Biden-Harris border policies violate Catholic social teaching, report claims
The Biden-Harris administration has embraced immigration policies that run afoul of Catholic social teaching, according to the findings of a religious advocacy group.
In its report titled “Bad Samaritans,” released in five separate installments last week, CatholicVote highlighted how human trafficking, failure to enforce immigration law, false asylum claims, and political corruption and other developments that have resulted from the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies directly violate Catholic social teaching.
The first portion of the report looks at a philosophy embraced by Pope St. John Paul II, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 1978-2005. It includes quotes from the late pontiff’s book Memory and Identity, which defines “patriotism” as “a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features” that “extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius.”
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“Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love,” he added. The report also noted how John Paul II thought patriotism was “covered by the fourth commandment, which obliges us to honor our father and mother.”
Explaining that John Paul II viewed “the native land” as the “common good of all citizens” and therefore believed “it imposes a serious duty,” the report suggests that the Biden-Harris administration has failed to live up to this “duty.”
It cited rhetoric from the president and vice president describing the United States as an “idea” and talking about the “American dream” as “far removed from what St. John Paul II taught — about a shared homeland as the common good of all citizens, and the serious duty to defend that land from dangers.”
“Having sworn to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ according to the Constitution, [President Joe] Biden now presides over a hemorrhaging southern border where millions of people — from all over the world — are crossing with impunity,” the report states, in part. “His vice president and chosen successor [Kamala] Harris was notably unsuccessful in her assigned mission to help stem the tide of illegal immigration.”
After highlighting Harris’ appointment as the “lead person” to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration into the U.S., the report described her efforts to combat illegal immigration as yielding “more talk than results.” While acknowledging that Harris instructed migrants not to come in a 2021 press conference, the report asserted that “millions certainly did come — and many of them never left.”
“Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration passes the blame, claims things are under control, and offers band-aid solutions to the ongoing disaster,” the report adds. “One can hardly imagine St. John Paul II giving this a pass.”
The report further stresses that “the Church does not actually take any official position on the practical details of immigration policy,” while insisting that “the Biden-Harris border crisis violates Church teaching on the international level, by playing into the hands of some of the world’s worst criminal interests.”
The second part of the report, titled “A Crisis at Home and Abroad,” includes a quote from the 2005 Compendium of the Catechism written by then-Pope Benedict XVI, declaring, “The most complete realization of the common good is found in those political communities which defend and promote the good of their citizens … without forgetting the universal good of the entire human family.”
It maintained that “the current chaos at the southern U.S. border is not simply bad for this country and its citizens” but also harms “the universal good of the entire human family.”
This section of the report shows the impact of immigration policy worldwide, including testimony from the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jessica Vaughan detailing how the “expansion of illicit border-crossing opportunities has led to the abuse and exploitation of migrants on a mass scale and an explosion in human trafficking, including luring children into forced labor and worse.”
“It is crucial to understand that the Biden-Harris illegal immigration crisis is not, by any means, a situation that simply benefits foreigners and other countries at the expense of America and its citizens. Rather, it is a profoundly harmful situation both for Americans and foreign nationals — especially through the massive enrichment and empowerment of criminal cartels, as they ruthlessly exploit America’s weakness and immigrants’ willingness to break our laws.”
The third part of the report, titled “A Crisis of Citizenship and the Rule of Law,” features a quote from the Church’s Compendium of Social Doctrine teaching that “As an instrument of the State, public administration at any level … is oriented towards the service of citizens.”
Another part of the document quotes John Paul II while asserting that “the law is sovereign, and not the arbitrary will of individuals.” The report suggests that the Biden-Harris administration has failed to adequately enforce immigration law and, therefore, hasn't complied with Catholic social teaching.
The fourth part of the report, titled “A Crisis of Fraud and Perjury,” details how false asylum claims that have become commonplace under the Biden administration's immigration policy violate Catholic social teaching. As stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Taking an oath or swearing is to take God as witness to what one affirms. It is to invoke the divine truthfulness as a pledge of one’s own truthfulness … A false oath calls on God to be a witness to a lie.”
“On the human level, false asylum claims are especially immoral because they detract from legitimate claims, made by those who actually face persecution based on the legal criteria,” the report adds.
It further includes statistics estimating that around 70% of asylum claims made by immigrants seeking entry into the U.S. are false.
The final part of the report addresses assertions that the Democratic Party has worked to implement “a long-term strategy of illegal immigration and mass amnesty” that “could conceivably expand the Democratic voting bloc into a permanent electoral majority.” While the report declined to take a position on the allegation, it pointed to such an act of “legal and political corruption” as “among the gravest offenses in public life, as confirmed by the teaching of the Church.”
According to the Compendium of the Catholic Church, “Among the deformities of the democratic system, political corruption is one of the most serious … It compromises the correct functioning of the State, having a negative influence on the relationship between those who govern and the governed. It causes a growing distrust with respect to public institutions, bringing about a progressive disaffection in the citizens with regard to politics and its representatives, with a resulting weakening of institutions.”
After highlighting the Compendium of the Catholic Church’s teaching that “Political choices [come] to favor the narrow objectives of those who possess the means to influence these choices and are an obstacle to bringing about the common good of all citizens,” the report concluded that “we cannot say whether the theory of illegally importing a new Democratic voter base is true or false.” It reiterated that “such corruption would be gravely contrary to Catholic doctrine and the common good.”
The “Bad Samaritans” report is not the first example of CatholicVote speaking out about the impact of the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies.
After Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this month following Biden’s departure from the 2024 presidential election, the advocacy group released an ad titled “Kamala’s Border Crisis” that shows pictures of a young girl who was raped and strangled to death by "an illegal alien released by the Biden-Harris administration.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
