “Bind us together, Lord.” Ryle, the monsignor, was saluted for modeling “humanism and social justice.” Then it was time for free food on the patio, apparently not paid for by the government.
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