09/03/2006
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 "]
Happy Labor Day to all our readers. Here’s some of the work we've done on Labor Days past:
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!
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.