The Political Litany of ¡Caminemos Juntos!

I post this with sadness.  My church supports ministry to Hispanics, and our beloved bilingual Rector is remarkably active in that.  As part of his ministry, working with ¡Caminemos Juntos!  (CJuntos) has been a possibility and may still be; it’s up to him (although because of the following I have advised him to work with other groups instead).  I had thought that perhaps CJuntos had backed away from its previous political activism for the sake of ministry and unity.  So I find their Litany Of Lament And Repentance For Our Treatment Of Immigrants And Refugees disappointing to say the least.

First, there is this introduction on the CJuntos site:

The last weeks have seen a dramatic increase in tension even in what has already been an incredibly tense climate for immigrants in the United States. Threats of raids and deportation, rapidly changing and confusing immigration law making it harder to legally enter the country to request asylum, rumors of the ending of all refugee resettlement and the increase of negative rhetoric in the news media has terrorized the immigrant community including those within out Caminemos Juntos family. We are in many ways a persecuted people. . . .

Oh please.  First, immigrants who have entered legally have nothing to worry about as long as they continue to obey the law. That’s the way it is for citizens, too, by the way.  Second, even illegal immigrants who have not skipped their court dates, have otherwise not committed crimes, and don’t have deportation orders on them have not much to worry about either.  There are 11 million or more illegals in this country.  Only a small fraction of those have deportation orders or are being deported.  The authorities are prioritizing who to deport because they have no choice with that many illegals here.

Besides that, being removed from a country you entered illegally is hardly terror.  If I entered the UK illegally or stayed longer than permitted and were then removed, I would look rather silly if I cried out, “Help! Help! I’m being terrorized!” If you really want to be “terrorized,” live in an area where the MS-13 gang of mostly illegals operates.

I will concede that we should watch our rhetoric especially in the current climate.  I hope CJuntos is also concerned about some of the rhetoric against those who oppose open borders. 

Note the conflation of both legal and illegal immigrants as simply “immigrants.”  There are a lot of legal immigrants who find that offensive. And this conflation is throughout this litany.

Finally, to equate enforcing immigration law and restricting who may enter and stay in this country with persecution is slanderous.  

Skipping a bit into the litany itself:

Officiant: You said: “Don’t oppress an immigrant.

You know what it’s like to be an immigrant,

because you were immigrants in Egypt.”

I don’t know Hebrew, but “immigrant” seems a sloppy translation for political purposes to me.  

But we have forgotten the hardships faced

by our ancestors who came to this country…

Speak for yourself!  My Granddad was a legal immigrant.  He worked himself to early grave, a few years before I was born, to provide well for his family.  My family still benefits, and I am here because of him.  I sure have not forgotten him or his hardships.

Officiant: You said “When a stranger sojourns 

with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.         

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you          

as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.”                                                                                                                                      

But we done wrong to the sojourners to this land:            

separating children from parents and husbands               

from wives, limiting opportunities for work                   

and education opportunities and not loving these              

new neighbors as ourselves. 

So much to dissect there.  First, when one breaks the law, the lawbreaker is often separated from his family.  That goes for citizens, too.  Second, as I have noted, there is rampant child trafficking along the border.  There have been several surges of migrants.  Dealing with the numbers and figuring out who are real families and who are fake families (of which there are many) and dealing with them accordingly is not an easy task at all.  There is not much question that the surges and caravans with accompanying child smuggling were designed to overwhelm the border.  So then to whinge when we struggle imperfectly to deal with that situation humanely is . . . well, I will allow readers to choose the adjectives of their choice.

Now, of course, the simplest way to keep illegals and their families together is quickly to deport them together or, better, to not allow them in at all.  But I doubt ¡Caminemos Juntos! would like that.  Instead, they likely want to let most to all of these families right on in together.  And then, after an eventual amnesty of some sort (which I would guess - just guess - CJuntos also likely wants), by chain migration, here come the extended families!  So really their whinging about “families” is advocating for open borders and mass immigration, or close to it.

Further, making too much of a priority to keep families together is encouraging and enabling the child trafficking at the border.  By the way, notice how the serious problem of child trafficking is not mentioned in this litany?

“Limiting opportunities for work…” So we should displace citizen labor with illegal immigrant labor?  Ask construction workers who have seen their wages depressed by cheap illegal labor what they think of that!  Where is the concern for those whose opportunities and wages are suppressed by cheap immigrant labor?  This lack of concern for citizens sounds more like the Democrat Party than the church.

