Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Rep. John Lewis, a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary and front-line freedom fighter during the civil rights era, said that immigration reform is a top civil rights issue. (“Immigration reform” is often a euphemism for amnesty.)
“The most pressing need for young people and for older Americans, for all of us, is to move with all deliberate speed to create a truly multicultural, multiracial democratic society. It doesn’t make sense … to have millions and millions of people living in the shadows. We have to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” he said Wednesday at a conference at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
In other words, Rep. Lewis equates people who enter and stay in this country illegally with the cause of black Americans fighting and dying to be treated as full citizens of the country of their birth and most of their ancestors’. No doubt some of America’s illegal aliens profess Christ. Has a pro-amnesty Christian ever asked an illegal alien who professes Christ how he reconciles his faith with willfully violating a country’s laws?
Rep. Lewis invoked the Voting Rights Act. “The Congress must get its own act together. I don’t want to be partisan, you know, but we need another election or two. People need to register, and they need to vote, they need to vote. There are still voices in America who want to take it back to 1965 … and we cannot allow that to happen.”
During the civil rights movement, America tried to reconcile its founding principles and relegating black Americans to second-class citizenship, and could not. America fixed the flaw. Who, in 2014, is trying to bring us back to those days? Is Rep. Lewis referring to people who seek to protect marriage and unborn children? Does he want to silence those who advocate personal responsibility and believe blacks have the same moral agency as everyone else?
There is no “civil right” to citizenship anywhere in the world. Countries have the right to set their borders and determine who enters, who stays, and who goes. Black Americans who vote for men like Rep. Lewis should press him on statements to the contrary and demand that he put the needs of law-abiding Americans before any foreigner’s, especially a law-breaking one.
Photo credit: tclementspc (Creative Commons)
Talk of “immigration reform,” which is nothing but amnesty with a new name, is without a doubt the number one anti-black issue in America today! Those who are pushing for this reform want one thing only: to cheapen the value of the work produced by men and women on the bottom rungs of the American economic ladder!
Anyone who is claiming to be in the corner of “the poor” in this country the way Rep. Lewis does, should understand – which I actually believe he does! – that by constantly bringing in new low-wage workers to the country, poorer Americans are hurt as the pay they receive for their labors will decline.
Anyone who truly wants to improve the status of lower-income Americans would do everything possible to reduce the competition they face in the marketplace which would immediately raise their economic value.