On May 9, 2007, a multi-faith coalition appeared on the immigration scene in the United States with coordinated press conferences in five major cities.
Known as the New Sanctuary Movement (NSM), this group of religious congregations is composed of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups, whose members help "immigrants" facing deportation.
In so doing, the NSM condones purposeful violation of federal immigration laws. Under the guise of doing God's work, these congregations offer illegal aliens shelter, financial assistance, legal assistance, and sanctuary from deportation.
Christian and Jewish groups base their NSM membership on Old and New Testament writings. Muslims apparently base their NSM membership on a historical account of Mohammed writing King Negus of Ethiopia (aka Abyssinia) seeking sanctuary for refugees; and the King granted refuge.
U.S. immigration laws, however, differentiate "refugees" from "illegal aliens," while NSM would blur these distinctions.
NSM spokesmen claim that the coalition was inspired by Elvira Arellano, an illegal alien from Mexico.
In 1997, Arellano entered the United States illegally and was deported shortly thereafter. Along with most deported illegal aliens from Mexico, she turned around and entered again, without inspection.
On her second illegal entry, she evaded detection and traveled to Washington state, settling in Wapato, about 14 miles south of Yakima. In 1998 she gave birth to a male child, Saul. Arellano does not reveal anything about the boy's father.
It was enough that she now had her "anchor baby," or so she thought.
Some 18 months later, she and Saul moved to Chicago, where she worked as a janitor at O'Hare Airport, with a security clearance obtained by fraudulently using a social security number belonging to a U.S. citizen. In 2002 Arellano was arrested and convicted of felony fraud.
Identity theft, now the most reported crime in the United States, has become the modus operandi of illegal aliens. She spent a number of years appealing her deportation order but finally received the infamous 72-hour "run letter." (Upon receiving these notices to report for deportation within 72 hours, illegal aliens tend to run.)
Arellano took another course; she and her child sought refuge in Adalberto United Methodist Church, where she immediately became the national "poster victim" for amnesty advocates. The newsmedia flocked to photograph her and broadcast her story.
Though having lived in the United States for nine years, she still could not speak English and needed an interpreter for her press interviews. Federal agents stood by and waited. Finally in August 2007, Arellano left the church and drove to Los Angeles to speak at an NSM rally. On Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007, she was arrested and deported home to Mexico, where she presently resides.
A main tenet of the NSM is concern about the separation of family members by the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. NSM along with amnesty advocates in general fail to acknowledge that many anchor-baby families consist of single moms who have children by different fathers — most of whom are never located.
The resultant costs to taxpayers for providing welfare benefits to such families is escalating. Arellano claims she will work in Mexico to have the United States do away with border control and grant amnesty to all people who manage to cross the border.
Will she also work to open Mexico's southern border?
The Roman Catholic Cardinal of Los Angeles, Roger Cardinal Mahony, stated in March, 2006, that he was instructing the priests and others working for his diocese to "disregard" U.S. immigration laws, which he says criminalize efforts to offer humanitarian services to suffering persons.
In contrast, the majority of U.S. Catholic clergy and laity appear to distance themselves from advocating such lawlessness. The interfaith NSM clergy, rather than shepherding their flocks, are leading them astray into felony crimes.
U.S. immigration laws, currently on the books state: Illegal entry into the United States — entry without inspection — is a misdemeanor; and repeated illegal entry is a felony. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) Section 275, (8 USC Section 1324).
The NSM, as a loose confederation of individual churches, synagogues, and mosques, claims that "good families" are being torn apart by unjust immigration laws.
It claims to focus on the livelihood of all "immigrants" in the United States, who suffer from "unjust" U.S. immigration laws. NSM members refuse to recognize that there is no U.S. Constitutional or legal basis for immigration sanctuary in the United States of America. The assertion by certain municipalities, cities, and states of the Republic that they are "sanctuaries" for illegal aliens displays complete contempt for the laws of the United States, as do actions by the NSM.
The NSM seeks public advocacy and promotes active, in-your-face defiance of the law.
One of the requirements for NSM sanctuary is that illegal aliens agree to go public and speak out about their hardships to garner monetary and political support for the movement.
Both the NSM and the illegal aliens they help are in violation of federal law, as are elected and appointed state and local officials who vote for, support, and counsel sanctuary and therefore disobedience of federal immigration laws.
The law is clear that whoever "harbors, shelters, conceals, transports and/or aids illegal aliens" commits a felony offense (8 United States Code sections 1324 and 1325). These civil and criminal acts of disobedience ought to be the subject of federal grand juries. It is the responsibility of the U.S. attorney general to actively present such felony violations for grand jury consideration.
Among the sanctuary states and cities, the actual wording of sanctuary statutes, executive orders, proclamations, legislative resolutions, and committee opinions, varies greatly.
These verbal variations, however, do not protect political figures, religious figures, and immigrant activists outspoken at the state and municipal levels in advocating defiance of federal immigration laws from felony charges.
For instance, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, police chief Heather Fong, other city officials, and even District Attorney Kamala Harris have been recorded condemning federal immigration law enforcement and declaring San Francisco a sanctuary city. As an attorney, Harris surely knows the legal consequences of her actions.
It is the responsibility of federal grand juries to determine whether elected and appointed officials, NSM members, and others who aid and abet illegal aliens have violated the federal statutes, and if so, charges need to be filed against those officials by federal prosecutors.
The NSM has joined with the self-declared sanctuary cities and states in defiance of the immigration laws passed by the U.S. Congress and enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration law violations have costly consequences, including rapes, other violent injuries, and killings of U.S. citizens by criminal aliens in this country illegally.
They endanger public health, tax social welfare programs, place undue burdens on public education, plague the criminal justice systems, and cause environmental degradation — with U.S. taxpayers footing the bill.
Even the most sanctimonious of the sanctuary advocates choose to simply ignore these unintended consequences and penalties placed on tax-paying U.S. citizens.
Evidence suggests that the recent executions of three college students in Newark, N.J. (a sanctuary city and state), were orchestrated by illegal alien gang members.
Although Newark officials try to downplay the gang aspect of the executions, they were clearly gangland-style murders committed by illegal aliens.
The New Jersey executions are part of a disturbing pattern in criminal behavior displayed by the thousands of illegal aliens committing murder, rape, vehicular homicide, robbery, arson, domestic violence, child abuse, and other assorted crimes against society.
They are not all "good families." There is not a state in the union or a city that has not suffered from crimes by illegal aliens.
The news media attempts to hide the fact that culprits are illegal aliens, and some law enforcement officials make the unsupported claim, "We need the immigrant community to help us solve crimes."
Such a statement is a sad excuse for failing to enforce the law and failing to perform the sworn duty of law enforcement officials — to protect the citizenry.
Some politically correct cities and states, to avoid recognizing religious groups, have coined a new terminology, in which "sanctuary cities and states" become "civil liberties safe zones."
These renegade sanctuaries or civil liberties safe zones, by denying the validity of the U.S. government, promote anarchy. Amnesty advocates, including the NSM, act as an insidious cancer seeking to rot the Republic's sinew, muscle, and bone that untreated could result in a corpse-like third-world nation.
The NSM is but the latest attempt by the radical left to use well-meaning do-gooders to do their bidding — to weaken the United States from within under the guise of God's work and love of humanity.
The New Sanctuary Movement is yet another means of using unassimilated multiculturalism to reshape the republic.
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