Jimmy Akin

Here in the San Diego area there is a special election today for the 50th Congressional District (which I don’t live in) where the two major candidates are Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray.

At a recent meeting with a largely Hispanic audience, Mrs. Busby said something that could lose–or win–her the election.

When a man said in Spanish that

"I’d like to help, but I don’t have papers."

Mrs. Busby waited for the translation and then said:

“Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can
all help. You don’t need papers for voting, you don’t need to be a
registered voter to help.”

On its face, that was an appeal for illegal aliens to vote for her in the election.

Mrs. Busby was disappointed when it turned out that someone was recording what she said, and the result ended up on the Internet, on local talk shows, and in the local paper.

She is now saying that she misspoke. She didn’t mean to encourage illegal aliens to vote for her.

Okay, so what did she mean?

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, her opponent seems to have got it pretty well summed up:

Bilbray said at worst, Busby was encouraging someone to vote illegally. At best, she was encouraging someone who is illegally in the country to work on her campaign.

Barring further clarification from Mrs. Busby, that’s the way it looks to me.

GET THE STORY.

I’ve written before about the over-use of allegations of racism. These are disturbing because racism is itself such a vile thing. To falsely accuse someone of racism is thus reciprocally vile. Falsely calling someone a racist is in this respect like falsely calling someone an adulterer or a child molester or a person given to any other form of moral turpitude.

Unfortunately, false allegations of racism are all too common in our society, and they appear in different contexts.

In the current debate over illegal immigration, for example, some have charged that those who want America to secure its borders and stop the influx of illegal immigrants are racists.

Such sentiments have even been expressed by some posters in the combox of late.

While there no doubt are individuals who harbor racial prejudice against Latin Americans, and while they no doubt disapprove of millions of Latin Americans entering this country illegally, it cannot be inferred that because someone disapproves of illegal immigration that one is racially prejudiced against Latinos.

Indeed, many Latinos who abided by the rules and entered this country legally–or whose parents or grandparents did–are opposed to illegal immigration, and it is hardly likely that they harbor such prejudice.

"Okay," one might say, "those who are Latino themselves should not be accused of racism if they oppose illegal immigration, but what about non-Latinos?"

It doesn’t make any difference. The formula "non-Latino + opposes illegal immigration" does not equal "racist."

The fact that one is white or black or Asian or what have you does not cause one’s brain to be unable to disapprove of millions of people entering one’s country illegally unless one is also a racist.

I’m quite sure that the vast majority of people who oppose the current influx of illegal aliens would be just as concerned if there were twelve million Canadians or Swedes or Germans or Russians or what have you who had entered America illegally.

In other words: Race has nothing to do with it.

At least in the mind of the great majority of people.

In view of how vile racism is, it is vile for anyone to carelessly lob charges of racism around, but it is particularly so for Catholics, who in the Catechism of the Catholic Church have a clear articulation of the following points:

2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

– of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;

– of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;

– of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

2479 Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one’s neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity.

To simply assume that someone who says he opposes illegal immigration is a racist is–in the absence of further evidence for racism (e.g., the use of racial epithets for illegal aliens)–is to commit the sin of rash judgment, which is a sin whether one expresses this judgment publicly or not.

If the charge of racism is publicly made against someone who is not, in fact, a racist then the sin of calumny is committed.

As the Catechism explains, we must be on guard against the rash judgment and calumny that are often involved in playing the race card.

Much good would be done if people–inside and outside the Catholic community–would take the Catechism’s advice and attempt to give a favorable construction of others.

Justice and charity require that those who say they are opposed to illegal immigration are to have their statements taken at face value unless sufficient evidence of a sinister motive is present. The mere opposition to illegal immigration is not enough to infer racism. To do so is rash judgment and to say so will be calumny more often than not.

On my recent trip from San Diego to Arizona I was using my GPS unit to navigate (I figured it was worth the expense if it helped me get out of the house and actually start taking my vacation hours) and I got a bit of a shock as I was heading out the I-8 toward Yuma.

I was so shocked that I took a picture of my GPS (left) to record the moment so that I could blog about it later. Sorry for the fuzziness of the photo, but I was driving and didn’t have time to manually focus my camera for such a close object (not that I’d know how to do that anyway).

I’d like to call your attention to three lines that are showing on the GPS screen. The first is the pinkish purple irregular line running from the top to the bottom of the screen. See it? That’s Interstate 8.

Right next to it is a dark line that is perfectly regular and also runs diagonally from top to bottom. Got that one? It’s the Mexican border.

Now look further to the right and observe the irregular yellow/orange line that mirrors Interstate 8. This line represents Mexican highway #2.

