Student Loans, High College Costs, and Illegal Immigration: A Solution (Part Five: The Corruption of Church Organizations)

There is another disturbing aspect of the “transformation” of the United States by the importation of illegal aliens and unvetted refugees, and that is the involvement of religious organizations in the process. In “The Islamization of North Dakota” in Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield reports on terrorist attacks, murders, knife attacks, and human trafficking by some of these refugees and then adds that Lutheran Social Services led the “refugee resettlement” in the state. He further states:

Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, its coffers swollen by dumping migrants from Islamic terror states on the area, suddenly faced a dieback under the Trump administration. The organization filed for bankruptcy and shut down in 2021, but rather than offering any relief, things actually got worse for Fargo and North Dakota.

Under Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, the former head of Lutheran Social Services, became the Executive Policy Director at the state’s Department of Human Services. Burgum, who is now running for president, announced that the state would take over refugee resettlement from Lutheran Social Services. Burgum had previously turned down an offer from the Trump administration to allow governors to end the practice of refugee dumping.

While Gov. Burgum claimed that the state would handle the invasion more responsibly than Lutheran Social Services had, bringing in the head of LSS put the lie to any such notion.

Interesting, “a dieback under Trump,” of this activity indicates a further reduction of the Democrats’ permanent underclass. And here we have the phenomenon of a Republican, Governor Burgum, abetting the Democratic program. But then there’s this: “Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, its coffers swollen by dumping migrants from Islamic terror states on the area. . . .” “Coffers swollen” makes one wonder about the motivation of church groups who help settle refugees and illegal aliens.

That is not to pick on the Lutherans. The Heritage Foundation’s article “Who is Helping Biden Facilitate America’s Border Crisis?” starts with the line: “Heritage recently uncovered that Catholic Charities and other non government organizations have been working with the Biden administration to help move migrants across the country.” Hmmm. Later in the article, Michelle Cordero of the Heritage Foundation claims, “So the Biden administration has caused and allows to persist the largest border crisis in American history, but they're not the only party responsible for facilitating this crisis.” In the article, Mike Howell, Director of the Oversight Project for Heritage, points out that the overwhelmed border patrol turn over the flood of illegal aliens at the border to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who then disperse these illegal aliens all over the United States so that “the mass resettlement of illegal aliens is impacting nearly every congressional district in America,” and “every town now is a border town in the Biden administration.” Huh, sounds disturbingly like the “transformaion of America.” The scope of this operation is nearly unimaginable. Howell goes on to say about the NGOs:

For the most part. Some of them are affiliated with national religious charities. That being said, calling them religious organizations I think is a stretch.

What we're seeing, much like the left's march through all of the institutions, whether it's the military, our culture, our schools, et cetera, the same thing has happened in a lot of the charitable arms of churches. Catholic charities is a prime example. They’re really the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to this.

They are deeply involved in facilitating the travel of illegal aliens throughout the country. But it doesn't end there. These NGOs are also, a lot of money behind this, involved in lobbying the Biden administration and our Congress to keep the border wide open. And so it's kind of this full scale operation where not only they're involved in the border, but they're involved in D.C. making sure the border stays open through policy and support to the Biden administration. A lot of their staffers and people connected in those NGO networks are in the Biden administration.
And it’s not just in America. This is an international issue. Mass migration is something that’s pushed by NGOs across the world. When illegal aliens make the journey to the border, they often stop at NGO facilities along the way, they have presence in Mexico. There are lawyers that help illegal aliens file frivolous asylum claims. They're involved in the push out of certain countries.

And it’s not just in America. I mean, we see this in Europe. It’s really an international operation. This is why the Open Society Foundation and George Soros and his billions of dollars are the central node in this. I mean, there’s a lot more players. But it really shows that the left’s view of massive, massive illegal immigration to destabilize, frankly, the West is really the plan here. That’s what they’re aiming to do. They don’t believe in territorial sovereignty or the nation state. And so through the mass resettlement of illegal aliens, they’re trying to undo that.

Howell says that these NGOs “basically complete the last leg of the human smuggling chain,” and that they enable the violent and deadly cartels and gangs like MS-13 that are not only at the border but that have infiltrated and scattered all over the United States. And this human smuggling involves human and drug trafficking. And the NGOs are “lobbying the Biden administration and our Congress to keep the border wide open.” Honestly, we are talking about church groups here!

Howell summarizes:

This is a resettlement program. The Biden administration wants open borders for the same reason these internationalist NGOs do. They want to destroy the West. They think that mass immigration and demographic change is a political benefit to them. It puts people on government dependency. It massively changes the population of a country. It waters down community and civic traditions and cohesion. It unsettles the country. This is a Marxist key part of their philosophy is that they need to build class warfare, and there’s no better way to do that than rapidly changing the demographics of a country with classes of people dependent on the government.

