Lds Church Issues New Statement Re: Immigration

[Xander]

Illegal = breaking the law = criminal

Next!!!!

Calling an entire group of people criminals over a technicality while technically being a criminal yourself (i.e. have you ever littered or broke the speed limit?) = hypocrite.

Pretending all undocumented residents are criminals, when in fact many of them were brought here by their parents = ignorance.

Next!!!!!!!!

[Xander]

There is no job an American is unwilling to do.

Tell that to the lettuce farmers in Yuma Arizona, who couldn't find replacement workers after the INS raided the area - causing the price of lettuce to skyrocket. And contrary to popular myth, these workers were not getting paid minimum wage or below. They were making as much as $14 per hour. Simply put, you don't know what you're talking about.

[Bob Crockett]

Thats nice and all, but none of it justifies an open borders approach. Esp not in a time of war or in times of great evil such as these

A "pollyanna" approach to illegals is naive and is treasonous to the oath of office. All enemies foreign and domestic.

I'm neither naive nor treasonous.

I'm just quoting from current Church policy. Without that stated policy I might have had a different view of things, but I can read for itself what it says. The Church gives guidance and policy to assist its members. This is just such a time. Some sign on; others don't.

[Loran Blood]

One thing that really stands out in this discussion, and in discussions that have appeared here before on this same subject, is the overriding sense of lawlessness that pervades immigration policy in the United States and the sense in which the expediences of political power and influence have essentially nullified thousands of pages of immigration law to the extent that no one, from the President on down to local law enforecement angencies in certain locales will enforece them. This means that the making of law itself, through deliberative, democratic processes and institutions, is judged, de facto, as illegitimate and simply ignored. In process of time, the danger here is that as the law is ignored and effectively nullified by those specifically tasked with its enforcement, the very concept of law as binding upon an entire citizenry as well as non-citizens - the very concept of both the rule of law and equality under the law, in other words - comes into question and general respect for the law as a body of binding rules and conditions limiting and/or regulating human conduct in various areas dissipates in a very broad, overarching manner. A major part of the problem of illegal immigration is doubtless the fact that most Mexican know that American immigration law is largely purely a matter of little black marks on white paper, but not of actual intention or principle. They do not respect United States law for the simple reason that they are clearly aware that we do not respect our own. If we break our own laws by failing to enforce them and/or creating numerous routes of circumvention around them, they breakage of the law becomes, itself, an unwritten law, and comes to impute no moral or ethical lack upon the breaker. Where does this specific lack of respect for our own laws, and for the very concept of "law" reach its logical conclusion? Certainly not with the immigration question. How many others laws can be non-enforced because members of the political class see political opportunity in non-enforcement?

There can be a great deal of special pleading manifest in arguments within this debate (no one kept "my ancestors" out, we are trying to "pull up the ladder" etc.) that circumvents two fundamental questions that, at the end of the day, regarding LDS doctrine and the ethical standards of gospel teaching, must be addressed for the argument to proceed productively. The first is that it is a requirement of gospel membership and doctrinal mandate that citizens of various countries, and more especially, open, representative societies, to obey, respect and sustain the law. This would include obeying and respecting the laws of other countries in which one is a guest or resident, for whatever reason. By definintion, illegal immigration is...illegal immigration, and involves, again by definition, neither obedience to or sustaining of the law.

The second are the very serious potential cultural side effects of large scale, unrestricted, undifferentiated immigration in which large groups of unassimilabe immigrants who may be quite hostile to their host country in an ideological/cultural sense and who bunch together in tribal, balkanized in-group enclaves that provide a shield against assimilation into the common American culture and value system, do not assume the core values of the American republic and its central political/social ethos, but attempt to recreate their own countries and culture in America within separatist enclaves. On a small scale, such is of minimal concern. But on the scale immigration, both legal and illegal, has been allowed to occur in this country, and throughout Western Europe, for that matter (primarily for political reasons), those dangers can swell to far more threatening proportions (the massive periodic rallies in Los Angeles, in which many thousands of illegals openly march through the streets calling for transfers of wealth from indigenous American citizens to themselves and for "rights" they cannot, by definition, lay claim to, is a case in point)

The large flag the once, a few years ago, graced the front picture window of a local Mexican restaraunt here where I live, on which was prominant emblazoned "Vive La Raza," marks the kind of thing such policies can and, history attests, will be created as immigration continues both on an unrestricted scale, and without differentiation as to the kind of people allowed into the country (unskilled and uneducated, and hence, likely to be long term or permanent wards of the welfare state, or semi to highly skilled. Ideologically hostile or nationalistic regarding their home country, or open to learning the language, adopting the values of an open, representative Republic based in the classical liberal tradition, and becoming Americans, in the broadest sense.

