The Catholic Bishops of Texas don\u2019t do their parishioners — or anyone else — any favors when they conflate illegal and legal immigrants.<\/p>\n
Waging a political campaign against Senate Bill 4<\/a>, the state\u2019s new anti-sanctuary law, the bishops fan the flames of fear with overheated rhetoric in heavily Hispanic communities.<\/p>\n San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Brownsville Bishop Daniel Flores<\/a> dealt the victim card from the bottom of the deck by declaring that the SB 4 debate \u201csound[ed]as if all immigrants are criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike the bishops, state lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the legislation into law, were punctilious in distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n A practicing Catholic married to a Catholic Mexican-American, the governor, a former attorney general, stressed that SB 4 strictly prohibits discrimination and profiling. Law-enforcement officers cannot ask questions about citizenship in the absence of a criminal investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bishops bowed briefly to that reality, and then set up more straw men.<\/p>\n Without evidence or specifics, Garcia-Siller and Flores announced, \u201cPeople are now afraid that pretexts will be invented so they can be stopped and asked about their immigration status.\u201d<\/p>\n The bishops agreed with Abbott that \u201cwe are a nation of laws.\u201d Yet that, too, was subject to extra-legal revision. \u201cNot all laws are good laws,\u201d they opined.<\/p>\n Such thinking is wrong on two counts:<\/p>\n First, if everyone is free to decide which laws are good and bad, and which ones they are going to obey, chaos ensues.<\/p>\n Second, immigration laws, however imperfect, protect important economic and social interests of Americans \u2013 many of whom might actually be filling church pews.<\/p>\n While vowing to \u201cstep up efforts to inform persons of their rights\u201d the bishops stopped short of declaring their churches sanctuaries<\/a>. As of now, the only self-proclaimed \u201csanctuary congregation\u201d in San Antonio is the First Unitarian Universalist Church.<\/p>\n Nothing in SB 4 prevents more churches from going the sanctuary route. The state law only targets government authorities and public agencies that fail to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n U.S. law is another matter, however. Federal statutes prohibit \u201cconcealing, harboring or shielding\u201d illegal aliens.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a distinction worth noting. Like the difference between legal and illegal immigrants.