Countering the Religious Left in their Immigrant Advocacy
Government's primary responsibility is to safeguard its citizens
The Wisconsin Council of Churches makes its case for acceptance of immigrants in its call to action:
Immigrants have been part of the fabric of the United States since its beginnings, but that has always come with tensions. Today, immigrant communities in the United States are under attack. While the system has been broken and immigrants have faced deportation for years, in 2025 the pressure has increased because of policies at all levels of government, but especially the federal level. This has resulted in families torn apart, increased discrimination, and many who are living in fear.
As people of faith, most traditions recognize “the golden rule”, to love others as we love ourselves, and many of our traditions speak of special care for immigrants. When voices of discrimination are loud, communities of faith have an obligation to loudly speak messages of love, acceptance, and welcome.
S.A. McCarthy challenges Cardinal McElroy on the latter’s Good Samaritan approach to immigrants entering this country illegally:
McElroy is oblivious to the Church’s position that nations have the right to protect their borders and their cultural identities.
I have written extensively on the Catholic Church’s teachings on national sovereignty, cultural identity, immigration, and border control in The American Spectator (here, here, here, and here) but it is worth repeating, in brief, that the Catholic Church has long held that nations have the right to protect their borders and preserve their cultural and national identities. The first responsibility of a nation’s leader is to his own people, not to strangers from foreign lands who spend months and years evading legitimate law enforcement agents and efforts — just as the first responsibility of a father is to his own family, not to strangers who break into his home under the cover of night.
What Cardinal McElroy Gets Wrong on Immigration
A Catholic priest quotes St. Thomas Aquinas who argues for a nation’s responsibility to provide for its self-defense:
Just laws on legal immigration may never be broken from a moral perspective. No one has a right to violate the boundaries established by a foreign sovereign nation.
St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologiae (I-II, Q. 105, a. 3) that man’s relationship with foreigners is either peaceful or hostile. He says that not all immigrants are equal. Every nation has a right to decide which immigrants are peaceful or beneficial to the common good. As a matter of self-defense, the state may reject those criminal elements, traitors, enemies, and those deemed harmful or hostile to its citizens. St. Thomas acknowledges that others will want to visit or stay in a given land for some time. Such foreigners must be treated with charity, respect, and courtesy. There had been a nearly worldwide traditional practice of only admitting one as a citizen after two or three generations. St. Thomas expresses a concern that newly-settled foreigners would not quickly have the best grasp of the common good and culture of their host citizens. It jars me to see so many foreign flags at soccer games on our home soil from people who claim they want U.S. citizenship. If the U.S. were playing the Swiss or German teams, I wouldn’t dream of taking a Swiss or a German flag in a display of opposition to the U.S. (I am one-eighth Swiss and half German.)
Catholic priest: Nobody has the right to violate another country's immigration laws
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose relief agencies acted as contractors for the federal government’s resettlement of foreign nationals, declined to renew agreements after funding dried up:
The US Conference on Catholic Bishops (USCCB), who made billions off of its illegal alien resettlement programs from the US government, announced on Monday that they would not renew their agreements with the US government for their refugee and illegal migrant resettlement programs.
The USCCB and Catholic Charities made billions of dollars resettling illegal aliens in the US for several years now.
According to Grok-AI, while individual agencies report figures ranging from tens to hundreds of millions (e.g., $47 million to $278 million for Fort Worth, $81 million for Galveston-Houston), the network’s total federal funding for refugee programs likely reaches into the billions over multiple years, with $1.4 billion cited for 2024 alone across broader migrant services.
The number of illegal aliens soared under the Biden regime to nearly 20 million in four years. Catholic Charities was there to redistribute these aliens across the country and made $1.4 billion in 2024 alone!
David Horwitz of the David Horwitz Freedom Center - a non-profit organization that promotes the moral, cultural and economic foundations of free societies – writes in 4 Open Borders of Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last: Horowitz, David:
The power of a nation to govern itself is made possible by enforceable borders. It is further secured by a citizenship process that requires immigrants to be educated in the nation’s laws and customs, an oath of loyalty, and a pledge to assimilate to the values and traditions of the immigrant’s new home.