{"id":2481,"date":"2025-10-17T20:49:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T01:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelight.com\/?p=2481"},"modified":"2025-10-19T20:52:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T01:52:46","slug":"the-dignity-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/17\/the-dignity-act\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dignity Act"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Christians we are called to be compassionate with the stranger. We also recognize every country’s right to protect its borders. However, people who are here who have done nothing violent are people who we can help find a way to be productive members of our society. Research by credible studies show that immigrants as a whole are beneficial to the US and that, in the aggregate, they commit less crimes than we do. Please read the following and, if you are so called by God, feel free to contact your church leadership about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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United States<\/strong>
\nRNS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rev Samuel Rodriguez, a Hispanic evangelical adviser to President Donald Trump, citing significant drops in church attendance in the face of immigration raids and mass deportations, is urging government leaders to recognise the \u201cinnocent people\u201d who are being swept up in detention quotas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference<\/a> and pastor of New Season Church in Sacramento, California, said in an interview on Thursday that some churches in the NHCLC network are seeing Sunday attendance drop by 25 per cent to 35 per cent due to fear of immigration raids.<\/p>\n

\"\"Rev Samuel Rodriguez. PICTURE: Courtesy of NHCLC.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other leaders of Latino and immigrant congregations throughout the US have reported drops in Sunday attendance, especially in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles, where the Trump administration has launched major federal operations.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIn my conversations with the White House, with members of Congress and so forth,\u201d said Rodriguez, \u201cthere is a constant affirmation that the priority is deporting the criminal element.\u201d But in his view, \u201c\u200athe 25 per cent to 30 per cent that are being deported that are not the criminal element are a direct result of a daily quota of 3,000 deportations,\u201d referring to goals set by the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez said he has been mobilising Latino evangelical Christians to support the bipartisan immigration reform known as the Dignity Act<\/a>, urging them to gather at church to pray for Congress to pass the bill, led by US Representatives Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Miami, and Texas Democrat Veronica Escobar.<\/p>\n

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said<\/a> in late September that 70 per cent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees are \u201ccriminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges in the US\u201d, but data at the time of her statement shows 36 per cent of those arrested have no criminal record.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez supports the deportation of criminals but claimed that ICE is forced into making arrests of criminals and non-criminals alike because leaders in blue states won\u2019t grant ICE access to their incarcerated populations.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say, hypothetically speaking, they reach 2,500 a day that are complete criminals, gang bangers, pedophiles, rapists, drug dealers et cetera,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201c\u200aIf the blue states primarily don\u2019t cooperate and give ICE access to their prisons and jails, then they have to find the other 500 because they have a quota of 3,000.\u201d He added, \u201c\u200aNot that I\u2019m affirming that, I\u2019m not celebrating that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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At the NHCLC\u2019s annual summit on Tuesday, the organisation heard from Salazar, whose bill would increase enforcement resources at the US borders while allowing unauthorised immigrants without criminal records who have been in the country more than five years to earn legal status if they pay taxes and $US7,000 in restitution.<\/p>\n

The bill would expedite the asylum process but would hold asylum seekers in \u201chumanitarian campuses,\u201d rather than releasing them into the US while they wait for a court decision, as has been the practice for decades. It would pay for U.S. citizens to receive workforce training, funded by the immigrants\u2019 restitution payments. It would also make changes to immigration visas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s never been a more conservative proposal. None ever, ever, ever,\u201d said Rodriguez. \u201cThis does not grant citizenship. This is the opposite of amnesty.\u201d Instead, he said, it offered the chance for immigrants who have entered illegally to work legally. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to live in fear,\u201d he said. \u201c\u200aIt gives people dignity, and that dignity status to me is beautiful. It\u2019s because we\u2019re all created in the image of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rodriguez did not express confidence in the bill\u2019s swift passage. \u201c\u200aRight now I think I have faith, and hopefully that faith will convert to hope, because faith is the conviction of things hoped for and the assurance of things not seen.\u201d He said \u201cthe same administration that brought an end to a war in Gaza\u201d was capable of immigration reform, calling it \u201ca layup in comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n

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