Wow. Cloward-Piven, anyone? Couldn’t say it better myself. And Catholic Charities is in the thick of it. Reminds me of why we quit contributing to Catholic Relief Services, years ago, after I read that it was helping spread contraceptives in Africa. And then we stopped contributing to the Josephites when we read in their newsletter support for the Marxist, thoroughly corrupt Black Lives Matter.

Given what is revealed in the Heritage article above and elsewhere, to what extent has the Catholic Church in the United States been coopted by the Democratic Party into the illegal-immigration assault on the United States?  It brings to mind the Stupak Amendment ruse, supported by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), that gave cover to so-called pro-life Democrats, so that the Democrats could engineer the government takeover of healthcare known as Obamacare, only to later have the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that Catholic employers be required to provided coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations (see “Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?”). You might remember how the Obama administration, along with some states, used Obamacare to try to bully the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception in their health-care packages, against the teaching of the Church. The sisters took their case, with the help of the Trump administration, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they won a 7-2 decision. Democrats bullying the Little Sisters of the Poor. Are you proud of that, Democrat Catholics? How could the bishops, or anyone who has any clue as to what the abortion-hungry Democratic Party is, not see that coming? And in the larger context, how could any church leader with an understanding of the proper functions of church and state abdicate the church’s role and moral authority in healthcare to the state? Such questions are worthy of some reflection. (And in

“Can a Catholic Be a Democrat” we do some of that reflecting.)

Sara A. Carter has done in-depth reporting on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border for years. And she says in her 30 August 2023 podcast that NGOs, which are receiving millions of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration, “incentivize the migrants to make this incredibly dangerous journey to the United States, and it’s all thanks to Biden now.” Speaking directly to US citizens, she adds, “The administration is basically forcing you into being an accomplice in the trafficking of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.” She talks about how the open-border policy of the Biden administration has resulted in rape, murder, slavery, and terrorist trafficking, and that children are often the victims. She says that when you “follow the money” that the Biden Administration dishes out to the NGOs, “the organizations are keeping that money in their coffers and making huge amounts of interest on it.” And she adds, “And by the way a lot of the money ends up getting recycled back into political parties.” Continuing to follow the money, she adds, “And how much money really ends up in the pockets of the actual migrants? Very little, very little.” And then Catholic Charities comes up again. “Catholic Charities is getting a huge chunk of money. The Catholic Charities in the Diocese of San Diego is going to get 12.8 million.” She says of Catholic Charities in Anzalduas Park in McAllen, Texas, “Taken over, Catholic Charities, Sister Norma, they own the park. Not even anybody in the community can use the park, just giant tents.” She also mentions that the United Nations is contributing massive funding to this trafficking of migrants illegally into the United States. (Note: Sara A. Carter and Bill Melugin have done excellent reporting on the border crisis.)

The Epoch Times article “IN DEPTH: Abortion, Transgender Services, Communion, and the ‘Transition’ of Catholic Church Leadership” reveals more evidence of Church organizations taking government money. It particularly singles out the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). According to the article: “The USASpending.gov website shows that the USCCB received an almost $40 million grant from the U.S. State Department for a ‘reception and placement program for refugees approved for admission in the United States.’” Huh, “refugees” again. Vetted or unvetted? Real refugees or illegal aliens? Approved by whom, the immigration laws of the United States or by fiat of the Biden administration that is abetting the flood of illegal aliens into this country at great cost to the aliens and the United States? Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and senior fellow at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, in “The truth about so-called asylum-seekers” on 9 January 2023 in The Washington Times sites a study by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) to show 93% of asylum cases were denied by the Immigration Court:

The TRAC report looked at the Immigration Court’s processing of asylum cases among those who passed their first interview and were released into the U.S. The sample study showed a 93% denial rate of asylum cases in the Immigration Court’s “Dedicated Docket” for speedy asylum review. Only 7% were awarded asylum from the court. This is largely due to the fact that bogus asylum claims are often based on the occurrence of crime in Central America rather than persecution as contemplated under the asylum statute.

The Epoch Times article adds: “USASpending.gov shows that the USCCB received another DHHS grant for $18.8 million—spread out between Feb. 1, 2020, and April 30, 2023—‘to provide for the care and placement of unaccompanied minors who are apprehended’ at the U.S. border through its ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children Program (UACP).’” Are any of those children among the 85,000 the Biden Administration had lost track of as reported here in the New York Times and the New York Post? How many of these children were illegally trafficked for exploitation by drug cartels upon the Biden administration’s open invitation for people to illegally rush our borders to create more “instant Democrats”?

