Catholic Priest Tackles Illegal Immigration

Catholic Priest Tackles Illegal Immigration




PETOSKEY, Mich., Jan. 11 /Christian Newswire/ -- Father Patrick J. Bascio, a retired Roman Catholic priest who is also an international human rights expert, professor, and widely published author, has written a book entitled "On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration."
Father Bascio presents a strikingly different perspective on illegal immigration than that of many church leaders. Like a prophet of old, he boldly decries current illegal immigration policies that have contributed to his fellow Americans' joblessness, shrinking wages and poorer working conditions. Based on the years Father Bascio spent ministering in Harlem, he also argues that African-American workers, in particular, bear the heaviest burden of the illegal invasion, which locks them out of many workplaces or drives wages below livable levels.

Father Bascio also critiques the motives behind both our legal and illegal immigration policies that lure the Third World's brightest and best to America, stripping poorer nations of their physicians, teachers, scientists, and future leaders.

He also believes that unchecked illegal immigration has grave consequences for overall U.S. tranquility: disdain for the rule of law, street gangs, document fraud and identity theft, staggering welfare and education costs and a creeping "balkanization" that threatens the national principle of E Pluribus Unum. As a Catholic priest, the author readily admits the unpleasantness of taking a position not shared by his church's hierarchy, and which he believes is driven by the prospect of rising membership.
Father Patrick Bascio's book is a resounding appeal not only to Roman Catholics, but to all people of faith to reexamine their churches' conventional views on illegal immigration and consider the hardship it brings for many Americans and its dangers for the nation as a whole.

Dr. Otis L. Graham, historian and visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, has described the book as "persuasive and moving," while Pete Nunez, a former U.S. Attorney, says "the author is right on the mark.