The gospel does require from us compassion and concern for our fellow beings (and the Church statement speaks to that quite clearly), but it also requires us to express that compassion and concern in a lawful manner, and in a way that does not unbalance other gospel principles, as they apply both to our personal lives and to the political realm in which we exist.

[Bob Crockett]

The gospel does require from us compassion and concern for our fellow beings (and the Church statement speaks to that quite clearly), but it also requires us to express that compassion and concern in a lawful manner, and in a way that does not unbalance other gospel principles, as they apply both to our personal lives and to the political realm in which we exist.

And, so, are you critical of or supportive of current Church policy?

If, as was the case in my stake, an illegal alien, undocumented worker, was offered to be sustained as a high councilor, would you you sustain him?

Really, it all comes that particular question. None of this other policy stuff really matters. I might have agreed with all of that material at one point.

[ELF1024]

Tell that to the lettuce farmers in Yuma Arizona, who couldn't find replacement workers after the INS raided the area - causing the price of lettuce to skyrocket. And contrary to popular myth, these workers were not getting paid minimum wage or below. They were making as much as $14 per hour. Simply put, you don't know what you're talking about.

Please answer the cfrs before you.

[Loran Blood]

It did not allow an increase in the numbers needed during the very very low unemployment period in the 1990's.

Unemployment at one time was down to about 4% and illegal aliens were used to reign in inflationary pressures.

Low unemployment causes inflation? This appears to be a statement derived from a long discredited economic theory and monetary policy known as "Keynesianism," which, though thoroughly discredited theoretically and historically, remains, for good reason, the coin of the realm within government. To be clear, general price inflation is not caused by low unemployment, but by the creation of vast quantities of fiat money (non-existent money created out of thin air and pumped into the economy as credit or direct "stimulus" by the state)

By allowing so many to enter we also encouraged our southern neighbors to avoid the responsibilities of cleaning their house.

I agree here. Mexico has never allowed free markets to function in any but the most rudimentary and highly truncated manner, and is one of the most fiscally (and in other ways) corrupt governments on earth.

[Loran Blood]

Lehi:

Sophistry.

SB1070 is a state law. By definition State law can not supercede Federal law without Federal permission. There is NO Federal law giving individual states authority over immigration. Also the Federal Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution directly prohibits individual states from enacting/enforcing any law in conflict with Federal law.

How is the state of Arizona "making" immigration law by enforcing the federal immigration laws that are already on the books as "the law of the land" in a federal sense? What the federal government is standing in the way of here is Arizona acting on existing law because of its own failure to act pursuant to those very same laws. No new immigration law has been made. SB1070 is about enforcement of existing law.

I suspect , STS, that you just don't like the idea of enforcing those existing laws per se.

[Loran Blood]

And, so, are you critical of or supportive of current Church policy?

Supportive.

If, as was the case in my stake, an illegal alien, undocumented worker, was offered to be sustained as a high councilor, would you you sustain him?

Yes.

Really, it all comes that particular question. None of this other policy stuff really matters. I might have agreed with all of that material at one point.

On the personal scale of your example, I support the Church. Within the larger political/social sphere in the aggregate, I support the position I have taken as well. This is the trade-off that appears necessary to make, at the present time, and the Church does not appear to be hostile to my basic thesis:

As a matter of policy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages its members from entering any country without legal documentation, and from deliberately overstaying legal travel visas.

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

In furtherance of needed immigration reform in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports a balanced and civil approach to a challenging problem, fully consistent with its tradition of compassion, its reverence for family, and its commitment to law.

[Xander]

Please answer the cfrs before you.

http://www.kenan-fla..._HispanicStudy/

In Yuma Arizona, lettuce pickers, the vast majority of which are "illegals" from across the border, earn as much as $14/hr based on performance. According to a farmer in Yuma,“…if we were to pay forty dollars an hour unfortunately we cannot attract any of the local labor if you want to call it that. The Caucasians aren't about to come out and work in these fields when it's a hundred and five to a hundred and ten degrees. They don't have the sustaining power to stay in day in and day out. The work ethic in the United States and in a lot of ways has gone backwards on us.”

http://www.iptv.org/...cfm/feature/447

- Immigrants in California pay roughly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year. In California, “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household.”

-If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from California, the state would lose $164.2 billion in expenditures, $72.9 billion in economic output, and approximately 717,000 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the Perryman Group.

http://www.immigrati...Immigration.pdf

"California could reap an economic boon worth $16 billion by legalizing its 1.8 million undocumented adult Latino immigrants, according to a USC study released today." http://latimesblogs....-immigrant.html

Loran,

Keynesian theory is dead? That would be surprising to Economists, most of whom are Keynesians.

