Lutherans assisting unlawful behavior
LIRS is another liberal Lutheran group--Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service stretching at the seams and borders (literally) of the faith to find someone in trouble. They don't have to look far. Among the illegals pouring into the country from central and South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico are violent criminals. Unfortunately, the police in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Diego and other cities can't do much about drug traffickers, gang violence, murders and assaults (usually against other immigrants)--because these are "sanctuary cities." LIRS has one advantage over the Sexuality/ Gendered task force group--they are better writers and their English is so clear and precise it's scary!
LIRS has one thing right in
its letter and memo of 2007--the immigration system is broken (primarily because it isn't enforced, not because it is). The mess we're in now was in part created by an ungodly coalition of business, unions, civil rights activists, and churches who thwarted the call to fix the 1965 immigration law with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized the status some 2.7 million illegals already here. As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working for you?"
However, plan of LIRS is to promote a "new sanctuary movement" by taking a "public, moral stand," not for law enforcement at our borders, not for demanding Mexico stop using its poor as a wind tunnel to blow funds back home, not for assisting Mexico in developing its own infrastructure to help its underemployed or unemployed, not for restoring the villages that have been decimated by evil people luring workers north, not for requiring businesses obey employment laws, and not for demanding that our federal government commit to protecting our border.
The four criteria suggested in the letter, of course, refer to "families," because that's always a good hook for little old lady Bible studies--and LIRS essentially encourages Lutheran churches to harbor illegals, because they won't be prosecuted. It does provide some useful clarification to misinformation at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law web site. As I noted--LIRS does not fall into the pit of pious, erotic, and squishy, cut and paste god-words like the sexuality task force--they actually have good research, even if I disagree with their intent. Well, I could do without the hokey phrase "prophetic hospitality," but that's as bad as they get.
I truly believe that Lutherans who want to encourage other Lutherans in illegal behavior should raise their own funding from their own pockets--reduce their tithe to their own churches (if they put their money where their mouths are)--and not ask the rest of us to pay their salaries, hire their legal consultants, and pick up the tab for their plane tickets, workshops, websites, and publications.
LIRS, with probably good intentions and a Christian heart, is nonetheless part of a huge problem--of smuggling criminals along with honest workers into the country, of winking at employers and hiring practices, of flooding our social services like schools, police and hospitals with people who don't pay taxes, of splitting up families, of a massive phony document industry, crooked politicians and union leaders hoping for more votes and members, and the list goes on and on.
Right now with the economy struggling, we're already seeing illegals going home, and not as many coming across the border. The same thing happened during the Depression with some 60% of the immigrants who came in the 1920s returning home. New Deal social programs were not accessible to them. Think about it, LIRS. What if there were no carrots to lure them here in the first place?
