The United States is a federal Republic, with a Constitution containing Article VI, Clause 2 that grants federal laws supremacy over state and municipal laws. Democrat politicians in states and cities stating their jurisdictions are sanctuaries for foreign nationals who are in the country illegally, are, themselves violating the law of the United States of America.
Sanctuary is a myth that Democrats, immigrant advocates, coastal elitists, and the newsmedia created. Sanctuary cities and states have no Constitutional nor legal basis.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the convictions of sanctuary workers for violating the immigration laws involving the smuggling of non-citizens into the United States while saying the aliens were refugees—transporting, concealing, harboring, and shielding undocumented aliens. Sanctuary was no defense. (U.S. v. Aquilar, 1989)
In 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied sanctuary as a defense for a person charged with bringing a non-citizen into the United States without inspection—illegally. (U.S. v. Francine La May)
Historically, the ancient Greeks and Romans had forms of sanctuary where criminals using temples of worship were protected from punishment until the user gave up and was tried and convicted, banished, or freed.
In 392 AD sanctuary was officially recognized by the Theodosian Code which limited sanctuary to the altar of the Church. The Anglo-Saxon code of laws, complied by Ethelbert, King of Kent, in 597 officially recognized sanctuary and then Ine, King of the West Saxons also issued sanctuary laws during his reign 688-725.
The Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages continued the Greek and Roman practice of extending sanctuary to all criminals who enter a church for sanctuary, however it died out by the 1600s. European sanctuary was for individual criminals, not waves of foreign nationals disregarding a nation’s sovereignty and laws. England abolished church sanctuary for criminals in 1623.
Sanctuary was not part of the common law brought to the New World, and the pilgrims did not consider the new land as a sanctuary. American sanctuary advocates refer to biblical passages to justify their actions, quoting Leviticus, “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you.” Ironically, the same people who espouse sanctuary with its religious connection and protection also support the “separation of church and state” concept.
The idea that sanctuary was on the minds of the Founding Fathers is false. Nowhere was it mentioned in the Federalist Papers or the record of the Federal Convention, or in the debate on the adoption of the Constitution.
During the Civil War and the days of the “underground railroad” — assisting slaves escaping to the North — no effort was made to institute the concept of sanctuary for the freed slaves. Sanctuary was unheard in America until the late 1960s.
As part of the objection to the Vietnam War begun by President Lyndon Johnson (D), the concept of sanctuary arose to protect draft dodgers but no claim was made for legal approval of sanctuary. The illegality of the act, an act of civil disobedience, gave sanctuary its symbolic power confronting the war. In two federal court decisions (U.S. v. Beyer, 1970 and Bridge v. Davis, 1972) a deserter and Selective Service violators were arrested in churches. Yet, a sanctuary defense was never raised. Thus, at that time sanctuary was a mere symbolic gesture.
In the 1980s, the sanctuary myth was adopted by advocates for undocumented aliens allegedly fleeing civil war in El Salvador and Central America, but soon Mexican nationals seeking economic opportunities in America claimed the sanctuary myth.
Beginning in 1987 the numbers of illegal aliens entering the United States was in the millions as word was spread world-wide and open-borders advocates promoted sanctuary for all foreigners. State and local politicians in Democrat strongholds began to realize that illegal aliens meant votes and sanctuary gave the aliens validity.
Today, the corrupt state and local officials sell their integrity for retention in office so they promulgated a myth—sanctuary for all illegal aliens. National security is at risk with no substantial vetting for illegal aliens, national wellbeing is at risk with illegal alien criminal gangs importing illegal drugs and committing murder on a daily basis, national and local government financial solvency is at risk with the costs of education, health care, and welfare for millions of illegal aliens, and American citizens have been put at risk by crimes committed by illegal aliens. These risks are belittled and dismissed by Democrat political hacks, educational pooh-bahs, and the newsmedia.
The most dangerous risk of the sanctuary myth is the internal disintegration of the American identity, culture, ethos, heritage, and future due to a lawless sanctuary existence. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the famous liberal intellectual in The Disuniting of America concluded that multiculturalism was dividing the country and illegal immigration was factor.
James H. Walsh was associate general counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1983 to 1994. Read more reports from James Walsh — Click Here Now.
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