I am reminded of a time a few years ago when a priest from Europe informed those of us in the pews that it would be a sin not to support, if I remember correctly, legislation that would grant citizenship to illegal aliens who had been brought to the United States as children. Though I certainly sympathized with the plight of those under consideration, I wondered instead how sinful it would be for one who was well informed to support such legislation knowing full well that to do so would serve to further the endgame of the Democratic Party’s human-trafficking program to overwhelm and take permanent control of the United States, so that it could force its evils, like abortion, deeper into the national character. (In such an instance it is important to follow Church teaching to form one’s conscience and to obey it.)

On the other hand, I know of a Catholic priest from a Latin American country who told Catholics from his native land that it was true that if they voted against abortion they could end up being deported by the candidate they voted for, but was not the protection of innocent unborn human life more important than the possibility that they could be deported? He pointed out that it could be providential, part of God’s plan, for them to return to their native land and contribute to it with all that they had learned and gained, especially if it prevented the murder of unborn children. And let us remember that if they are in danger of being deported, they are here in violation of the law.

Given all of the above, Catholics have legitimate concerns about the Church taking government money to participate in the Biden administration’s human trafficking programs. And I have to confess an uneasiness with a certain Catholic chauvinism that I have unexpectedly encountered in recent years regarding this illegal-immigration matter. On at least a couple of occasions I have been surprised to have representatives of the Church, in a way that makes me believe it is not confined to them alone, express to me, as to one who shared in the conspiracy, an enthusiastic support for moving Catholic illegal aliens into local Catholic parishes and schools. And the support seemed to extend to such a movement all over the country.

I was aghast. Here I was hearing Americans apparently enthusiastically supporting the inundation of the country with foreign Catholics by breaking the laws of our country that honors and protects their freedom to practice their faith in the first place. It was as if the worst fears of the discarded nativist, anti-Catholic Know Nothings were being validated. As a Catholic, specifically, I staunchly reject the wholesale assault, that is illegal immigration, on the rule of law in the United States, our home country, that protects our God-given right to freedom of religion that allows us to practice our Catholic Faith. What are these people thinking? That by joining the purveyors of the Cloward-Piven strategy they can fill the pews with illegal aliens while that very strategy attacks the constitutional foundation of the country that protects our right to build those churches in which stand those pews from which we worship our God in the first place? And that is beside the fact that so many of these illegal aliens are trafficked and abused horribly in the illegal-immigration system in which these Church organizations participate. Maybe we should be concentrating on keeping the Catholics we have by serving them with the truths of the Faith; lowering the incidence of unspeakable scandal; divesting the Church of government money and the strings attached to it; courageously breaking out of the clique bunker; and championing Church attendance in the next “pandemic,” rather than writing off legal American Church members and attempting to fill their place by breaking the law and cooperating in the trafficking of human beings. As it is, the gain through participating in illegal immigration is apparently transitory, according to what I have heard from priests and immigrants who lament that the children of the immigrants drop out of Church attendance when they come of age.

What if leaders of the Catholic Church—ubiquitous in the Central American countries from which or through which illegal aliens come to the US, and present in the scores of other countries from which illegal aliens are fleeing to come to the US—instead of encouraging desperate people to break into the United States in a way that destroys the rule of law and supports monstrous human trafficking, respected the borders of the United States and its laws and immigration system and dissuaded impoverished people there from allowing themselves to be manipulated into the dangerous and often deadly illegal-immigration, organized-crime, human trafficking. What if, instead, representatives of the Catholic Church informed people about the perils of giving themselves over to drug cartels and human trafficking. What if Catholic leaders from these countries forsook contradictory liberation theology and, instead of watching their members enter the hazardous human-trafficking system to risk their lives to get to the United States, they educated their people about the evils of Marxism and about the foundation of the United States on God-given inalienable rights, including liberty, established and protected by representative government that governs best when it governs least? What if those Catholic leaders helped to make their home countries better by working with their people to establish representative government and free markets instead of Marxism? What if instead of watching their people be trafficked, they helped them apply for legal immigration into the United States and take their place in line with those who sacrifice and respect the laws of the country they aspire to move to? What if, instead, the Church helped those who had legally applied to immigrate to the United States to learn English and skills that would aid them in assimilating into the United States and keep them from being exploited by human traffickers and unscrupulous politicians and employers? Just asking, as one who has reluctantly and sadly learned through long conditioning to distrust, but for magisterial teaching, many of those who represent the Church. 

