The Trumpet: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the Trump administration’s immigration policies on November 14 and pledged to assist Central American immigrants who are marching toward the U.S. border.
“On Nov. 9, 2018, President [Donald] Trump issued a proclamation barring people arriving to the U.S.-Mexico border from receiving U.S. asylum unless they request it at a U.S. port of entry, a direct contradiction of existing U.S. asylum law,” reads the official statement on the bishops’ conference website. “While our teaching acknowledges the right of each nation to regulate its borders, we find this action deeply concerning. It will restrict and slow access to protection for hundreds of children and families fleeing violence in Central America, potentially leaving them in unsafe conditions in Mexico or in indefinite detention situations at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
President Trump’s proclamation invoked national security powers, delegated to his office by Congress in 1952, to suspend for up to 90 days asylum rights for migrants who illegally cross into the U.S. The Supreme Court decided in Trump v. Hawaii that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act entrusts the president to temporarily suspend entry to any group of aliens he deems detrimental to the interests of the United States.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops apparently disagrees with the Supreme Court.
“We reiterate that it is not a crime to seek asylum, and this right to seek refuge is codified in our laws and in our values,” the statement on the bishops’ conference website continues. “We urge the administration to seek other solutions that will strengthen the integrity of the existing immigration system, while assuring access to protection for vulnerable children and families. The Catholic Church will continue to serve, accompany and assist all those who flee persecution, regardless of where they seek such protection and where they are from.”
Bishop Joe Vásquez, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, and Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of Catholic Legal Immigration Network, both signed this statement. Atkinson’s signature is significant, since the Catholic Legal Immigration Network is part of the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project. Along with immigration rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project helped organize a caravan of Central American migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. last October.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops claims that its goal is to “accompany and assist” migrants fleeing persecution, but the Catholic Church has done little to help these migrants in their home countries. Instead, priests and bishops across Latin America are helping them leave their countries to enter the U.S. illegally. One reason the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops acts like an open-borders lobby is that it receives thousands of new parishioners and billions of dollars by encouraging mass immigration into America.
According to a report by the Capital Research Center, Catholic Charities and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops received over $2 billion from the U.S. federal government between 2008 and 2015. This money is paid out in return for Catholic assistance housing and resettling refugees in dozens of communities across the nation.
Catholic Charities agencies typically resettle 25 percent of all legal refugees admitted into the U.S. each year, along with an unknown number of illegal immigrants. By calling on the government to increase the number of migrants and refugees allowed into the country, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops protects its annual flow of hundreds of millions of federal dollars.
In addition to this monetary benefit, encouraging mass immigration from Catholic-majority countries brings new parishioners into the U.S. Catholic Church. San Diego bishop Robert McElroy stated in 2016 that mass deportations of illegal immigrants could remove 10 percent of Catholic parishioners from American churches. This makes the illegal immigrant community a powerful demographic within the U.S. Catholic Church.
Pew research data shows that 67 million people identify as Catholics in the U.S., roughly 21 percent of the population. But for every new Catholic convert, six Catholics leave the church. About half of these former Catholics give up on religion, while the other half join a Protestant denomination. The reason the percentage of Catholics in America isn’t plummeting is because native-born Catholics are being replaced by immigrant foreign-born Catholics.
Without illegal immigration, the Catholic Church in the U.S. would be a shrinking organization of diminishing influence. Immigrants moving into the country give Catholic leaders influence that they would not otherwise have. According to the Vienna Institute of Demography, if immigration into America doubled, Catholicism would overtake Protestantism to become the largest religion in the U.S. by the middle of the century.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops supports illegal immigration into America as part of its long-term strategy to weaken America’s Protestant base and ultimately transform it into a Roman Catholic nation…
The Vatican is currently using the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to oppose the Trump administration and help Hispanic Catholics from Latin America settle in the U.S.—legally or illegally…
Our Comment:
Rome has to rise to power on the back of popular support. Encouraging illegal immigration is one of the ways in which the Papacy in rebuilding its power. The Bible, in Revelation 13 astonishingly declares that Rome will use the United States to collaborate with her in establishing the “image to the beast,” and enforcing false worship on pain of death on all citizens.
Prophetic Link:
And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Revelation 13:14, 15.