Making it illegal to do the right thing

Over the past week, protesters organized by immigrant supporters have rallied in cities across the country, loudly objecting to legislation that would require churches to check the legal status of parishioners before helping them, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, not to speak of making it a felony for them to be in the U.S. illegally.

Fortunately, an amendment being considered would protect church and charitable groups, as well as individuals, from criminal prosecution for providing food, shelter, medical care and counseling to undocumented immigrants. (Last December the House voted to make offers of such aid a felony!)

Shouldn’t charitable organizations be able to provide humanitarian assistance to immigrants without fearing prosecution? This excerpt from a Washington Post article examines the human and moral side:

When Tim Holt spotted Maria Rabanales of El Salvador lying still in the Arizona desert, he believed he had a God-given duty to save her. He forced water through the woman's swollen jaws and poured ice down her shirt. Border Patrol agents later took Rabanales to a hospital, where she was revived.

This action was praised by some, but his actions might soon be considered a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison or property forfeiture.

"The overriding Biblical mandate is to care for the stranger or the alien because that stranger or alien might very well be God," said Joan Maruskin, the Washington representative for the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program.

In Arizona, where immigrants cross the desert each year by the thousands and die in the hundreds, groups such as No More Deaths try to save some. About the penalties for helping, Stuart Taylor [a pastor and founding member of No More Deaths] said, "We think such legislation would be a very dangerous precedent, a government trying to make it illegal to do the right thing."

"People of faith and conscience will continue . . . because that is the nature of our faith and our moral duty," Taylor said.