Stranger in a strange land

Immigration Debate Is Shaped by '08 Election

The Post: President Bush's effort to secure lawful employment opportunities for illegal immigrants is evolving into an early battle of the 2008 presidential campaign, as his would-be White House successors jockey for position ahead of next week's immigration showdown in the Senate.

Bush called on Congress yesterday to tone down the increasingly sharp and divisive rhetoric over immigration, as he renewed his push for a guest-worker plan that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to continue working in the United States. But Bush's political sway is already weakened by public unease about the war in Iraq and by Republican divisions.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), whom Bush helped elect as party leader, is threatening to bring a new immigration bill to the Senate floor early next week. It would tighten control of the nation's borders without creating the guest-worker program the president wants.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a rival of Frist's for the Republican nomination, is promoting Bush's call for tougher border security and the guest-worker program as he embraces the president to shore up his standing with Republican leaders. In the House, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) is garnering support for a long-shot presidential bid with his fierce anti-immigration rhetoric.

And after weeks of sitting on the sidelines, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) jumped into the immigration debate Wednesday. She declared that Republican efforts to criminalize undocumented workers and their support networks "would literally criminalize the good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."

Uh, okay.... You'd think the Post would expand on that quote by Hillary, either in the next paragraph or somewhere else in the article. But they don't.

So let's go to the trusty New York Times to explain, in the clunkily headlined Mrs. Clinton Says G.O.P.'s Immigration Plan Is at Odds With the Bible:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the Bible yesterday to criticize a stringent border security measure that, among other things, would make it a federal crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants.

"It is hard to believe that a Republican leadership that is constantly talking about values and about faith would put forth such a mean-spirited piece of legislation," she said of the measure, which was passed by the House of Representatives in December and mirrored a companion Senate bill introduced last week by Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the majority leader.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Mrs. Clinton, who is running for re-election this year and is leading in polls for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke at a news conference in Manhattan with more than 30 immigrant leaders after meeting with them privately.

Hmm, nothing else in the article addresses it either. So we turn to Google News, and after some time find the original remark that apparently triggered this whole line of argument; here's the Rocky Mountain News article in its entirety:

Rep. Tom Tancredo has accused leaders of some of the country's biggest religious denominations of being out of step with their own followers on the issue of illegal immigration.
Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, released a statement Tuesday blasting the U.S. Catholic Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, 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.

"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 alert to members saying, "This enforcement-only bill is anti- immigrant, unfair, and unjust."

Elenora Giddings Ivory, of the denomination's Stewardship of Public Life advocacy program, said the church's position on immigration is based on the scripture passage Matthew 25, verses 31-46, which talks 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 Catholic bishops also support that bill.

The Senate is expected to begin debating immigration legislation as early as next month. 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 kind 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 McCain- Kennedy language, calling them tantamount to amnesty for people who broke the law to get into the country.

Jeanette R. De Melo, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, said the church does not support "blanket amnesty" for illegal immigrants, adding, "The idea that the choice is between completely 'open borders' or (a) homegrown Berlin Wall is misguided. Neither option is practical or just."

It's all very interesting. Obviously Jesus would not favor enforcing the letter of the law over the spirit; so anything that calls for tightening immigration rules in a country built by immigration is pretty suspect from any sort of Christian perspective.

As for calling Jesus an illegal immigrant--well, who knows technically, not sure you can compare laws from 2,000 years ago. But he was certainly not at home under the tyranny of Rome in Palestine.

Would he be at home in America today?

Georges Henri Rouault's Head of Christ via Wikipedia.