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Churches should not be staging grounds for political works, and, in fact, federal law forbids it.
In 2006, Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant and mother from Mexico, was in danger of U.S. deportation and of being torn from her child.
Arellano sought sanctuary in Chicago’s Adalberto United Methodist Church, which protected her, at least temporarily, from federal authorities.
This public church display of federal defiance prompted vast national efforts dubbed the New Sanctuary Movement.
Cardinal Roger Mahoney of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and other national church leaders, rallied supporters to fight for the change of immigration laws they said were inhumane and ripping families apart.
This sort of church sanctuary is nothing new in this country.
In the 1980s, during the first Sanctuary Movement, more than 500 churches nationwide offered sanctuary — habitat and hiding spots — to Central American refugees who fled horrid human rights violations at home. Federal law, at the time, forbid offering amnesty to refugees from countries called allies.
Churches, no doubt, should open their doors to all needy visitors, even when those visitors are illegal immigrants.
Many local priests from churches such as Our Lady of Sorrows don’t ask parishioners if they are illegally here or not. Priests shouldn’t have to. They are not an arm of law enforcement.
But when churches publicly defy federal law — as in the case of Chicago’s now-famous United Methodist Church — they have overstepped their moral and legal bounds.
At that point, churches have bounced from their humanitarian net and landed in a social stew they have no business publicly stirring.
Federal law denies churches, which enjoy special nonprofit tax status, from becoming embroiled in political battles.
Churches shouldn’t use tithes and tax dollars to spar politically, critics say.
We agree.
Churches should offer theological and humanitarian counsel, not public political arguments.
If church leaders want to help the illegal immigrants they say are caught in immoral U.S. federal law, they should follow legal avenues that drive into the heart of the root problems.
Send missionaries to the border and into Mexico. Work to create jobs for immigrants at home.
Use your status in society to help improve Mexico’s economy so that immigrants aren’t forced by necessity to the United States.
Teach parishioners to avoid drugs and crime, two black eyes that smugglers deliver to Texas every day – often on the backs of immigrants.
No one denies that U.S. immigration laws need to be reformed. When churches, of all houses, break federal law for that reform, problems – and the fights between both sides – only mount.
The New Sanctuary Movement distracts local, state and federal authorities, who are already outmanned and outgunned, from fighting the crimes funneled to Texas streets.
Priests cite biblical scripture about sanctuary and helping the needy. With this we agree.
But please do not make a seemingly unfixable problem even worse — and break federal law and your parishioners’ belief in this authority — to accomplish your mission.
This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate’s editorial board.