Hispanic Evangelical Offering Gop A Bridge To Future

[♦ nivek ♦]

Not too sure what to think of this article.

 

kL

*********************

 

Klinkadinka to article

 

Hispanic evangelical offering GOP a bridge to future

Sees undocumented as potential citizens, Republican voters

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 6, 2006

 

WASHINGTON -- The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of a group he says represents 15 million Hispanic evangelical Christians, said his fellow social conservatives are making a historic mistake. By spurning proposals to give illegal immigrants a shot at citizenship instead of deportation, they are making it easier for supporters of abortion and same-sex marriage to win elections.

 

''This is a watershed moment for the Republican Party," said Rodriguez, digging into a steak at an American flag-festooned restaurant near the US Capitol, where he had been lobbying GOP leaders last week. ''Hispanics are social conservatives. Their votes can determine the next 25 years of national elections. But all that is in jeopardy, based on what is happening."

 

What is happening is that the GOP-led Congress is on the verge of making sweeping changes in border-security laws this year that could shape political alliances in the Southwest for decades.

 

Republicans are split over what to do with the millions of undocumented immigrants already inside the United States.

 

Some support intensifying efforts to deport them all. Others, including President Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona, favor letting them stay as legalized guest workers if they come forward and pay a fine and back taxes.

 

Rodriguez, chief executive officer of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and a handful of other religious activists said they hope Congress will adopt a version that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the country with a shot at becoming citizens.

 

They contend that taking an immigrant-friendly approach could help social conservatives win the culture wars for decades to come.

 

The numbers help make Rodriguez's case: Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, about 80 percent are from Latin America. And, according to a 2002 Pew Hispanic Center poll, 77 percent of foreign-born Latinos believe that abortion is unacceptable, and 73 percent reject homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.

 

But Rodriguez has not gotten far with his contention that social conservatives who advocate deportation are being short-sighted. The House of Representatives has passed a bill calling for stepped up deportation efforts. Many conservative lawmakers in the House balked at giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, saying that would reward lawbreakers.

 

Last week, the Senate began work on its own immigration bill. Several lawmakers have filed versions that would allow the undocumented to stay legally as guest workers, but some lawmakers most opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage are urging their colleagues to focus only on deportation.

 

One such conservative, Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, acknowledged that many undocumented immigrants are natural allies on abortion and gay marriage. He also noted that businesses generally back a guest worker program because they like cheap labor. But those advantages must yield to widespread demands for a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, he said.

 

''It's true that most of our immigrants, particularly that come from Hispanic countries, are traditional, faithful, and conservative -- good people," Sessions said in a Senate hallway last week. ''The question is how much can the country absorb, what are our needs as a nation. . . .It shouldn't be a political question. It's what is a good policy for the United States."

 

So far, Rodriguez has been the most prominent evangelical calling on lawmakers to rethink their priorities. Many of the high-profile religious right leaders have refrained from endorsing his view, a silence Rodriguez thinks is motivated less by disagreement than by reluctance to offend GOP allies.

 

More than a year ago, Rodriguez led the closing prayer at a rainy rally on the National Mall of more than 200,000 evangelicals opposed to gay marriage. At that rally, he proudly stood alongside Focus on the Family's James Dobson. But Dobson's office said last week that the influential religious right leader had ''no comment" on the immigration issue.

 

Rodriguez said he hopes to convince leaders like Dobson that letting undocumented immigrants work toward citizenship is not only the Christian thing to do, but it's in their movement's political self-interest. This week, he'll face his biggest test yet.

 

The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, representing 45,000 churches, is converging on Dallas for its semiannual meeting. At the meeting, the board will debate whether to take an official stance on the immigration issue. Rodriguez, a board member, said he is determined to make a forceful case.

 

No one, however, is predicting that a majority of the board will be eager to weigh in on immigration. The evangelical attitude toward undocumented immigrants has been deeply ambivalent so far, said Manuel Vasquez, a professor of religion at the University of Florida.

 

On the one hand, he said, evangelicals have both a theological and a political reason to embrace undocumented immigrants. Theologically, their mandate to expand the Christian community transcends national borders. And politically, the cultural values of Latino immigrants -- especially ''clear gender roles" in the family -- resonates with their social agenda.

 

But, Vasquez said, many US evangelicals also are patriotic and believe that the United States has a role in leading the world to salvation. They are worried about threats to their country and are offended by outsiders who violate border laws. ''There is a certain fusion of the idea of the Christian message with the idea of the American nation, and that makes it difficult for many evangelicals to support legalizing undocumented workers," Vasquez said.

 

Last month, a group of Catholic and Protestant activists illustrated the risks of speaking out against the immigration crackdown. After criticizing the House bill, they were attacked by one of its most ardent supporters, Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, a self-described supporter of the religious right.

 

The activists suggested that some provisions in the bill violate biblical mandates to be compassionate to the less fortunate and welcoming to strangers. In response, Tancredo issued a statement harshly denouncing the activists for having betrayed conservatism: ''The faith community must step forward and tell left-leaning activists that undermining border security is not a religious imperative," he said.

 

The prospect of more such attacks may give religious activists pause, though it would be in their ''long-term strategic interest" to help undocumented immigrants become voters, said John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

 

The short-term politics are trickier, he said, because evangelicals are leery of crossing their secular conservative allies, who have supported them on abortion and expect ''quid pro quo" help on the deportation issue.

[The Sage Nabooru]

Does anybody else find it totally sickening that the fundies prey on Catholic Hispanics coming in poor and wretched from Mexico to "turn from their popist devil-worshiping heathen blaspheming religion!"

 

Even Sunnis don't try to convert Shi'ites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Okay, so they just kill them instead, but still.)