THE DAILY BLADE: Proposed Regulations Will Tighten Religious Visa Requirements
Religious organizations are raising an unholy ruckus over proposed changes in religious worker visa regulations that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says would reduce rampant fraud in the program, reports The Washington Post:
[R]eligious organizations that increasingly serve immigrant populations cite a need to bring in workers with the spiritual, cultural and linguistic expertise to serve them.
Religious worker visas are used to bring in Catholic nuns, Hebrew teachers, Muslim imams and Baptist church administrators, among other workers. In 2006, more than 11,000 of the visas were issued, most to natives of Korea, Israel and India.
Religious organizations say no other visa category fits their workers as well, and they praise the current system for being relatively hassle-free: Religious workers get visas at U.S. consulates abroad or ports of entry. But the process might have invited fraud, immigration officials say. …
A 2005 Department of Homeland Security review of 220 religious worker petitions found that nearly a third had been falsified. … Last fall, federal immigration agents arrested 33 Pakistanis who held religious worker visas but who, in many cases, had no theological training and were working secular jobs.
The changes would require employers to file petitions in the United States before consulates could issue visas and to renew the visas more frequently. They would give notice of possible site inspections. Religious organizations say increased paperwork would make the process costly and cumbersome. Widespread site visits, rather than just to those whose applications raised red flags, would cause major delays, they say.
The latest National Intelligence Estimate warns that "Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here."
The report adds, "The arrest and prosecution by US law enforcement of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the United States – who are becoming connected ideologically, virtually, and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement – points to the possibility that others may become sufficiently radicalized that they will view the use of violence here as legitimate."
Considering that all over the U.S., there are camps training wannabe jihadis, madrassas teaching wahhabism (a fundamentalist, anti-Western form of Islam) and radical imams preaching jihad, it’s high time someone looked into whether the religious visa program is a conduit to funnel Muslim terrorists into the U.S.
The increased paperwork burden the new regulations impose on religious organizations is small price to pay to purchase enhanced national security for us all.
Point, Counterpoint: Atheism Against Faith
Books extolling the virtues of atheism authored by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are currently on The New York Times bestseller list, prompting dissenting commentary from Dinesh D'Souza, Stanley Fish and Michael Gerson, among others.
As Christopher Hitchens is the most reliably entertaining member of his team, he’s been the point man defending atheism on TV and in print. Most recently, Hitchens rebuts a piece in The Washington Post by former Bush 43 speechwriter Gerson, who starts by citing British author G.K. Chesterton’s argument that: "Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."
As far as The Stiletto is concerned, Gerson could have (and probably should have) stopped there. But he puts forth the proposition that, "If God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth, it would not, of course, mean that everyone joins the Crips or reports to the Playboy mansion." Gerson allows that, "On evidence found in every culture, human beings can be good without God" but adds:
Human nature, in other circumstances, is also clearly constructed for cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage, icy selfishness and a range of other less desirable traits.
So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.
Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: "Obey your evolutionary instincts" because those instincts are conflicted. "Respect your brain chemistry" or "follow your mental wiring" don't seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: "To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I'm going to do whatever I please."
Hitchens responds to Gerson in the WaPo the next day. The first thing that struck The Stiletto was that Hitchens does not make his case by quoting other atheists. Not that he needs this intellectual crutch, but he’d have to dig to find a really pithy, quotable atheist (other than himself) who didn’t eventually become a believer.
So here’s his case in his own words about "the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial dictatorship … which could also consign me to eternal worshipful bliss (a somewhat hellish idea) or to an actual hell":
Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the slaughter of other "tribes," the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation of sexual "deviants" and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of "deicide," the absurdity of "Limbo," the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice. …
Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.
Although he was taking on Richard Dawkins at the time, this Dinesh D'Souza post after the Virginia Tech shootings might serve to answer Hitchens’ first challenge:
Atheists are nowhere to be found.
Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. …The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. … Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul - well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where G-d is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way - molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
The Stiletto would love to see Hitchens and D'Souza go head-to-head. Just for the intellectual fireworks.
[Editorial Note: The Stiletto wonders what answer Hitchens would give to Phan Thi Kim Phuc - that 9-year old girl running naked down the highway after her village of Trang Bang was napalmed on June 8, 1972, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Nick Ut – who explains her conversion to Christianity this way: "Having lived with hatred, terror and corruption I know the value of faith and forgiveness."]
Wounded Warriors Project Needs Your Vote!
The Stiletto received a request from Wounded Warriors Project (WWP) that she would like to pass on to her readers:
ReZoom.com, a new Web site for "active baby boomers," is running a promotion called "A Better World" that will award $100,000 to a single charity and WWP is a finalist. Please visit ReZoom.com every day between now and August 10 and cast your vote for WWP. You will have to register on the Web site to vote (there is no cost involved), and are limited to one vote per day. And pass the word to your friends, co-workers and family!
For those who don’t already know, WWP is a non-profit organization that brings comfort and support to severely injured servicemen and women, and assists their transition from the hospital to an independent and productive life.
Excellent commentary on the new atheists! It hits the nail truly on the head.
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