I’d also like to call your attention to a dark triangle that is located on the Interstate 8 line and that points toward the top of the screen. That represents the position of my pickup on the highway.

Now that you’ve got the lay of the land (so to speak), notice this: You see how close the pink line gets to the edge of the Mexican border? It seems to run right up to it, doesn’t it? And the tip of the triangle representing my truck seems to be touching the Mexican border as well. A couple of miles later, the tip of the triangle representing my truck was actually IN Mexico. (My truck wasn’t, of course, but the display icon for it was spilling over into Mexico.)

This gives you a sense of just how close a major American highway (a low-number interstate) is to the Mexican border–and how close a parallel Mexican highway (another low-number interstate) is to our interstate.

I mean, it would be very easy (in relative terms) to just drive up the Mexican interstate, cross the border, and have nearly immediate access to a U.S. interstate.

And bear in mind that there is NO FENCE out here. When you’re going east on I-8 and you look to your right, you’re looking DIRECTLY INTO MEXICO, with no barriers in the way (below).

Now, you might complain that the GPS screen doesn’t give you a sense of scale, so I’m prepared to help with that. Here’s a scan from my Southern California DeLorme atlas.

This is the same point that’s pictured on the GPS screen–the close pass of I-8 to the Mexican border just after the town of Jacumba (hah-come-bah).

I spliced the map’s scale into this picture so you can see just how close the interstate comes to the border at this point: It looks like about a mile and a quarter or 6600 feet (that’s about 2 kilometers for metric users).

So there you have it: At this point a major U.S. interstate is just two klicks from the Mexican border and NO FENCE.

But you might object that it’s rather rocky here and so the terrain is at least somewhat inhospitable to crossing naturally.

It’d be a moderate hike, as the mountains at this point are nothing like Everest and are easily climbable. You don’t need oxygen or anything (the elevation is only about 4000 feet above sea level).

But suppose you’re of a mind to think that the hills alone are enough to deter illegal aliens from entering here.

Okay, take a look at this map (click to enlarge):
This is a few miles further down I-8, near the Arizona border. In fact, it’s just a few miles west of Yuma, Arizona, just before you get to the Imperial Sand Dunes.

See how close it is here? (Be sure to look at the scale provided.)

It’s even CLOSER than the point near Jacumba!

Here Interstate 8 runs maybe a bit more than a quarter of a mile from the Mexican border, or 1400 feet. (That’s a bit over 400 meters for metric folks.)

And here there are NO mountains and we are right AT sea level, and once again there is NO FENCE.

You may hear people on the news talking about us having a porous, unsecured border, but the media isn’t telling you the half of it.

When you actually see it with your own eyes–when you look to your right and realize that you are looking right over into Mexico, with mile after mile of unsecured border and not even natural barriers like mountains in the way–you realize just how vulnerable to penetration the United States is.

It’s no wonder that there are over 10,000,000 illegal aliens in this country.

And at least some of those are likely to be terrorists.

Oh . . . and the immigration check points they have on I-8?

They’re closed half the time.

I didn’t get stopped at the checkpoints near Jacumba, either coming or going. They were all closed up.

MAKES YOU WANT TO MAIL A BRICK TO CONGRESS SO THEY CAN GET STARTED ON A WALL, DOESN’T IT?

A reader writes:

A good friend alerted me to a 3 day discussion of the marriage crisis among African-Americans that is going on Tuesday through Thursday this week on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show. (you can listen to it online via his website–though I warn you that the discussion only takes up about the last ten minutes of Tuesday’s show because he highlights a  wonderful anti-abortion effort done by some teenage homeschoolers).

During Tuesday’s episode, one of the pastors mentions a Washington Post editorial entitled (I am not making this up) "Marriage is for White People." Go Goolge the article. You have to see the article to believe it, but it explains the reactions I get from kids I substitute teach when they find out that not only am I not married, I also have no children. They don’t ask me why I don’t want to get married; they ask me why I don’t want any children!! The times they are a-changing, and NOT for the better.

I can’t wait to hear the rest of the discussion; I have alerted my niece (single black professional who is no closer to marriage than her aunt) to listen to it also. Drop in on it and see what you think.

Thanks for alerting me to this!

The institution of marriage has taken a huge hit in America in recent decades, but in the African-American community it has been hit particularly hard. The sentiment expressed by the student quoted in the editorial that "Marriage is for white people" is truly shocking.

It’s glad to see that the folks at Focus on the Family are trying to do something about the problem. They have had inner city outreach and have worked with African-American pastors for a long time.

I encourage folks to pray for their efforts, and for troubled families everywhere.

READ THE EDITORIAL.

LISTEN TO THE FOCUS ON THE FAMILY SHOWS.