Edited June 26, 2011 by Xander

[Loran Blood]

I'd like rc, and others supportive of unrestricted immigration and legally consequenceless illegal immigration to engage something I said above in greater detail if possible:

The gospel does require from us compassion and concern for our fellow beings (and the Church statement speaks to that quite clearly), but it also requires us to express that compassion and concern in a lawful manner, and in a way that does not unbalance other gospel principles, as they apply both to our personal lives and to the political realm in which we exist.

[Xander]

I'd like rc, and others supportive of unrestricted immigration and legally consequenceless illegal immigration to engage something I said above in greater detail if possible:

I think neither the Bible nor the LDS Church qualifies compassion in this way. Christ commands us to be compassionate, period. He doesn't say do it so long as it doesn't contradict any laws made by man. God's law is higher, is it not?

[Bob Crockett]

"California could reap an economic boon worth $16 billion by legalizing its 1.8 million undocumented adult Latino immigrants, according to a USC study released today." http://latimesblogs....-immigrant.html

As a former economist and a libertarian I strongly endorse the conclusions of these sorts of findings.

A recurring problem, of course, is the U.S. welfare state. Immigrants do put a load on that welfare state. Whereas agribusiness and manufacturers might benefit from a general amnesty, hospitals (which are required to accept all comers to their emergency room, and which are used by illegal aliens for general health care) would suffer greatly. As would much of our health care.

[thesometimesaint]

Loran Blood:

The Church is not a immigration law enforcement agency of the government. BTW It doesn't enforce any other man made law either.

[Xander]

Judge Napolitano explains why SB1070 is unconstitutional.

[Bob Crockett]

Judge Napolitano explains why SB1070 is unconstitutional.

That doesn't make it unconstitutional. Time will tell.

[thesometimesaint]

True enough. But I too have many legal questions about its constitutionality, and I'm no fan of Judge Napolitano.

[Loran Blood]

I think neither the Bible nor the LDS Church qualifies compassion in this way. Christ commands us to be compassionate, period. He doesn't say do it so long as it doesn't contradict any laws made by man. God's law is higher, is it not?

So we are to be "compassionate" as each one of us on an individual basis understands that term, no matter what the cost? We are to be compassionate, even if it brings to pass evils on a large scale as specific behavior or policies we support create violations and transgressions of God's law in other places?

If our conduct in the name of one of God's laws creates violations of God's laws in other gospel areas, and even on a large scale among numerous others not originally a part of one's aims, can one truly say one has legitimately followed the gospel at the outset?

[Loran Blood]

This sounds much more like a Kantian maxim than a resort to gospel principles as normally understood. Compassion at any cost sounds much like honesty at any price in the Kantian sense, i.e., if the Gestapo comes to your house and asks you if there are any Jews in your attic, the maxim, which is not to lie, dictates, regardless of the consequences and effects of your choice, that you tell the truth, and turn them in.

Then you get to watch as they are taken away and their journey to the camps begins. In the same way, the cultural consequences of continued unrestricted illegal and legal immigration, the rewarding of lawbreaking rather than its sanction, and the disregard and disrespect for our own laws, and hence for the concept of the rule of law itself, will have clear and unambiguous consequences. Our "compassion," cannot change that.

It is for that reason that I think our compassion, as in rc's example, should be exercised on a personal level on a case by case level with individuals, while at the state and national level, it should be tempered by a realistic appraisal of the aggregate consequences on a larger, broader scale.

[Xander]

So we are to be "compassionate" as each one of us on an individual basis understands that term, no matter what the cost? We are to be compassionate, even if it brings to pass evils on a large scale as specific behavior or policies we support create violations and transgressions of God's law in other places?

You're putting your faith in political predictions made by men, assuming they are an inevitable result of compassion towards immigrants.

If our conduct in the name of one of God's laws creates violations of God's laws in other gospel areas, and even on a large scale among numerous others not originally a part of one's aims, can one truly say one has legitimately followed the gospel at the outset?

There is no reason to believe compassion towards immigrants will result in evil or "create violations of God's laws" in other areas, and you haven't even begun to establish the validity of this wild claim. We're an immigrant nation, and always have been. The first European settlers came here illegally and forced out the indigenous people who had their own set of laws. So we're all children of lawbreakers. And so if the United States is based on God's plan (as some presume), then I see no room for man to butt in and suddenly say, "no more immigration" just because we're offended when we hear others speak Spanish or Chinese or what not.