And again, rather than help destroy the constitutional foundation of the United States, Church leaders might examine why pews are empty in the first place. First, we start with the fact that we are all sinners and all ought to be availing ourselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a regular basis. But that requires an examination of conscience against the ages-old moral teaching of the Catholic Church. Though there seems to be a movement back to the traditional teachings and practices of the Church in the last two or three decades, what about the period before? What about those two or three decades before when traditional Church teaching was not taught and was sometimes contradicted outright by clergy; when the rich Tradition of the Church was replaced with silly, trendy, relativist, vapid, heterodox nonsense in religious instruction; when sinners were told in the confessional that their sins were not sins? What about those times that led to widespread destructive behavior and unimaginable scandal? (My righteous indignation was recently stoked again when I read Children of Winter by James Demers, which offers just one Canadian observer’s perspective on that destructive period.) What about the response of Church leadership to the Covid mass formation? What about acquiescing to the closing of churches when strip joints and pot dispensaries were allowed to stay open? I remember pointing out the diabolical nature of that setup, how easy it would become for people to get used to doing something else on Sunday mornings and just keep doing those things when the Covid shutdowns were lifted. And so it was. And it has to be noted here that so many priests went to great effort to make sure they made the sacraments available. I know one church in our area that doubled or tripled its number of Masses, and said them every half hour on Saturday night and Sunday morning, blocking the pews to meet the senseless government requirements for social distancing and having crews quickly wipe down the pews with disinfectant between the short Masses. And, of course, there were the priests who said Mass in parking lots, and others who refused to close down altogether. God bless them.

What if leaders of the Catholic Church . . . instead of encouraging desperate people to break into the United States in a way that destroys the rule of law and supports monstrous human trafficking, respected the borders of the United States and its laws and immigration system and dissuaded impoverished people there from allowing themselves to be manipulated into the dangerous and often deadly illegal-immigration, organized-crime, human trafficking.

Well, we started this series twelve years ago to offer a solution to the problems of student loans, high college costs, and illegal immigration. Much has changed during those twelve years, providing more to address. The discovery of the degree of involvement of church organizations in taking government money to participate in the illegal trafficking of migrants into the United States expanded the scope. And touching upon that church activity, when considering the matters of student loans and high college costs, how much have Catholic and other church colleges and universities been compromised and outrightly corrupted by the acceptance of government student loans and grants and other funds, so much so that Catholic parents will not send their students to many Catholic colleges lest their faith be destroyed? The Cardinal Newman Society is a good source for answers to that question.

Colleges and universities could take a lesson from Hillsdale College and others that refuse to take government money in order that they might retain their integrity. In sum, the United States needs to lessen the government’s confiscation and frivolous spending of taxpayer money by ending government student-loan programs. That would lower the cost of college and incentivize students to work to earn their educations. At the same time, it would reduce the excuse for illegal trafficking of migrants into the United States, and the misemployment of taxpayers’ money to do so, and the participation of church and other organizations in that criminal activity.

So, what are some of the evils inherent in or resulting from the Democrats’ and their allies’ obliteration of our borders that ought to shame anyone, especially anyone in a church organization, who supports the party and its policies? Well, here is a non-exhaustive list, in no particular order, of at least some of those evils not necessarily mutually exclusive of each other:

• human trafficking, especially of women and children;

• slavery;

• sexual exploitation;

• enhancement of international drug cartels;

• drug-cartel control of our southern border regions;

• wide-spread and voluminous trafficking of illegal drugs, especially fentanyl;

• spikes in the numbers of deaths from fentanyl;

• immigration of foreign nationals and illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, from adversarial countries like China that seek to damage if not destroy the United States;

• government processing and busing of large groups of foreign, military-age, physically-fit men from border regions into undisclosed locations within the United States;

• government trafficking with the help of NGOs (often church groups) of illegal aliens and unvetted “refugees” to cities and towns all over the United States;

• devastation of lands and properties of United States citizens;

• spikes in crimes committed by unvetted career criminals who come and go across the open borders;

• Cloward-Piven-style overburdening of government services and agencies;

• the using of poor, often ill-educated migrants as political pawns;

• the destruction of law and order and morality;

• suppression of wages for US citizens;

• dependence on government of illegal aliens and citizens who are left unemployed or underemployed because of illegal aliens taking jobs;

• enhancement of the permanent underclass that the Democratic Party requires to hold on to power;

• loss of the virtues, skills, and attitudes that college students can gain from working at physical and other entry-level jobs;

• elimination of the borders that define the United States of America and protect its Constitutional foundation, its culture, its principles, its existence;

• apparent corruption of church and other organizations that take government funds to assist the current administration in breaking our laws and violating US sovereignty by trafficking illegal aliens;

• the furtherance of a globalist Marxist program at the expense of the United States;

• espionage and sabotage by easy entrance of enemies of the United States, some of whom are terrorists;

• the flooding of the United States with millions of people who have no concept of the Constitutional foundation and structure of the United States or who may be hostile to it;

• illegal voting by such people;

• manipulation of these people to support the Cloward-Piven, Barack-Hussein-Obama “transformation” of the United States into “one more ugly oligarchy blighting the face of the earth,” as I wrote in

  “Unmasked Outlaw, Part One: The Gym (P. A. Ritzer, Volume 4).”

Still, there is more. The corruption of Church organizations goes well beyond human trafficking. That means it goes beyond this series, and we will explore it in an upcoming piece.

Thank you,

P. A. River