By REY FLORES
(Editor’s Note: The Wanderer went to press this week just as all the confusion over the “DACA Deal” was breaking. Rey Flores’ column and the LifeSiteNews article below were both written before those developments.)
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The recent debates about President Trump’s plans to wind down the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — DACA for short — have once again drawn the ire and fury of the left-wing radicals. Predictably, the fake news media also jumped into action, all of them calling President Trump a white supremacist and a xenophobe.
Whether it’s called DACA or the Dream Act, or whatever other legislation the left pushes to legitimize illegal immigrants, at the end of the day, they still have broken the law. Even if the young “dreamers” were still minors and couldn’t make their own choices, they still entered the country illegally, parents or no parents.
Jesus taught us to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” We live in a land of laws, so whenever anyone breaks any of those laws, and it is proven that they have, there are consequences and penalties to pay. If you enter our country illegally, you have officially broken the law.
In typical fashion, the leftists always like to use platitudes and sentimentality to defend their side, saying things like: “How could you be so heartless and separate these families?” or “These are ‘dreamers’ and this is the only home they have known.”
Fair enough. No one wants families separated; the Lord knows I certainly don’t. But if laws have been broken, there’s little that can be done aside from further breaking more laws. I know it sounds crazy to some people, but, in all frankness, if a family does not want to be separated, perhaps they should all stick together and all go back to their country of origin. That way they won’t be separated.
It’s a hard thing for us Catholics to take a position on illegal immigration. Of course, we don’t want to make life more difficult for already difficult lives; but where do we draw the line on doing what’s right?
That line is the border between the United States and Mexico, and it is the illegal immigrants who have crossed that line, not us. The left-wing radicals, especially those within the Church, have no right to criticize us as being heartless.
As many have already pointed out, the pro-illegal immigrant social justice Catholics will talk about the value of these “dreamers,” but at the same time support abortion. How can they even say that with a clear conscience?
That was one of the predicaments I faced a few years back when I was the director of a diocesan Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). On the one hand, I had the very liberal pro-immigrant Catholics, while on the other hand, I had the very conservative pro-life Catholics. Neither could see eye to eye.
While I do not condone or support illegal immigration, I wanted the more conservative Catholics to at least recognize the human dignity of the illegal immigrants, many of whom benefited from many of the CCHD-funded programs. Yes, they were, and many still are, lawbreakers, but the very least we could do is not dehumanize them.
The almost exact same thing existed within the liberal Catholic camp. While these folks constantly spoke about social justice this and social justice that, and all about human rights, they omitted the unborn. If I brought up anything “pro-life” to any of the more liberal clergy and community organizers applying for CCHD monies, they’d look at me as if I had two heads. They would completely ignore me and continue rattling on about their own battles.
Many of the U.S.-born minorities were already generationally entrenched into local Democratic Party politics. They were victims of public school brainwashing and constantly in conversation with leftist union and community organizers. They had bought into the “reproductive rights,” “women’s rights,” “my body, my choice” mumbo-jumbo, and so convincing them of the human dignity and the worth of an unborn child was a tough sell.
The saddest part is that many new immigrants come from countries and families who are naturally socially conservative. They do not support radical agendas like abortion, homosexuality, or that transgender nonsense. Despite the constant propaganda on Spanish-language networks like Telemundo and Univision, many maintain their own lives as apolitical conservatives, until the leftist organizers sink their claws into them and exploit them for their own political purposes.
The difference between an illegal immigrant and an unborn child is that the unborn child has never been given a chance to live, let alone “dream.” These “dreamers” have a fighting chance. Whether it’s here in the U.S., or back in their home country, at least their lives weren’t extinguished before they were born. Calling someone an illegal immigrant is not racist or xenophobic or bigoted. It’s exactly what these people are; they’re immigrants and they’re here illegally, hence illegal immigrants. Calling them “undocumented,” another deceptive politically correct term, doesn’t change the fact that they are here illegally.
Calling an unborn human being a “clump of cells” is dehumanizing. If an unborn child is a clump of cells, then any illegal immigrant can also be described as an “illegal clump of cells.” Why not? If the left wants to use double-talk rhetoric like this, then the pro-lifers and conservatives can play that game too.
My whole point is that while we do not support the breaking of any laws when it comes to immigration, let’s pray for a commonsense solution to this behemoth of a problem. Whether many of these folks are here illegally or not, they are still made in the image and likeness of God.
The same thing with the unborn — they are also made in the image and likeness of God, so as The Blaze’s Matt Walsh pointed out so succinctly in a recent blog post: “You are standing on a mountain of dead kids while you sermonize about being compassionate to kids.”
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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