Back in February I pondered why the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had not put forth a model law to solve the immigration/migration problem. Their statements are full of condemnation for a "broken system," but long ago I learned that if you don't have a solution, merely pointing out a problem is pointless.
It's gotten to the point where some bishops are offering dispensation to people on the basis that they are committing a criminal act and seeking to evade the legal consequences for their action. Again, if American immigration law is on the same moral plane as chattel slavery, why don't the bishops speak clearly in favor of unlimited movement between countries? This bizarre "don't change the law but don't enforce it" system perpetuates cruelty and facilitates human trafficking.
On a practical basis, much of this behavior can be explain by simple corruption: a lot of money was to be made in providing services to illegal migrants and that is now going away. It must be painful to lay off workers and close down empty facilities because the government money spigot has been turned off. There have been effort to encourage the laity to make up the shortfall, but these have (predictably) failed because of the obvious contradiction of asking for more donations to support migrants while also noting that there is a low-income housing shortage and the food banks are running low.
Like many Catholics, I'm taking a pass on the diocesan donation this year, and instead giving that money directly to my parish.
I think another factor in this is that the bishops have deluded themselves into the belief that a person who break one law, will not break any others. This is an obvious fallacy: if you do one criminal act, you're likely to do others, perhaps as a result. Criminality builds on itself.
No one crosses the border into another country by accident (unless you live in that weird stretch of US-Canadian border which crossing the street is an international event). That's clearly not the case. These people are committing an illegal act, albeit often with official sanction.
Still, every time the media wants to make a cause celeb out of one of these cases, we find out that they have a stack of driving citations, outstanding criminal warrants and so on. I'm not the only one who has noticed that driving has gotten very dangerous over the last few years and that we are moving backwards in terms of automotive safety. A large part of this are unlicensed drivers who don't speak the language and know that they will face no consequences because of their illegal status.
This is the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree. Once people recognize that they are outside the law in one instance, it is expected that they flout other laws regarding safety, fraud, theft and so on.
This is why the Catholic Church is so shameful in its behavior. One cannot hide behind "render unto Caesar" in cases like abortion while defying Caesar on immigration law. I am unaware of any bishop marching on abortion clinics but plenty are happy to march for illegal immigration.
Again, if the law is unjust, tell the faithful what it should be. Roll out a policy plan that tells us exactly how many new immigrants the US (or any other country) needs. This must be backed up by scripture, Church doctrine and history.
Otherwise, this just looks like the Catholic Church leadership is either clueless or dishonest.
Chateau Lloyd 
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