Vance Picks a Fight With the Bishops
Vance spars with Catholic bishops: Vice President J.D. Vance, who is Catholic, said in a Sunday interview with CBS that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has “not been a good partner in common-sense immigration enforcement.”
“I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns?” Vance said. “Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”
This follows several statements by the USCCB that condemn President Donald Trump’s immigration-related executive orders, including the Department of Homeland Security guidance—instructing immigration enforcement to avoid “sensitive places” such as churches and schools—that was recently scrapped.
“We recognize the need for just immigration enforcement and affirm the government’s obligation to carry it out in a targeted, proportional, and humane way,” declared the bishops in a statement (titled “Human Dignity is Not Dependent on a Person’s Citizenship or Immigration Status”) last week. “However, non-emergency immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, social service agencies, healthcare facilities, or other sensitive settings where people receive essential services would be contrary to the common good. With the mere rescission of the protected areas guidance, we are already witnessing reticence among immigrants to engage in daily life, including sending children to school and attending religious services. All people have a right to fulfill their duty to God without fear. Turning places of care, healing, and solace into places of fear and uncertainty for those in need, while endangering the trust between pastors, providers, educators and the people they serve, will not make our communities safer.”
Along with his cynical take that the bishops are more concerned with money than with fulfilling their Catholic duties, Vance asserted at one point that Trump’s suspension of the refugee program, which has resettled some 3 million people in need since its start in 1980, made sense because not “all of these refugees” had been “properly vetted.” That is a wild claim, since refugees probably qualify as one of the most vetted groups allowed to enter the country: Potential refugees register with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which does an initial screening and refers those who qualify to U.S. State Department Resettlement Support Centers, which then interview applicants, verify their data, and submit background checks to a whole consortium of national security agencies, which then cross-check things like fingerprints with databases around the globe. It’s a roughly two-year process, and the USCCB has histori
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