Thread: Tancredo urges religious groups to support immigration crack

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Tancredo urges religious groups to support immigration crackdowns
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
February 21, 2006

WASHINGTON — Rep. Tom Tancredo has accused leaders of some of the country's biggest religious denominations of being out-of-step with their own parishioners on the issue of illegal immigration.

Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, released a statement today blasting the U.S. Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for lobbying against a border-enforcement bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year.

"The faith community must step forward and tell leftist activists that undermining border security is not a religious imperative," Tancredo said in the release. "I call on the conservative majority of churchgoers to contact the activists who are misrepresenting their beliefs."

Various religious groups have lined up against the House-passed bill, which calls for building a fence along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border, plus tougher enforcement against illegal immigrants and those who employ them.

The Washington, D.C., office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued an action alert to members saying, "This enforcement-only bill is anti-immigrant, unfair, and unjust."

Elenora Giddings Ivory, of the church's Stewardship of Public Life advocacy program, said the church's position on immigration is based on the Biblical stories from Matthew 25, verses 31-46, which talk about nations being judged, in part, by how they treat strangers.

"We have a position that supports compassionate immigration policy, so any bill that comes forward and does not fit with a compassionate understanding of immigration policy would be held up to that," Giddings Ivory said.

She said a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., comes closest to meeting the church's ideal, based on its proposed guest-worker plan. The Senate is expected to begin debating immigration legislation as early as next month, and then its version must be reconciled with the House-passed version.

"Joseph and Mary had to flee persecution. Jesus was not born in his home community," Giddings Ivory said. "Jesus and his family perhaps would have been locked up with a strict border approach to immigration."

But that type of argument offends Tancredo, a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

"As a person of faith, I was offended by these radical advocates invoking God when arguing for blanket amnesty," Tancredo said. "If we really want to be a compassionate faith community, we must enforce the law and end the border charade that lures hundreds of people through the deadly desert every year."

Tancredo, leader of the congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, has vowed to fight various guest-worker plans, including the McCain-Kennedy language, calling them tantamount to "amnesty" for people who broke the law to get into the country.

http://www.californiachronicle.com/arti ... cleID=6123


Tancredo: Liberal Church Activists Distort Border Reform
California Political Desk

By California Political Desk
February 22, 2006
Congressman Rips D.C. Open Borders Advocates for Being Out of Touch with Parishioners.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) ripped the Washington representatives of several major religious organizations for their recent smear tactics against the House’s bipartisan immigration reform bill that passed in December. The House’s bill, H.R. 4437, calls for the construction of a security fence along our southern border, requires federal and local law enforcement to cooperate on immigration matters, and mandates that employers use an instant check system to verify their employees' legal status.

Claiming to speak for their churches’ members, left-leaning religious activists have distorted what the bill would do and have impugned the motives of those who voted to secure our borders, in one case claiming that the bipartisan legislation does not reflect “Gospel attitudes toward immigrants…” The U.S. Catholic church, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have all initiated lobbying campaigns against the House bill and in favor of blanket illegal alien amnesty, despite many of their members support for strong border security.

“The faith community must step forward and tell left-leaning activists that undermining border security is not a religious imperative,” said Tancredo. “I call on the conservative majority of churchgoers to contact the activists who are misrepresenting their beliefs.”

In an official Catholic church manual, Sunday school teachers are apparently instructed to have students compare the U.S. Bill of Rights with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Church’s teachings and to ask “Which is more encompassing?” Sunday schoolers are then supposed to write their own new bill of rights and examine “the rights of (or lack thereof) immigrants” in the U.S.

An official Presbyterian action alert urges parishioners to contact their elected officials, arguing that the House bill “is anti-immigrant, unfair, and unjust… [the bill is] a frontal assault on the due process rights of non-citizens in this country… that threatens asylum-seekers, noncitizens, and their families…”

“As a person of faith, I am offended by these radical activists invoking God when arguing for blanket amnesty. If we really want to be a compassionate faith community, we must enforce the law and end the border charade that lures hundreds of people through the deadly desert every year,” said Tancredo.