[Deborah]

This is such a difficult topic for all people of compassion who at the same time support obedience to laws. The problem is as has been mentioned the law has become meaningless. As a result states like Arizona and California are suffering from the invasion of many illegals who are not here to work but are actually members of gangs or selling drugs. This hurts the many immigrants who do want to work and who in my experience are very hard workers.

Unfortunately the feds seem unwilling to really do anything about the problem except to put forth policies that no one can accept and then not bother to enforce them in any case. This has left it to the states to try to get control of their own borders. Utah is not Arizona but we have an illegal problem as well. We have to find what works best for us.

I think at this point all we can do is put forth a policy that has compassion on families that are already here and have been for many years while getting them legalized and making it easier for legitimate workers to come across on work visas so that they can work. We need to eliminate the argument that those who have been trying to go through the system are put on the back burner by fixing the system so that they don't have to wait years to come here, especially if they have family already here or a sponsor, as in the days of Ellis Island. This is not a problem with an easy solution but as long as the feds don't want to enforce the law and the states are left hanging to clean up the mess there will be conflict and I don't think it will go away soon.

[thesometimesaint]

Deborah:

Law of supply and demand. If Americans didn't demand the illicit drugs the supply would also quickley dry up.

Overall gang violence is way down in California. That doesn't mean it's not a problem, but statistically an aging population is less prone to violence. Old age does have its benefits.

Also illegal immigration is way down.

http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/126.pdf

It is a Federal problem. That is the sticking point. Individual states have no authority for immigration. A quick look at the Dream Act history should answer the question of how much of a political fotball immigration has become.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

[Loran Blood]

The idea of compassion, or any principle isolated and expanded to the infinite power sounds much more like a Kantian maxim than a resort to gospel principles as normally understood. Compassion at any cost sounds much like honesty at any price in the Kantian sense, i.e., if the Gestapo comes to your house and asks you if there are any Jews in your attic, the maxim, which is not to lie, dictates, regardless of the consequences and effects of your choice, that you tell the truth, and turn them in.

Then you get to watch as they are taken away and their journey to the camps begins. In the same way, the cultural consequences of continued unrestricted illegal and legal immigration, the rewarding of lawbreaking rather than its sanction, and the disregard and disrespect for our own laws, and hence for the concept of the rule of law itself, will have clear and unambiguous consequences. Our "compassion," cannot change that.

It is for that reason that I think our compassion, as in rc's example, should be exercised on a personal level on a case by case level with individuals, while at the state and national level, it should be tempered by a realistic appraisal of the aggregate consequences on a larger, broader scale.

[Loran Blood]

Sorry for the double post. I got a 505 bad gateway error several times and gave up for awhile, but I see it actually posted. As I can't edit yet, I'm just saying...

[Loran Blood]

You're putting your faith in political predictions made by men, assuming they are an inevitable result of compassion towards immigrants.

I'm assuming nothing save that "compassion" without intelligence and prudence can be very destructive.

There is no reason to believe compassion towards immigrants will result in evil or "create violations of God's laws" in other areas, and you haven't even begun to establish the validity of this wild claim.

There's a huge literature on it already, and more than adequate historical experience to justify serious concern.

We're an immigrant nation, and always have been.

Which is hardly relevant to present concerns. The same could be said of virturally all nations/kingdoms that have ever existed, if one wished to go back far enough and watch the borders and ethnic composition of some territory change over time.

The first European settlers came here illegally

I'm sorry, but who's permission did they need and from what authority?

and forced out the indigenous people who had their own set of laws.

They "forced them out." Where did they go?

So we're all children of lawbreakers.

Could you give me a CFR on what federal Blackfoot, Wampanoag, or Apache immigration laws were, and how they were administered?

And so if the United States is based on God's plan (as some presume), then I see no room for man to butt in and suddenly say, "no more immigration" just because we're offended when we hear others speak Spanish or Chinese or what not.

The problems with the kind of out-of-control immigration, both legal and illegal, we are dealing with at present, are economic decline and dislocation, negative political and cultural alterations due to non-assimilation and indigestible cultural attributes that are not filtered out through a reasonable process of assimilation and Americanization, and multiculturalist tribalism, which, if allowed to fester long enough, the experience of other peoples and nations shows can become a very dangerous and destabilizing condition.

The sheer size, rapidity, and composition of the present waves of immigrants we are receiving does not allow sufficient time to assimilate, learn the language, and acclimatize themselves to core American values and civil concepts, and no historic example I've ever run across indicates that this is a sustainable or prudent course to pursue.