Be Our Guest / Susan Hurst

Reader: Columnist’s immigration rhetoric is totally off the mark

The “Faith & Precedent” opinion piece by Douglas Kmiec in the June 22 issue of The Criterion had many erroneous statements.

Kmiec says that law is to be respected then proceeds to ignore the law.

If an attorney would suggest that protesting against the breaking of a law could be immoral, what would the bar association have to say to him about that?

Since there are laws against rape, murder, incest and pedophilia, should we consider it immoral to protest against their implementation? Did St. Thomas Aquinas also advocate ignoring a law the majority of citizens feel is right and proper?

Kmiec’s analogy to the Prohibition Era would be funny, if not so sadly inaccurate. He attempts to compare U.S. citizens’ sneaking liquor with illegal aliens sneaking into our country. Don’t try to compare apples and oranges; the key word here is “citizen.”

He seems to believe the U.S. should invest economically in Mexico. I assume the economic investment would be companies moving facilities down there. That would certainly help our work force up here.

Even worse would be financial aid from our government. What is the Mexican government doing to make life better for their people? Why is it automatically assumed that the U.S. government should step in whenever another country’s government doesn’t live up to their responsibilities?

I have yet to have proven to me that these illegal aliens are taking only jobs nobody else wants. I do know they are straining services—schools, hospitals, etc.—and the taxes for those come from me.

My not wanting this to continue and talk radio addressing this very real problem I do not consider “loud ranting in the wasteland.”

I frankly consider that phrase an insult to my intelligence and my patriotism.

Kmiec’s answer to these strained services is increased federal appending and taxation. Again, Mr. Kmiec, that taxation is on me, the citizen, and it would be for people who have no right to be here in the first place.

To say wanting to protect our borders and retain our sovereignty is immoral

is a slap in the face to every thinking U.S. citizen in this country. Is the latest morality a world without borders? Is this the ultimate act of Christian charity?

No one is against looking at and changing the immigration laws. What we are against is rewarding those who knowingly and willfully break the existing laws.

Passage of the immigration bill that was being debated in Congress in late June would have been a public statement that having broken this law is not only all right, but that it is also blessed by our government and the hierarchy of our Church. Has Kmiec spoken with any of the thousands of legal immigrants on how they feel about this?

His bringing New Orleans into this conversation is irrelevant. It is part of the United States.

I do have two questions, though. Since Kmiec is a professor of law at Pepperdine University, he should know the answers.

Is someone who enters the U.S. illegally considered a felon? And is a felony still considered a serious crime in the U.S.?

If the answers are yes, why is this not being addressed?

(Susan Hurst is a member of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Aurora.) †