Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Catholics and immigration on No Spin News (Updated)

Those who follow me on Twitter/X will know that I posted there heavily last week about the controversy over Catholicism and immigration.  This evening, I appear on Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News program to discuss the controversy.  O'Reilly Premium Members can watch the segment here.

UPDATE 2/5: You can now watch the interview here.
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25 comments:

  1. Miguel CervantesFebruary 5, 2025 at 12:51 AM

    I think the immigration debate needs to be focused on the specific realities of the US today. Trump/Musk/Miller would like to deport 10 million "illegal" hard-working Catholics and replace them with 10 million "legal" Hindus and Sikhs. Which outcome is more conducive to de-Christianising the United States? That is the practical question for US Catholics, given the options available to them.

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    1. TonyFebruary 7, 2025 at 10:41 AM

      Trump/Musk/Miller would like to deport 10 million "illegal" hard-working Catholics and replace them with 10 million "legal" Hindus and Sikhs.

      This is bulloney, there is no evidence they want to replace Catholic immigrants with ANY other immigrants at all. And while some immigrants are hard-working, some aren't. But whether they are hard-working or not, the US cannot afford the loss of rule of law that is is entailed in turning a blind eye to 10 million aliens entering and remaining illegally, whether Catholic or otherwise. There is no grave problem with returning to doing the work the way it got done before they entered illegally.

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    2. Miguel CervantesFebruary 7, 2025 at 5:18 PM

      Course there is. That's what the H11B visa controversy was about. Musk wants to increase the numbers of Sikhs and Hindus entering, and Trump immediately supported him, even though Musk described those who opposed it as "despicable racists", that is to say, most of the Republican voters who voted Trump in. So much for MAGA. Even the slogans went by the wayside in the first five minutes. Who is going to do the manual labouring jobs so often undertaken by "illegals"? Whites have largely abandoned this field, and Trump's rhetoric won't change this, any more than Putin and Orban's rhetoric about babies being good has made ANY difference to the birthrates in Russia or Hungary.

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    3. bmillerFebruary 7, 2025 at 7:50 PM

      Miguel,

      Who is "white" and who is not? And what does "race" have to do with Catholicism, Putin, and Orban wrt to immigration in America?

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    4. TonyFebruary 8, 2025 at 3:36 PM

      Musk wants to increase the numbers of Sikhs and Hindus entering,

      Musk wants to increase the number of specialty-qualified people are around to be employed for technical jobs. This would increase the labor supply and drive down the price of labor - which is what any business-owner would like to see. He doesn't care if they come from India or whether they are Sikh or something else. If hardly any specialists are available from Mexico, that's not the businessman's fault.

      If America fixed its families and schools, it could easily supply the needed specialists just fine. Employers might be bothered by having to pay slightly higher wages than they can manage with immigrants, but there are offsets to that which would (often) make it worthwhile. There is, necessarily, a trade-off between the tensions involved in importing the talent in the short term versus letting the need go unmet for a time to create the incentives to develop the talent locally, trade-offs which simply have no definitive perfect solution and which ought to be made by an informed and educated legislature with room to nuance in the future. The H-1B program undoubtedly has its flaws, and it may be too easy to fill some slots with low-paid immigrant specialists instead of with slightly better-paid American specialists, but the concept of the program isn't dumb or immoral.

      Who is going to do the manual labouring jobs so often undertaken by "illegals"?

      Again: the same people who, a few years ago, were already doing the work before those illegals came here. Or new people, who are willing to take the same work with a slightly better pay check once the labor supply drops a bit.

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    5. Miguel CervantesFebruary 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM

      I meant to refer to non-Hispanic whites, George, nor will habits change among them if Catholic "illegals" are driven out, even ten million of them. As I said above, people may find things like lots of kids, and non-Hispanic whites picking fruit desirable, but it doesn't mean those same people will perform.

      Musk, with his other techno-optimist freaks, are taking over the US, implanting a real deep state that will run without opposition because native federal workers are getting the sack, to be replaced by PCs and Hindus. They will also be used to perform labouring jobs. It turns out that even those so far admitted under these visas are not particularly smart or educated, and are replacing natives because they may work for less, in worse conditions, and without Christianity's troublesome religious or philosophical considerations that might throw a spanner in the nutty system being constructed. They are simply ideal for Musk and Andreessen's hideous utopia of "useful" people. Trump is just a front who will soon be gone. But he's useful. His decrees will allow anything. The Democrats would have started arguing about rules when Musk illegally privatised the country's databases as he's doing now. Those who use "legality" as an excuse to beat up on millions of hard-working Catholic "illegals" ought to start thinking about the illegal deep state that Musk runs from his coffee table computer.

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    6. AnonymousFebruary 9, 2025 at 3:46 PM

      Miguel,

      For a liberal, your comments sound very racist.

