Two immigration stories this week.
A 65-year-old woman in Texas, who has lived here 30
years, recently applied for naturalization. She is a little old English lady
who has been recognized by the Queen of England for her work fighting
illiteracy. She claimed the right to be a conscientious objector, but the
immigration people rejected her claim, because she doesn’t belong to a church.
Essentially they said – “come back and show us that you are part of a church
that believes that, and you can be naturalized. And we want a letter on
official church stationery.”
I have a few problems with this.
First, this action by the immigration people is illegal.
The Supreme Court already said the immigration guys can’t do that. In 1971 they
said you can base your conscientious objector status on something other than
religious belief – the only thing they require is that you object to fighting
wars in principle, rather than objecting to a particular war. You must be
opposed to war in any form, not just the war we’re fighting now, or could be
fighting in the near future – and the woman in this case said that explicitly.
Check the Gillette, Witmer, Seeger and Welsh cases. And the military already has
the same rules: you can object to fighting wars for religious or non-religious
reasons, as long as it’s not based on your political view regarding the war, or
sheer self-interest.
Second, she’s a 65-year-old woman, and nobody has been
drafted in 40 years – it will probably never happen again. So even if the
immigration people were right on the law – which they weren’t – they should
have let this pitch go by anyway.
Third, we already live in a world in which religious
extremists are trying to breach the wall between church and state, to put their
religious priorities at the top of our national agenda, and ram their views
down our throats on abortion, school vouchers, school prayer,
intelligent design, putting the Commandments in courtrooms, stem cell research,
euthanasia, cloning, civil unions, HPV shots, contraception, sex education,
faith-based initiatives, banning books, assisted suicide. Now officials of the
government are taking us down a path wherein an English grandmother who wants
to teach kids that reading is better than fighting can be thrown out of the
country for being an atheist, but if she came back the next day and said “okay,
I’m a Baptist, I hate fags, I want to ignore Roe v Wade, my schoolkids
shouldn’t be taught evolution or sex ed or get anti-cancer shots, and let’s
start burning books too!”….they would welcome her with open arms. If she was
teaching her kids hate and ignorance rather than grammar and spelling, they
would roll out the red carpet for her.
And fourth, it opens the door to restricting
atheists from entering the country – what other restrictions could government
put on atheists? As it is, already it is almost impossible for an atheist to
have a political career in America. The government, with this action, is taking
the stance that morality doesn’t mean anything unless there’s a church standing
behind you.
Update – the immigration people backed down.
…Second
story, Ted Cruz, arguably the leader of the crazy tea-party caucus in the U.S.
Senate. He is a hardcore opponent of immigration reform – he has been
screeching that we must oppose immigration reform in order to save “our
humanity”.
Brace
yourself for some irony here.
Cruz’s
father came from Cuba, and did so illegally. He had to bribe officials to get
into the United States. And Cruz himself believes he is eligible to run for
President, even though he himself was born in Canada. So those Republicans who
argue that illegal immigrants can turn into criminal scumbags once they arrive
safely in America – they were right!
So by Republican logic, the little old lady is the person we need to fear, and keep out -- Cruz is the guy we want not only as a citizen, but as Commander in Chief.
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