#295: Scapegoating “Illegals”

EXCERPT:
For the people touting “respect for the law” as the key issue for immigration reform, the term “illegal” has become either a ploy or a fetish.

It’s a ploy if they hide behind “illegal” to camouflage opposition that really is rooted in racism, or paranoia, or delusion, or nativism. I’m sure this applies to some who cannot abide an America filling up with dark-skinned foreigners (who don’t speak English and may even worship a foreign God) and are convinced these people are causing all our troubles.

But let’s assume that most closed door people really are driven by their problem with the illegals’ (and their supporters’) supposed lack of respect for the rule of law. In that case, they risk idolizing the law as if it were some absolute value – as if merely being “illegal” is reason enough to be excluded.

If that is really what people think, they have made “illegal” their fetish: a small piece of the American anatomy that excites them all out of proportion to its importance…

…

Consider this lesson from history. During World War II Angelo Roncalli became Vatican ambassador to Turkey. Aware of thousands of Jews trapped in Eastern Europe under Nazi occupation, he took decisive – and decidedly irregular – action. He got Jewish authorities in Palestine to send bundles of travel papers, he got the Vatican to send bundles of transit letters, and he arranged to issue baptismal certificates to thousands of Jewish children – some reflecting actual “provisional Baptisms,” some simple forgeries. Thus equipped with smuggled, fraudulent, even forged papers, thousands of Jews (some say 25,000) escaped from Poland and Hungary into unoccupied territories. Roncalli also convinced the Turkish government not to deport even the undocumented Jews.

For all these efforts on the half of “illegals” immigrating to Turkey and Palestine, the worldwide Jewish community has declared Roncalli to be one of the 20th century’s "Righteous Among the Nations". Of course, fifteen years later Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII.

Today’s US Bishops are similarly pro-immigrant, and are fighting to help “illegals” gain acceptance and the legal permission to stay. They know, like Roncalli, that in most cases “illegal” merely means “victims of circumstance” – and they’re committed to helping any way they can.

People trumpeting “the rule of law” as a sacred value must ask themselves: are they also committed to the higher law of human rights? What about God’s law of love for neighbor? Or would they condemn Roncalli for enabling “illegality,” and tell us someone should have sent those Jews – who were Hitler’s scapegoats – back to their fate?