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    7. bmillerFebruary 9, 2025 at 5:25 PM

      Miguel,

      Who is George?
      Also, are you an American citizen? By birth? Naturalized?

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    8. AnonymousFebruary 10, 2025 at 4:52 AM

      There is a certain kind of liberal who actually thinks that corporations exploiting illegal migrants because they don't want to pay their fellow countrymen a fair wage to actually be a good thing.

      This whole debate has exposed those kinds of liberals to me. Some who are obviously very intelligent.

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    9. Miguel CervantesFebruary 10, 2025 at 6:32 PM

      I must have made some good points. Nobody has addressed them yet!

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    10. bmillerFebruary 11, 2025 at 7:39 AM

      Miguel,

      Yes, those were very profound points. No one can challenge them.

      Are you an American citizen? By birth? Naturalized?

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    11. bmillerFebruary 11, 2025 at 3:17 PM

      La Raza is pro-abortion:

      https://unidosus.org/press-releases/roe-wade-dobbs-jackson-unidosus-statement/

      So much for their Latinx members pretending to promote Catholicism

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    12. bmillerFebruary 11, 2025 at 3:46 PM

      La Raza also gets US taxpayer dollars. $13.6 million in 2024.

      https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/339aee0f-60b3-e00a-62e1-07cfb775f842-R/latest

      I'd rather my taxes don't go to an anti-Catholic organization.

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    13. AnonymousFebruary 11, 2025 at 4:43 PM

      nor will habits change among them if Catholic "illegals" are driven out, even ten million of them.

      Catholic illegals? On what basis?

      I live in a town that his about 80% Hispanic. At most about 20% go to mass on Sundays. Are we supposed to prefer illegals who have some un-lived Catholic tradition in their past that they turn their back on, over other people here legally of whom maybe 10% are practicing Catholics? That seems a stretch.

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    14. Miguel CervantesFebruary 11, 2025 at 5:54 PM

      20%? That's actually very good. About the same rate as Spain or Poland. Higher than Irish-American Catholics. What counts is the Catholic background, which can eventually be reactivated if and when the Church decides to get its act together again.

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    15. bmillerFebruary 13, 2025 at 8:15 AM

      Musk may not be right about everything, but it seems he's right about one thing.
      You can tell who the fraudsters are by the level of hysteria they exhibit when it's possible their fraud is being exposed.

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    16. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2025 at 4:24 PM

      What counts is the Catholic background, which can eventually be reactivated if and when the Church decides to get its act together again.

      Wishful windy sentiments. What matters for the civil authorities is the welfare of the country. They don't know if the Church will ever turn these people back into practicing Catholics. But rest assured, they know that the illegals have broken laws, the laws were made to promote the common good, as were the laws to punish law-breakers and remove illegal aliens. We don't need to see the future to act for the common good right now.

      But don't worry: ICE is also going to evict people from Asia, Africa and Europe here illegally too, it's an equal-opportunity evicter.

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    17. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2025 at 4:43 PM

      20%? That's actually very good. About the same rate as Spain or Poland.

      In Poland it's really 28%, not 20%. And it was about 40% just 4 years ago, before the pandemic. And the proper measurement is against the 100% required by law and by spiritual need, not against some other country.

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  2. NormFebruary 5, 2025 at 11:07 AM

    I agree with the basic impetus Prof, But I do feel a sense of pain though, when charities run by the catholic church are cast as the main villain. I don't think all of them are bad, some of them probably provide important immediate care or services.

    There are obviously some bad actors who want to facilitate mass migration on a large scale with no checks and sometimes (maybe often) these bad actors use the catholic run institutions as a front.

    But in so far as some institutions maybe involved in just providing immediate care, treatment, food etc, they are just acting in line with the basic acts of mercy.

    Maybe the catholic authorities could issue statements to the effect of having a duty or obligation to convince those migrants to follow the law and turn themselves in or to report those migrants themselves as soon they have provided the immediate and urgent care.

    But since you might be commenting on this often Prof, I think along side responding to the left caths, we might also have to be more proactive in tackling Protestants as well who may see it as an overall opportunity to undermine the basic christian commitment to works of mercy as they have always done throughout the centuries by cashing in on the general resentment and trying to target all catholic services.

    Cheers

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    1. TonyFebruary 8, 2025 at 4:02 PM

      I don't think all of them are bad, some of them probably provide important immediate care or services...But in so far as some institutions maybe involved in just providing immediate care, treatment, food etc, they are just acting in line with the basic acts of mercy.

      I agree.

      On the other hand, providing basic services to people who shouldn't be there is, without any doubt, modifying the incentive structure that makes it more attractive for them to enter illegally. Thus the act of providing the services is not (morally) off in its own silo, independent of the illegal entry / presence. It represents a kind of cooperation with evil. Sometimes cooperation with evil is right, but it takes a lot of analysis.