That is another problem with this litany. It is not only out of balance; it pretends valid competing claims have no legitimacy worth mentioning.  

“Limiting . . . education opportunities…” How?  Thanks to an old Supreme Court ruling, public schools have to educate the children of illegals (which is overwhelming some school districts and harming the education of citizens).  Most universities welcome illegals and many even provide financial aid.  Many illegals get a far better education here than they would hope to get in their home countries.    

Skipping a bit…

But rather than recognizing your sovereign

disciple-making purposes in the dispersion of 

peoples across borders, we have seen 

immigrants as a threat. We have failed to 

practice Godly hospitality and instead embraced 

protectionist nationalism, not submit our ways of 

thinking to the authority of your word.

Well, MS-13 and other criminals streaming across the border are a threat to say the least.

“We have . . . embraced protectionist nationalism.”

That is a straw man.  To want controls on immigration and a secure border is hardly “protectionist nationalism.”  And what is that anyway?  If I love my country and want to protect it and its culture, does that make me a “protectionist nationalist”?  Instead of engaging with different views of what is appropriate immigration policy, CJuntos engages in buzzwords in a prayer no less. Maybe they should submit that “to the authority of your word.”

By the way, whatever “protectionist nationalists” are, I don’t think there are many of them at ¡Caminemos Juntos! meetings.  I thought confessing other people’s sins was an Episcopalian thing.

We have opposed change resisting any giving up of our ways of worship and life.   

That’s backward, isn’t it?  It’s immigrants (and now I include legal immigrants) who should change and become American if they are going to move to America. (Yes, different cultures enrich America.) If I were to move to England, even I would not insist it become Texan.  (Well, I have introduced Tabasco Sauce on eggs to Pusey House, but anyway….)  I would instead become at least English enough to participate well in that culture.  And if someone is going to become Anglican, Anglican churches shouldn’t change their “ways of worship” for him/her.  We should not starting dunking people and stop baptizing babies if a Baptist joins us.  We shouldn’t cavort during our processions if a Pentecostal joins us.  “Our ways of worship” are an integral part of being Anglican.

But maybe I am misunderstanding here. How should we change, even give up “our ways of worship” for immigrants other than providing language assistance? This seems to me more of what we hear from the social justice crowd, that the church should change to be more to their liking.  But that is a whole ‘nother post, and maybe I am hearing this wrong anyway. Am I?  It is a perplexing clause at best.     

At least the litany ends well:

Lord, have mercy upon us.                                            

Christ, have mercy upon us.                                    

Lord, have mercy upon us.                                                               

Let us pray. Oremos.

A Collect for Refugees and Immigrants          

Heavenly Father, from whom every family on earth derives its name, have mercy on all those who sojourn in this world. As you sheltered your Son Jesus who fled from the tyranny of Herod, so now provide new homes for all those who flee the violence of this age that they may know the peace of Christ. Grace your people with hearts of welcome and lives of courage through Jesus Christ who lives and   reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

That collect was written by Archbishop Foley Beach and serves as a godly example of making public prayer something in which all faithful Anglicans can participate.  Unlike most of the litany, I can pray that collect along with ¡Caminemos Juntos!.  Public prayer certainly should not smear and divide the faithful church along political lines.

Child Trafficking Used by Criminals to Enter U. S.

Earlier this week in discussing the rampant child trafficking at the border, child smuggling used to game entry, I noted that rather suddenly men trying to enter are showing up with children.  I was skeptical about the motives, and I was right, of course: 

The Department of Homeland Security treats the expanded “Flores” decree like God’s word, releasing any illegal alien who crosses the border with a child, even if border personnel can’t confirm identities, criminal records, or whether they are threats to Americans or to the children they’re using as golden tickets.

Senator James Lankford, R-Okla., announced at yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that border agents told him, on his recent trip to the border, that they found in two separate incidents that an alleged murderer and a convicted pedophile had each been released with a kid as part of the expanded Flores catch-and-release deadline of 20 days.

In one case, “they released an adult with a child and then found out two weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in their home country, and they just released him into the country, and they could do nothing about it.” In another case, “they had released an adult traveling with a child and then found out after they were released when they got their criminal records in from home country that, that was a convicted pedophile from that country now traveling with a child somewhere in our country, and because we couldn’t detain them for longer than 20 days and we couldn’t get those criminal records, they’re released in the country, and they’re traveling with a child.”

