Lux Lucet

We’re often told that death and taxes are the only things certain in this life. Perhaps we should add a third item to this list: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) taking the wrong side on the immigration issue.

As the USCCB whines in its latest press release, “Bishops Urge That All People Count And Must Be Included In Census Efforts.” Now if all one knew about the upcoming 2020 census was taken from this headline, one may fairly suppose that there was some nefarious plot to exclude certain people from being counted. But this would be incorrect.

So just what’s driving the bishops’ concern? The Trump administration’s proposal to put a question on the 2020 census asking if the person is a citizen.

But contrary to the rhetoric from the USCCB, the question does not exclude anyone.

Of course the argument is that if someone is here illegally, he may elect to dodge the census entirely out of fear. To which the proper reply is, So what? No one made illegal aliens come here illegally, and no one is making them not answer the census. Those are matters of their own choosing.

But why, as an American citizen should I be concerned if some illegal alien is afraid of a census question? Writing about the civil magistrate and his relationship to law breakers, the apostle Paul wrote, “But if you do evil, be afraid; for he [the magistrate] does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4).

Those who violate American immigration law have done evil and, therefore, ought to be afraid of the civil magistrate. If having to answer a simple citizenship question keeps illegal aliens from responding to the census out of fear, that’s their problem and is no concern of American citizens and legal residents.

If some illegals chose to exclude themselves, the bishop’s are concerned that this will affect the distribution of “$800 billion annually to key programs designed to advance the common good,” which is another way of saying the USCCB is concerned that illegal aliens won’t get their “fair share” of the loot stolen from American taxpayers.

There’s another aspect of the citizenship question that the bishops don’t address: the effect illegal aliens have on Congressional apportionment. As Steven A. Camarota of Center for Immigration Studies notes in his article The Impact of Non-Citizens on Congressional Apportionment, “seats in the U.S. House of Representatives…are apportioned based on each state’s total population relative to the rest of the country, including illegal aliens and other non-citizens” (emphasis mine).

In other words, states that encourage illegal immigrants to settle within their borders potentially can pick up Congressional seats based on their flouting American immigration law. This hardly seems fair.

This author has long argued that the Roman Catholic Church-State is the single biggest driver of illegal immigration, mass migration and refugee resettlement, not only in the United States, but the world over. This latest example of immigration treason from the USCCB is exactly what we have come to expect from this evil organization and from the bosses in the Vatican.