Dan refutes Ben

[Doctor Steuss]

15 hours ago, Duncan said:

New statement from the Church

https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders/2025/01/30/church-statement-principles-guidelines-immigration-law-love-family/

My mom plays organ for her Stake's Spanish-language ward.  A significant portion don't speak any English (a few members have recently learned "Thank you" as some of their first English, in order to thank my Mom after meetings, which I think is so incredibly sweet).

While I appreciate the Church's statement (and its continued reiteration of the importance of things like love and compassion), I can't help but wonder, with the "law" portion, would the Church and its members be supportive of ICE conducting raids at meetinghouses during Sacrament Meeting at Spanish-language wards/branches here in the US?
 

[bluebell]

15 minutes ago, Doctor Steuss said:

My mom plays organ for her Stake's Spanish-language ward.  A significant portion don't speak any English (a few members have recently learned "Thank you" as some of their first English, in order to thank my Mom after meetings, which I think is so incredibly sweet).

While I appreciate the Church's statement (and its continued reiteration of the importance of things like love and compassion), I can't help but wonder, with the "law" portion, would the Church and its members be supportive of ICE conducting raids at meetinghouses during Sacrament Meeting at Spanish-language wards/branches here in the US?
 

I don’t personally think they would be supportive. Even someone with the same stance as smac, I don’t think they want to see ice agents raiding sacrament meetings, pulling people from pews. Not that it matters. Whether or not the church supports, it would have no impact on whether or not it happens.

But this is kind of where I always see the intersection on hard topics coming together. People theoretically support one thing, but when the rubber meets the road, and it comes into their communities and in their neighborhoods and they have to watch it happen in person, that’s a different story.

Honestly, having ice start raiding churches, and dragging kids out of classrooms at schools, would probably be the best thing that could happen for the Democratic Party. There will be some conservatives who could watch that happen to people they know and not blink an eye. But for many, things will start to change when they see what supporting a policy like that looks like on the ground.

People may like to eat meat, but that doesn’t mean that they want to go to the slaughterhouse and see the killing.  I think the same is true for this topic.
 

[Doctor Steuss]

34 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Honestly, having ice start raiding churches, and dragging kids out of classrooms at schools, would probably be the best thing that could happen for the Democratic Party. There will be some conservatives who could watch that happen to people they know and not blink an eye. But for many, things will start to change when they see what supporting a policy like that looks like on the ground.
 

I do wonder if that sort of thing would be the tipping point for some, and maybe it would be.  Perhaps I've grown too pessimistic (which worries me), but I don't know that it would move the needle at all for most people.  We literally have American citizens being taken to detention centers by ICE right now (the most recent publicized example being a mother, grandmother and toddler[!]), and that's being met by a lot of people with nothing more than a shrug.  The crime of these American citizens, warranting being hauled off to detention centers?  Speaking Spanish in public while shopping.  The Navajo Nation has also been getting a lot of calls from Navajo tribal members who have been targeted by ICE.  Imagine being Native American, and getting harassed about whether you are in America legally.  But, that's where we're at right now.  It's bonkers.