      A similar issue arose in international adoptions, from eastern Europe and Asia: Americans willing to help orphans and give them a home ended up helping to generate what was, in net practice, a business of selling kids to Americans for money. Massive so-called "fees" for the "adoption services", i.e. in reality brokers' fees for greasing palms and lining the pockets of gangsters, became so common that lots of nations had to step in and shut down the practices. Even though, in each case, some American family "just wanted to help an orphan", surely an act of charity (on its surface).

      Knowing the American hierarchy by its reputation, there is little doubt that in some cases they turned a blind eye to entities milking the "basic refugee services" pipeline for their share of money, e.g. high salaries for executives who merely signed pro-forma paperwork - when it wasn't the dioceses themselves that were so benefiting.

      And that doesn't even begin to get at the degree to which having basic services available made plenty of illegals willing to come here to begin with, or stay here longer, thus regenerating the problem ever anew.

      It's a very complex moral problem, and I wouldn't trust the bishops' (claimed) position farther than I could throw them: they are hopelessly out of touch with both physical realities and with moral nuance. Add in the illegal immigration tie-in with sex and labor slavery trafficking that the bishops ignored, and my default position would be "give them basic services only in the context of working to get them out of the country", and for those who are here legally and are hurt by such a premise, that harm is due to the illegal immigration itself, (and all of the wrongful policy decisions to ignore the law by past administrations).

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    2. AnonymousFebruary 10, 2025 at 4:41 AM

      Catholic Charities doesn't think there is such a thing as illegal immigration. Read their puff pieces on helping illegal immigrants.

      https://www.catholiccharitiestrenton.org/immigrant-children-stability-dangerous-journeys/?print=print

      This is one where they tell the story of a pregnant 15 year old, who left her family in Ecuador without saying anything at all, travelled north and broke in to the US illegally. No word on how this is insanely evil. Instead, they say she was just seeking a better life.

      Meanwhile, when border agents caught her, they described this as "border patrol swarmed". They "swarmed" apparently.

      They tell about how they helped her come to her aunt (who did the SAME THING years before, and was the one who convinced this pregnant 15 year old to perform this insanely reckless and evil act).

      How is that not facilitating illegal immigration? Sounds like they are proud of this.

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    3. TonyFebruary 10, 2025 at 1:11 PM

      Catholic Charities doesn't think there is such a thing as illegal immigration.

      Right. Catholic Charities, along with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and the USCCB, and US bishops in general, have been in in the wrong, defying traditional Catholic teaching, and part of the problem for quite a while. Their effective connivance in slavery and sex trafficking is just the top layer of what's wrong with their policies.

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    4. The Great Thurible of DarknessFebruary 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM

      @Anonymous

      I don't understand how leaving your family and trying to cross into another country illegally can possibly be described as "insanely evil." Reckless, yes. But what mortal sin was the girl committing? Fleeing a poor and unstable country? Endangering herself? Had she been North Korean, Chinese, Iranian, or Cuban, conservatives would consider her a hero. The only "insanity" here is your hysterical rhetoric.

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  3. Vini TadeoFebruary 11, 2025 at 7:49 PM

    As the update on the post appeared, I could finally see the interview.

    I think the interviewer was unfair because he barely let Ed speak, let alone finish his thoughts. Most of the conversation and the informative content it could have had was held hostage by the abrupt interruptions of the interviewer.

    Also, he was unfair in his criticism -- not the content of the criticism per se -- but he was so focused on demolishing the morale of the Church (at least in my view) that he totally lost focus on the original issue. Is Pope Francis making a lot of mistakes? Yes. Are liberal bishops and fathers corroding the Church from the inside? Yes, no doubt. But the main issue (that was expected to be discussed) was immigration and Cathecism and how the newcomers must pay respect to the country that adopted them instead of feeling entitled -- like the dreadful figure of the sovereign individual nowadays -- to enforce their own culture, ways of life, and morality on the people that adopted them in the first place as if it was "their right" of doing so as newcomers. I really wish that Ed could have had more space to talk about these important matters.

    Btw, Ed was so patient and interpreted the questions in the most charitable way possible -- and did not cut off the man a single time. A true gentleman indeed.

    (off: if I could someday have the privilege to host a conversation or interview with someone as bright and gifted as Ed -- especially bringing his thoughts about God and philosophy to the other Brazilian fans and readers -- the last thing I would do would be cutting off Ed like that. I know, I know...the time of the interview was exiguous -- more like a quick conversation --, and the interviewer had to be quick, but at least he could have let Ed finish his rationale!)

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  4. Tim FinlayFebruary 12, 2025 at 6:33 AM

    Very good interview, Ed. Good comments by bmiller with regards to La Raza and by Tony on Catholic Charities and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. As Ed pointed out, Protestants are divided on this topic. Connected to this is JD Vance citing correctly Ordo Amoris and Pope Francis arguing against him (and against Aquinas) that we are not to love our parents and children more than others but to love starts with the vulnerable such as immigrants.

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