On the Krikorian, Miller, Lopez, and Freddoso exchanges about the motives of our Roman Catholic bishops in pushing for amnesty, I’d just offer one data point which seems to me to argue against the Krikorianian (?) side: the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. is just as clueless about immigration as the RCs, yet I can’t imagine that the inflood of Mexican illegals is doing much to fill the ECUSA’s emptying pews.

And the mother church over in England is just as bad; yet there the immigrant flood is not only not Anglican, it’s not even Christian.

I think it’s mainly just a case of the old establishment Christian churches running out of poor people. There’s a lot of emphasis on the poor in the New Testament, as I recall. Showing kindness and charity to poor people is a key element of Christianity; yet the Western world, illegal immigrants aside, is short of poor people, and the few it has left are not very receptive to what the old churches offer. Without poor people, the clergy find they don’t have much to do. Who is it that makes work for idle hands?