Jordan’s post below observes the divisions among evangelicals on the hot-button issue of immigration. Its divisiveness—cutting across the usual lines of conservative/liberal and Democrat/Republican—has made the immigration debate an unusual and therefore extraordinarily interesting one.

The issue also divides Catholics. Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony has been among the most promising national voices in favor of immigrant rights. But ments have not gone unchallenged among Catholics. Activist Jim Gilchrist denounced Mahony’s views. Kathryn-Jean Lopez at NRO questioned them more delicately. But then Larry Kudlow, another Catholic and another conservative NRO writer, without explicitly supporting Mahony, wrote a very pro-immigrant piece (cited also by Jordan).

I don’t pretend to have the answers to this huge plicated problem, but I do think that any contribution to the debate ought to balance two passion toward immigrants (legal and illegal) and respect for the rule of law. I share the strong pro-immigrant views evident in the public interventions made by Catholic officials such as Mahony and Bishop Gerald Barnes of the USCCB.

But these officials’ minimizing of the issue of law is disturbing. As everyone knows, in the vast majority of cases immigrants enter the United States in pursuit of economic betterment. And as Kudlow says, who can blame them? Is it not also obvious that one indispensable pillar of this country’s relative prosperity is its relatively vigorous rule of law? Any immigration reform that ignores that fact will be counterproductive in the long run. Bishops Barnes, to his credit, notes the importance of normalizing immigrants’ legal status. But he and Cardinal Mahony not only fail to recognize the importance of enforcing immigration law as the flip-side of that coin—they explicitly oppose it. This is incoherent. What is the value of being a “legal” immigrant if there is no penalty for being an “illegal” one?