BISHOP GERALD BARNES IS WRONG: THE USA IS NOT A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS
By Robert Klein Engler (05/11/06)
CHICAGO (10 May '06)--Bishop Gerald Barnes, the bishop of San Bernardino, California and the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration recently wrote the U. S. Senate. In his letter he encourages the Senate to develop a comprehensive immigration policy based on "the values upon which our nation--a nation of immigrants--was built." The National Catholic Reporter echoes that sentiment. They report that a continent away, Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who spoke April 10 at the massive pro-immigrant rally also said "We are a nation of immigrants" to a largely Hispanic crowd.
Bishop Barnes and Cardinal McCarrick are entitled to express their opinions about pending legislation just like any U. S. citizen. When they claim, however, that the U. S. is a nation of immigrants they are wrong. Perhaps living in California has colored Bishop Barnes' vision of U. S. history. San Bernardino is far removed from the original thirteen colonies on the east coast of the United States. Perhaps the bishop also wants to divert the media from the recent sex scandals which cost the U. S. Catholic church millions of dollars. Talking about immigration may be a way of doing that.
Maybe there are other motives, too, for political rhetoric instead of historical facts. Perhaps the bishop wants to increase the number of Spanish speaking parishioners to make up for the English speaking ones who are drifting away from a church they view as organized around a corrupt hierarchy. We do not know the bishop's motives, but we do know his error: The United Sates is not "a nation of immigrants." The Catholic Church in the United States may be a church of immigrants, but the country is not a nation of immigrants.
We should not use political rhetoric and say that the U. S. is "a nation of immigrants" because it confuses people about the realities of U. S. history and encourages them to break the law and come to the U. S. illegally. To say that the U. S. is "a nation of immigrants" also masks the importance of Anglo-Prostestant values in U. S. society. These values are very different from the values of colonial Mexico with its Spanish, Roman Catholic and indigenous history.
The Spanish colonization of Mexico and their battle to defeat and convert the fearsome Aztecs lead to values and a culture in Mexico different from the Anglo-Protestant culture and values of the United States. Just read the works of Hernán Cortéz and Thomas Paine to see how the history of the United States is different from the history of Mexico. To ignore this difference and to glibly say that the U. S. is "a nation of immigrants" is to create more conflict between nations and immigrants, not to lessen it.
Furthermore, the territory that became the United States of America began as a colony. For the most part that territory in North America was a colony of Britain and those who came here were not citizens, but settlers and subjects of the British crown for hundreds of years. A colonist is not an immigrant. George Washington was not an immigrant. Neither were Ben Franklin and Benedict Arnold immigrants.
According to Yale Professor S. P. Huntington, America's ancestors were not immigrants but Anglo-Protestant settlers. In his recent book, Who Are We? Huntington writes, "America is a founded society created by seventeenth-and eighteenth-century settlers..." He continues, "...in its origins America was not a nation of immigrants, it was a society, or societies of settlers who came to the New World..." Then he adds, "Immigrants do not create a new society."
To say the United States is a society of immigrants is at best a half truth. That half truth may serve an ideology or a politician, but not a historian. We must remind the bishops also that most African Americans were not immigrants, but brought to North America as slaves. Only within the past 100 years have they gain their full rights as citizens of the U. S.
Our modern idea of citizenship is different from the ancient one of land and blood. The French Rights of Man and the U. S. Constitution require allegiance to ideas and values along with common cultural elements. The British colonists in North America only became citizens after the American Revolution and the adoption of the U. S. Constitution. This is a crucial fact in understanding the nature of U. S. citizenship today and the contemporary debate over illegal immigration.
This new concept of citizenship being an allegiance to ideas and values besides culture is aptly summed up in the oath of allegiance naturalized citizens to the U. S. must take. New citizens to the U. S. swear that "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." The laws these new citizens swear to support and defend include immigration laws.
Immigration to the U. S. also means Americanization, something which Mexican immigrants seem reluctant to do. According to John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, "The most comprehensive longitudinal study of the children of immigrants found that Mexican American students (age 13 and 14), whether born in Mexico or in the U. S., 'overwhelmingly did not choose "American" as their primary identification.' Among the American-born students in the study only 3.9 percent considered themselves primarily American."
If the U. S. Bishops wanted to help the poor of Mexico, then they could focus their attention on Mexico itself, instead of distorting U. S. history. Criticism of the Mexican government and programs to change that society seem to be a blind spot in the Church's quest for social justice. Works of charity that transform Mexican society seem to me more in the spirit of Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadeloupe than distorting the history of U. S. for the sake of short term political gains.
Just as St. Paul encouraged the runaway slave Onesimus to return to his master, so the bishops of both the U. S. and Mexico should encourage Mexicans who are in the U. S. illegally to return to Mexico and work to transform their own society instead of breaking the laws of their neighbor. The same should be said to Irish and Polish illegal immigrants. Furthermore, the Church ought not overlook its mission to African Americans by an emphasis on illegal, Latino immigration.
To be a citizen of the United States should remain a prized possession, not something to be gained by amnesty or law breaking. The Church should know this, for even St. Paul held his citizenship as a Roman to be important. It was that Roman citizenship that earned St. Paul a journey to Rome to appeal his case before Caesar. St. Paul claims he was a citizen by birth, too, unlike the centurion who guarded him and bought his citizenship at a price.
If the Catholic Church is playing for short term political gains with the immigration issue in the U. S., then it should take a longer view, instead. Is it good policy over the long run to alienate U. S. citizens by meddling in immigration affairs and distorting American history? When the time comes, who will protect the Vatican from Iranian nuclear missiles? Certainly, not Mexico!
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