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Does the Bible Support Sanctuary?
Friday, Jul. 20, 2007 By DAVID VAN BIEMA

To understand the role that scripture plays in debates over the New Sanctuary Movement, it helps to be familiar with an insider term: prooftexting — the cherry-picking of Biblical quotations out of context in order to claim scriptural authority for a particular proposition.


Nobody likes to be accused of prooftexting, but in a soundbite culture, it's hard to resist — so darn tasty. Here's a typical exchange: Opponents of gay marriage cite Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination." They also like Romans 1:26-7: "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions... the men... committing shameless acts with men." But gay marriage defenders note that Leviticus also orders the faithful to stone mouthy children to death, and that the "dishonorable passions" passage can be read to equate homosexuality with sins such as envy and gossip that are practiced openly every Sunday in the pews.

On the New Sanctuary Movement, the usual roles are reversed — liberals sling chapter and verse, while conservatives argue that the true "sense" of scripture contradicts them. When Sanctuary proponents cite the verses below, they go to pains to contextualize them, both biblically and in terms of secular morality. Nonetheless, as a religious movement, a lot of their oomph comes from being able to rattle off the following:

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From 9/11 Commission hearings:

LEHMAN: "Were you aware that it was the US government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?"

CONDOLEEZA RICE: "I do not believe I was aware of that."

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Some churches choosing to ignore immigration laws

By: Jeff Schwilk - Commentary

There's a problem in Fallbrook, and it's not with the local peaceful protesters. The town's Catholic church, St. Peter's, has decided that U.S. immigration laws don't apply to them. This church operates a formal day labor hiring center for known illegal aliens in their driveway 50 feet from their preschool and playground. Monday through Saturday, St. Peter's aids and abets dozens of illegal aliens (felony), assists them to find employment (felony) and encourages parishioners to hire the illegal aliens (another felony). Father Bud Kaicher knows this, yet he openly proclaims that the church's laws trump our immigration laws, which are designed to maintain fair and orderly immigration in the most generous, welcoming nation in the world.

The local residents are fed up with this lawlessness and political activism by the leaders of St. Peter's. Father Bud's arrogance has surprised and angered much of the community and his own members. On Saturday mornings, hardly any of his parishioners are there supporting his position against the American protesters. Instead, local alien activists Claudia Smith, Tina Jillings and their friends bus in dozens of Latino students from Palomar College to counterprotest.

With all the recent problems in the Catholic Church, you would think they would want to bring people together, not divide them on as hot an issue as immigration.

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The New Sanctuary Movement (NSM), founded in May, has coordinated what it calls prophetic hospitality (there is no legal right to asylum in churches, but immigration authorities tend not to raid them) for eight undocumented immigrants in five cities. Each, like Yolanda, has a story of personal integrity and family unity under attack by immigration enforcement. They have drawn considerable press, but they also seem a bit packaged: focusing on eight undocumented immigrants out of 12 million allows for intense cherry-picking and hardly suggests a mass movement. An anti-immigration blogger derided NSM as a "bed-and-breakfast dog-and-pony show."

Yet a closer look at the group's campaign suggests that it has both substance and significant promise. Four new host congregations will announce themselves in August, and more are in the pipeline: NSM has received hundreds of calls from interested congregations and participated in 33 phone conferences and 15 visits working out the details. The movement draws from an actual grass-roots network but has also garnered support within bodies as big as the United Methodist Church. Its solid biblical underpinnings make its issue particularly promising for the resurgent religious left, and it may peel conservative Protestant Hispanics from the right. It speaks in absolutes--God calls believers to tend to the unfortunate, however they got to the U.S.--but so do pro-lifers and anti-death-penalty activists. "I think it's an issue where churches can take the lead," says Bishop Beverly Shamana of the United Methodist California-Nevada Conference. "We are taught to follow Jesus and risk transformation--and risk changing the status quo."

The movement was inspired by a prelate and a single mother. In 2005 Roger Mahony, Los Angeles' Roman Catholic Cardinal, stirred immigrants' rights activists by vowing to disobey a congressional bill that, had it become law, could arguably have criminalized any kindness toward someone who turned out to be undocumented. The bill failed, but Mahony's words helped spark nationwide pro-immigrant demonstrations. Then last August, Elvira Arellano took sanctuary in a Chicago church rather than leave her 7-year-old son. (She is still there.) At this point, says NSM co-founder the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, several activist Los Angeles clergy wondered, "We can't ignore this. What can we do?" They found their answer in the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, when congregations risking arrest by harboring Central American political refugees helped change public opinion in their favor. Salvatierra, a Lutheran, opened her house as a young seminarian and felt that the movement "awakened the moral imagination of the nation." Now she hopes to achieve the same with the undocumented. "We want to make visible these families' status not as faceless border jumpers but as children of God," she says. "And when they are ripped apart by raids and deportations, they become the suffering 'strangers within your gates' that the Bible tells us to aid."

