LETTERS
2006 LETTERS
September/October
July/August
June
May
April
March
February
January
ARTICLES
NEWS
ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
May 2006
IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO SAY "GO HOME"
Editor's note: in the following letter, Thomas Storck responds to a letter by Stephen Burns (April Mission), written in response to Mr. Storck's article, "Be Thankful They're Not Moslems" (January Mission.)
I appreciate Mr. Burn's taking the trouble to reply to my article, and especially for his explicit endorsement of the Church's teaching on economic justice. And first I would agree with his criticism that part of the reason for Mexican immigration is the Mexican government itself. But I do not know that it is necessarily the "party most responsible," as Mr. Burns claims. The Mexican government certainly has abdicated its duty of protecting its own people and fostering the common good of its nation. Mexico's ratification of NAFTA alone shows that. And if, as is alleged, the Mexican government has actually encouraged Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S., what better method (from that government's point of view) to hide the economic failures of neo-liberal capitalism than by getting rid of the poor? Mexico's government, before about 1970, although extremely hostile to the Church, had a more pro-family economic policy than recent governments. But the exact responsibility, as between our own government, the Mexican government, and the corporations themselves, is hard to fix, but I agree that all must share in the blame. The climate of opinion that created NAFTA existed in Washington as well as in Mexico City, and we surely encouraged the Mexican government to adopt economic policies that benefited neither ordinary Mexicans nor ordinary Americans.
Moreover, given the history of U.S. military intervention in Latin America, I wonder what we would have done had there been a real Catholic and patriotic Mexican government, dedicated to protecting Mexico's cultural and economic patrimony and less welcoming to foreign investment and trade. We should remember that for decades our corporations have invested in Mexican oil and mining, and it surely is not farfetched to wonder if these investments always benefited the Mexican people or simply those elites who exercised political and economic control.
As for the negative spiritual and moral effects of Mexican immigration on the immigrants themselves, I mention these in my article. I speak of the "destroyed social fabric" and my concerns about the preservation of chastity when husbands and wives are separated. There is no disagreement between Mr. Burns and myself there.
However, on what appears to be Mr. Burns' main complaint, that Mexicans are coming here "for love of money," I think he is naive. If he thinks that people who have a basically decent life in their home country are coming here to get rich quick, then I see no evidence of that. Rather, poverty, low wages, civil strife (in the case of Central America) are driving people to come here in order to survive. It is the corporations who should be chastised for their inordinate love of money, not the poor who are seeking to provide for their families. And this applies not just to the corporations which take advantage of the admittedly complicit behavior of the Mexican authorities. It also applies to American businesses, which profit by hiring illegal immigrants. If there were no jobs here for them they would not (for the most part) come. If there were sufficient means of making a living in Mexico they would not (for the most part) leave. It is not enough to tell someone to "go home" if there is no job or means of support at home.
Lastly, as to Mr. Burns' criticisms of my observations that "Hispanics were in the Southwest before Anglo-Saxons," I do not understand his point. No one will dispute that the entire Southwest was Spanish and Mexican before we seized it in an unjust war. Whether few or many, it was Hispanics who lived there, not Anglos.
Thomas Storck
JOSE MADERO COMPLETELY MISSES THE POINT!
Since César Chavez and Dolores Huerta never hesitated to support pro-abortion Democrat politicians and never supported pro-life Republicans, I was very disappointed to see, "They Miss the Point," in the March 2006 edition of the Mission!
Both Chavez and Huerta were followers of the late Communist agitator, Saul Alinski, and his organizing policies. In fact my late mentor, Democratic Congressman Clyde Doyle, once Ranking Member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, had quite a bit of information on Ms. Huerta and her alleged Communist activities and shared it with me!
I would expect better from the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission!
Kenneth M. Fisher,
Founder and Chairman,
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
Editor replies: I can't understand what disturbs Mr. Fisher so much. The article to which he refers was critical of the United Farm Workers union, noting it has placed its influence behind abortion and pro-homosexualist policies and has, in effect, sold itself to the spirit of the times. That Chavez, Huerta, or the union they founded has never supported pro-life Republicans is not surprising; for Republicans have never supported the rights of labor. In the end, this does not justify supporting pro-abortion politicians; but were pro-life people, were Republicans publicly calling for just wages, supporting the just claims of labor? Or were they, through political expediency, allied to business interests that wanted to keep wages low and maintain the working conditions under which José Madero says, in the article, his mother suffered? Why would labor ally itself with the very folks who would sacrifice, or who would give political support to those who would sacrifice, the lives of men to profit?
Instead of focusing on the alleged communism of Huerta and Chavez, we pro-life Catholics should rather examine our own consciences to see whether we ourselves have been true to the fullness of the Church's social teaching, which insists, not only on the sanctity of unborn life, but on the dignity and rights of labor as well. Maybe if pro-life Catholics had stood with laborers in their just demands and helped in their struggle for just wages and humane working conditions, the likes of Chavez would not have gravitated to anti-Catholic political elements.