September 03, 2006
Labor Day In Cardinal Mahony's Alta California
This Labor Day Weekend featured protests by and
for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles
“LOS ANGELES - Hundreds
of people marched through downtown Los Angeles Saturday
to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and a
moratorium on deportations.
“The event, dubbed ‘La
Gran Marcha Laboral -- For the Immigrant Worker/For
General Amnesty,’ also showed support for
Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant living in
Chicago with her 7-year-old son,
who is an American citizen.
“Arellano has sought
sanctuary at her local church to avoid deportation,
and she and her son have become symbols for the
pro-amnesty movement.
“Javier Rodriguez, one of
the march organizers, said Arellano represents the ‘face
of thousands of women’ in the United States illegally,
and her son ‘represents the face of millions of
American children’ living in fear that their parents
will be deported. [Protesters
seek amnesty for illegal immigrants; moratorium on
deportations, North County Times,
September 2, 2006]
Of
course, it's clear that any march "For The Immigrant
Worker" is a march against the American
worker. That's economics 101,
supply and demand. This is the same point that
Steve Sailer has written about on
VDARE.COM under the name of
"citizenism." All the workers who are
here now lose out when you add millions of new workers.
And that happens whether the legal workers are white,
black, or Hispanic.
Unfortunately,
Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Cardinal Archbishop of
Los Angeles, doesn't see it that way. He held a Labor
Day Mass—which apparently, the Archdiocese does every
year—in honor of the illegal immigrants who are
taking jobs away from American workers,
lowering American wages, and behaving badly in other
ways.
“The Mass marks the Archdiocese’s annual
observance of the national holiday honoring all workers.
During the Mass, Cardinal Mahony will bless the workers
and
their tools.
“All are invited to commemorate Labor Day by
joining workers,
labor leaders, public officials and community
leaders at the Mass, which highlights civic
participation,
immigrant rights and immigration and worker justice.”
[Diocesan
Press Release]
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has a list of churches
with
Liturgy In Your Language, and the available
languages include
Garifuna and
Igbo, which were new to me. There are only one or
two of those—but 199 churches where you can hear Mass in
Spanish. (Los Angeles has been part of the United States
since 1848.)
The flyer [
PDF]
in (in English and Spanish but not Garifuna and Igbo)
says
“At
the Labor Day Mass, Cardinal Roger Mahony will challenge
our community to commit to faithful citizenship
[!]
so that we can address the issues that matter most to
us:
Of course, all of this has to be
paid for by someone, namely
American workers and American taxpayers.
This
doesn't seem to bother Mahony, but it bothers us.
Mahony's activism on behalf of a
political cause which as far as I can see has nothing to
do with faith and morals is likely to be more popular
with, say,
the New York
Times, than it will be with
American Catholics, whose pastor he's supposed to
be. (Mexico has
Bishops of its own.)
But apparently Mahony feels it's
his duty to help all these interlopers to settle in the
United States.
I particularly
don't want to turn this into a Catholic vs.
Protestant article. When
I started writing about Mahony five years ago, I
insisted that I was not attacking Catholicism, but its
Bishops.
In fact, I'm afraid that clergymen
in general, priests,
ministers, and rabbis, all tend to become
victim of the
"life is not like that" syndrome. That is, their
charity towards the poor and the criminal make them
unreasonably optimistic about how well the poor and the
criminal would do if people would just let them alone.
(It's the anniversary of
Hurricane Katrina, by the way. There's an
example of
spontaneous order!)
But Mahony is definitely an example
of what's wrong with the immigration debate. American
workers are likely to suffer for on this and future
Labor Days, unless something is done to stem the tide.
[VDARE.COM
note: The LA Diocese
website
says
“Comment about a position or
statement by Cardinal Mahony or the Archdiocese—Please
contact Media Relations at 213 637 7215 or
mediarelations@la-archdiocese.org”]
Happy Labor Day to all our readers. Here's some of the
work we've done on Labor Days past:
Labor Day vs. Day Labor
Happy (Fairly Priced) Labor Day!
Unhappy
Labor (Investor/Taxpayer) Day?
View from Lodi, CA: A Labor Day Lament
Thought
For Labor Day: Conservative Dogma Pulling Marx Out of
His Grave.
View From Lodi, CA: Labor Day—As the Rich Get Richer….
UnConventional
Opinions for Labor Day
Thinking
About Jobs On Labor Day
Celebrate Cinco De Mayo—Victory Over Invaders!