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Do I think Derrida's approach is biblical or Christian? For the most part, no. In the paper I wrote, I argued that while certain aspects of Derrida's thought are consonant with a biblical worldview, much of what Derrida advocates turns Scripture on its head.

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And in my view, evangelicals for the most part are not overly susceptible to being overly compassionate on this question - we are overly susceptible to being too dismissive and harsh.

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For illegal immigrants, Connecticut ID gives new haven

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN

The Associated Press

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Dozens of people lined up at City Hall on Tuesday for municipal identification cards, the first city-issued ID cards specifically designed to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and give them access to community services.

The cards, available to New Haven's entire population, are meant to help anyone without a state- or federal-issued ID open a bank account and use other services that would otherwise be inaccessible. Advocates argue that if immigrants can open bank accounts, they will be less likely to carry large amounts of cash, a practice that makes them easy targets for robbers.

From 10,000 to 12,000 of New Haven's 125,000 residents are believed to be in the country illegally.

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Taxpayer-Funded Border Crashers
By Tom Fitton
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/7/2007

Judicial Watch continues to fight for the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws, leading a nationwide legal campaign against so-called “sanctuary policies” for illegal aliens. Judicial Watch has battled against taxpayer-funded day labor sites for illegals in Herndon, Virginia, Laguna Beach, California, Gaithersburg, Maryland, Westchester, New York, and Southampton, New York. Now you can add Thousand Oaks, California, to that growing list.


Last Tuesday, I sent a letter to the Mayor of Thousand Oaks, California, warning him about the legality of the city’s taxpayer-funded day labor site for illegal aliens. Judicial Watch had previously uncovered documents through the California Public Records Act indicating that the City of Thousand Oaks spent more than $133,000 in taxpayer funds between 2001 and 2007 to subsidize the day labor site, which serves illegal aliens. My can be read in its entirety on our Internet site www.judicialwatch.org .


“For the City to use taxpayer resources in this manner is akin to a city operating it’s own ‘red light’ district or illegal drug market to enable persons who participate in such activities to have a safe, orderly, well-regulated environment in which to engage in their illicit transactions. We trust that taxpayer resources will not continue to be misused for the operation of a day laborer site. Kindly confirm that you will cease immediately expending citizen taxpayer dollars and resources for the day laborer site.”

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Romney: Giuliani's NYC 'Sanctuary' for Illegal Immigrants
Republican Presidential Contender Calls Giuliani's New York a 'Sanctuary' for Illegals
(Reuters) By JAKE TAPPER with RON CLAIBORNE
BETTENDORF, Iowa, Aug. 8, 2007

In one of the strongest conflicts yet between Republican presidential front-runners, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney attacked rival Rudy Giuliani Wednesday, implying that Giuliani supported illegal immigration when he was mayor of New York.

"If you look at lists compiled on Web sites of sanctuary cities, New York is at the top of the list when Mayor Giuliani was mayor," Romney said at the Abbey Hotel here. "He instructed city workers not to provide information to the federal government that would allow them to enforce the law. New York City was the poster child for sanctuary cities in the country."

The Giuliani campaign issued a statement rejecting the charge. Campaign communications director Katie Levinson said, "I am not even sure we should weigh in on this, given Mitt Romney may change his mind later today about it. Mitt Romney is as wrong about Mayor Giuliani's position on illegal immigration as he was when he last mischaracterized the mayor's record and later had to apologize. New York is the safest large city in America since Mayor Giuliani turned it around -- it is not a haven for illegality of any kind. The mayor's record speaks for itself."

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ORIGINAL: eragon

I am for enforcing the rules, but then, one time when I was confronted with a possible illegal who worked at a Mexican restaurant that I eat at I found myself telling myself that I wouldn't turn him in. It is easy to enforce the rules when you are able to keep it impersonal and the illegals as caricatures in your mind. It becomes harder after you have interacted with them.

God bless,
Eragon

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§ 1324. Bringing in and harboring certain aliens

(a) Criminal penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;