This hyphenated missionary needs a reality check:

Immigration bill would target some churches
Published: Saturday, November 17, 2007 - 2:00 am
By Jeffrey Pagan-Laureano

The South Carolina Legislature will soon consider an illegal immigration bill drafted almost verbatim after a law enacted recently in the state of Oklahoma.

While most of the proposed legislation is acceptable, it is also plagued with serious flaws that will turn law enforcement in South Carolina into the worst enemy of Hispanic families (legal or illegal) and Christian churches.

The Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (Senate Bill 392) passed the Senate and is currently undergoing some study by the Judiciary Committee. The ambitious proposal contains provisions aimed at preventing and penalizing the employment of illegal aliens, which I find appropriate. However, the bill also includes some disturbing provisions that are reminiscent of countries like the Soviet Union, East Germany or Cuba. For example the bill requires the implementation of a hotline to report on illegal aliens. The reporting and investigative criteria are anything but clear. Needless to say, this law will probably lend itself to justify the indiscriminate harassment of Hispanics that fit a certain profile. The bill also makes it illegal to harbor and transport illegal aliens.

In my 23 years as a layman and missionary in the United States, I have never asked anybody frequenting or visiting my church to prove his or her legal status before offering transportation to or from the church or any church event. In fact, I have never raised the question because my Bible does not instruct us to ask for proof of legal residence before doing what God told us to do in a true spirit of love and obedience. Moreover, illegal aliens are not objects, and most don't even fit the profile of a criminal. They look like ordinary and decent people. They are fathers, mothers, children and grandparents.
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If Christian churches allow this bill to pass in the state Legislature, we might witness the unthinkable -- God-serving Christians jailed for transporting an illegal alien. Hispanic Christian churches, evangelical and whatnot, are beginning to grow quickly in the Upstate area, and some of them are blooming under the support and protection of English-speaking congregations.

If my guesstimate and experience are correct, these new churches are made up by a significant number of illegal aliens (maybe up to 20 or 30 percent). Yes, ilegales go to church too. My question is: Are we ready to allow the state to interfere with our ministries to the needy? Are we going to look the other way? Are we prepared to turn our brothers and sisters over to the police? People, especially Christians, shouldn't be asked to turn into informers, but that is exactly what this new law will force them to do.

We are slowly, but surely becoming what we hated the most before 9-11 -- a nation of informers, a police state that does not recognize its limits. Since harboring an illegal alien will also become a crime in South Carolina, the new law will also put in jail family members such as mothers, grandmothers, brothers and sisters of illegal aliens if they refuse to turn their loved ones away in their moment of need.

What is so bad about it? Most people confronted with such an overwhelming moral predicament will suddenly turn from law-abiding citizens into outlaws. Since many of them might be legal residents, if they are not American citizens already, this will clearly represent an attack on Hispanic families. The social repercussions are almost catastrophic.

I am in favor of stopping the flow of illegal aliens, but as a brown-complected, Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican (that makes me an American citizen), I refuse to side with people whose shady agendas will eventually turn me into a victim of the policies that I support. From my perspective, it looks like some Americans insist on putting this country in a collision course against Hispanics. So my wife and I did what we should have done 20 years ago -- we registered to vote.

I suspect that we will not be alone in 2008.
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