Thread: When love for your neighbor is a crime

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 649179.htm

Posted on Wed, Jan. 18, 2006


IMMIGRATION

When love for your neighbor is a crime


BY J.R. LABBE
jrlabbe@star-telegram.com

Nowhere in the Bible's passages that instruct God's people to care for strangers does it say to check their citizenship papers first.

Members of Congress who voted for some decidedly uncharitable provisions in an immigration bill should review their childhood Sunday-school lessons before they vote on the final version:

• In Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Moses wrote about God: ``He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.''

• In the Gospel of Luke (Chapter 10), Jesus offers the parable of the good Samaritan. This hated foreigner, who helped a beaten man after he was ignored by a priest and a Levite, was the example that Christ used for how we are to achieve eternal life: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself by showing mercy.

As Jesus said to the questioning scholar, ``Go and do the same.''

The immigration bill passed in the House, does not do the same -- not when it threatens with criminal penalties Americans who extend compassion to people in need. Think church workers who hand out clothing and food, teachers who help with English classes, social workers, even healthcare providers.

Legislation supporters argue that the language specifically addresses those who ''traffick in illegal aliens,'' which is how the communications director for U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess put it in an e-mail to my newspaper.

It's so much easier to think of these people as something other than human when they are called aliens, isn't it?

Smugglers who prey on those who want to enter this country by extracting large amounts of money are committing a crime, and any immigration bill should have tough provisions for punishing those caught doing it. Going after employers who hire illegal immigrants is another way to stem the tide.

To threaten those who voluntarily provide the basic human needs of food, clothing and medical care is a step too far.

I don't think that Burgess intended for any provision to apply to healthcare workers. But he should know that intent and reality are often very different issues when it comes to federal legislation.

Criminal assistance

The provision that concerns immigrant advocates describes those individuals who could face criminal penalties as ``whoever assists, encourages, directs or induces a person to reside in or remain in the United States, or to attempt to reside in or remain in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such person is an alien who lacks lawful authority to reside in or remain in the United States.''

Bill supporters should parse that and then say with utmost confidence that it can only be constructed to apply to individuals trying to illegally smuggle someone across the border: ''assists . . . a person to reside in or remain in the United States, or to attempt to . . . remain in the United States.'' Providing healthcare does that, as do educational opportunities, English classes and other activities that organizations from Catholic Charities to La Raza are concerned about.

If federal lawmakers want to deny healthcare or access to public schools or federal benefits of any kind to immigrants who are in this country illegally, they have the power to enact such legislation. But to threaten Americans who ''go and do the same'' is an act most disheartening.

It's also disingenuous. The provision has little chance of passing in a final immigration and border-security bill, but voting for it can be used in campaign propaganda that will appeal to those constituents back home who want to build that wall between Mexico and the United States.

It doesn't take much to

imagine some of the very

same federal lawmakers who voted for this troubling provision in the House version of the bill coming home to their ultraconservative districts to cite God and family values, decry the liberal government for throwing God out of public schools -- and then get applause for threatening to jail those who walk the walk by offering aid, comfort and support to someone here illegally.

Shame.

Jill ''J.R.'' Labbe is deputy editorial page

editor of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Jill Labbe, what an interesting article for the Fort-Worth Star Telegram to print as an "editorial"... "When love for your neighbor is a crime".

"love for your neighbor"

Is she kidding us? She is an editor for the Fort-Worth Star Telegram and she wants us to believe she "loves" strangers invading Texas from other countries needing jobs, healthcare and housing that are not available such that the state of Texas and the tax payers of the United States have to underwrite their presence here either by losing their job; losing their trauma center; losing their health insurance; losing their spot in school; losing their loan; losing their benefits?

Quoting the Bible....how interesting!!

I remember a quote that says "love thy neighbor as thyself". Jill, Honey, your town is full of strangers in need....they're called Americans living in poverty. The poverty rate for Americans has risen every year in the past four years. One child in four lives below the poverty line. Do you love them as thyself? These neighbors of yours called poor Americans? Have you given them your home; your job--well, obviously not--you're an EDITOR for the Fort Worth Star Telegram....geee I wonder what THAT PAYS?

You're a fraud lady. You're a fake. You're a phoney baloney upper class snob touting violations of our laws; bankruptcy of the United States and the American People; loss of our sovereignty as a nation to accommodate foreign interests....and you call that love.

Well, Fraud Lady, you know what we call that.... we call that Treason.