When Lankford asked acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan whether border personnel were able to verify criminal status within the arbitrary 20-day deadline by the courts, he answered, “Not efficiently.”

So criminals are using child smuggling, combined with the 20 day deadline mandated by a California judge in the Flores decision, to be released into our country to prey on the rest of us.  And in case one thinks I am being alarmist about exceptional situations…

“In every single group, almost without fail, there is someone with a criminal record, typically males with single kids,” [an anonymous] agent said. “There is a wide misconception about the majority of these people being females. They are overwhelmingly male. While we try to prioritize referrals for prosecution based on criminal history, we only have so many computers we can utilize and so many staff members.”

When I asked him if that means there are those with confirmed criminal records, even with convictions in the U.S., who have been released, he said, “Absolutely. … They are given a notice to appear in court like anyone else.”

And we know that most do not show up for their court hearings.

Again, sentimental thinking about children and families at the border is enabling child trafficking and other criminality.  Yes, families (not the fake ones) showing up at the border should be kept together . . . by sending them back across the border immediately if they don’t have proper documentation.  If they want and merit a hearing, they can wait for it across the border.  We must stop policies which make children a golden ticket to get in and thereby make them targets of child trafficking.

Rampant Child Trafficking: Children Used to Game Border Entry

Disclaimer: I wish I didn’t find it necessary to post this and similar stories on this blog.  I know some may find it off-topic. But Anglicans are among those being taken in by and often furthering sentimental weaponized compassion about illegal entry and are being used to undermine our borders and our country. Reality checks are necessary.

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There is a lot of sentimental talk in the Southern Baptist Convention, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and other churches and Christian organizations about keeping families at the border together.  (Strange that deporting them together is rarely suggested as a solution.)  This and other weaponized compassion about “refugees” and “immigrants” is enabling rampant child trafficking.  A lot of those families are fake: 

Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, sent 400 agents to El Paso and Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in mid-April to interview families that Border Patrol suspected were fake. In the last eight weeks, HSI special agents have identified 5,500 fraudulent families—about 15 percent of all cases referred.

McAleenan said agents have uncovered 921 fake documents and 615 individuals have been prosecuted for trafficking or smuggling a child.

“That tells me that we might be scratching the surface of this problem and the number of children being put at risk might be even higher,” he said.

“Everybody knows that if they bring a child, they’ll be allowed to stay in the United States—they call it a ‘passport for migration.’ I heard that directly from a gentleman from Huehuetenango, the western-most province of Guatemala.”

Yes.  Smuggling children in order to gain entry into the U. S.

Do we want people who would do this in our country at all?

But you get more of what you reward. And we are rewarding child trafficking at the border.  If you have a child with you and get across the border, you are probably in. For that we can thank . . .

The legal loophole that is fueling the sharp increase in family units was opened in 2015 by a California judge, [of course] who amended the Flores Settlement Agreement to prohibit the detention of families for more than 20 days. Previously, the 20-day rule was applied to unaccompanied minors only.

An immigration case cannot be adjudicated within 20 days, so families who cross the border illegally are now released by Border Patrol within days, with a future court date that most fail to honor.  [87% fail to show up by one study. – ed.]

One of the most telling statistics is that of men crossing the border with a child. In 2014, fewer than 1 percent of all men apprehended by Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley Sector had a child with them. That number now sits at 50 percent, according to Rodolfo Karisch, chief Border Patrol agent for that sector.

Wow! It’s so nice to see male illegals suddenly become so family-oriented!

Now at least some of those men are smuggling their own children, taking them through a dangerous journey, which is bad enough. Who knows how many of those men are smuggling other people’s children.

As for unaccompanied minors, most of them are smuggled as well in part to, yes, game the system.

McAleenan said it’s often a parent, who is already in the United States illegally, who pays a smuggler to deliver their child up to the border.

“I don’t think most people realize that most of these unaccompanied children are being released to parents or relatives in the United States who are also here unlawfully, who may not have permission to work in the United States,” McAleenan said.

New restrictions, placed by Congress in the latest round of appropriations, include a provision that illegal aliens in a household with an unaccompanied minor are now exempt from deportation.

Again, rewarding child trafficking and the violation of our borders.

As I’ve said before, I do not pretend to know the balance between compassion on the one hand and self-defense and not enabling criminal behavior on the other.  But we as churches and as a nation need to be realistic about who is entering the U. S. and how they are gaining entry, even if being realistic is smeared as racist or whatever.

And, for the sake of children and the God who loves them, we must stop enabling and rewarding child trafficking.