WHEN IS AN INVASION NOT AN INVASION?

The good Catholic Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas has a most novel concept of invasion. As quoted in The Kansas City Star of March 15, 2008, he told lawmakers that if illegal immigration is to be considered an invasion, it is indeed “the strangest invasion in history, where the invaders clean our houses and harvest our crops.”

The Archbishop of course failed to add that they also, along with legal immigrants, lower American wages by 5.4% and the wages of American high school drop-outs by 7.4%, as well as rob the American working class of $152 billion annually in depressed wages and job displacement. All according to the data collected by Harvard’s Dr. George Borjas. Naumann failed as well to cite a UCLA Chicano Studies Research Centre report that found that Americans and established immigrants suffer an 11% wage drop simply by working alongside new Hispanic immigrants.

It is evident that the illegal “invasion” that conservatively has increased by 5.3 million , or 79% under George Bush, has grown the labour pool and weakened labour’s hand vis a vis the employer. Lower wages are only one consequence, the other was determined by Cornell’s Vernon M. Brigg’s when he found that the percentage of the foreign born population in the United States is inversely proportional to the percentage of union membership. Yet organized labour prefers to chase phantom Hispanic recruits rather than defend the dues paying members it has.

In the context of Matthew 22:39 and Leviticus 19:10 one can forgive the Archbishop for his belief that the common good cannot be defined strictly by national borders and that a sense of solidarity with other human beings is required to understand the plight of illegal immigrants. However could he not earmark some of his boundless Christian love for the hardworking low-income American worker whose livelihood the illegals threaten? 1st Timothy 5:8 instructs us after all to love our own family and attend to their needs first.

In the meantime, I am intrigued by Archbishop Naumann’s notion of what actually constitutes an invasion, because this could be the basis of moral and legal precedent. He apparently argues that if 20 million liars knowingly break the law, enter your country and seek illegal employment, they aren’t invaders if you judge their impact to be beneficial.

By Neumann’s measure then, the British did not invade India because they built railways, roads, hospitals, the telegraph system and public works. Nor did the Norsemen invade the north of England because they cultivated new lands and opened up the rural economy. And I suppose the Germans really weren’t invaders in northern France because they gave a real shot in the arm to the construction industry of Normandy when they built the Atlantic Wall

So when is an invasion not an invasion? When your clerical job is secure and you’re standing in a comfortable pulpit.