Oskar Schindler where are you?

A fine piece in today’s Trib about the discussions between LDS Church leaders and our legislators. I read a number of the online comments in Trib Talk and note the significant amount of anti immigrant feeling. It is a hot button for many here in Utah and the US.

It is clear to me that the argument for the rule of law, and how it must be enforced with regard to the undocumented, is nothing more than a masquerade for racial bigotry. America has a long history of ethnic prejudice toward yellow, brown, and black minorities, as it has been manifested in our immigration laws. See my earlier post on that topic. I look at the list of bills being sponsored by various legislators here in Utah and elsewhere and recall from readings of prewar Nazi German history they are much in a similar vein and type as the Nuremburg Laws. These laws deprived Jews within the Third Reich of all their civil rights. Eventually more than 6 million would die in the gas chambers. (Let me remind you we had our own concentration camp here in Utah for Japanese Americans during WWII.)

When Bush was in Israel recently he was asked why it was the allies did not bomb the rails leading to the concentration camps. He could not answer and others have offered only lame excuses to date. It is time for more voices to be heard urging compassion and decency. We need to have the Oskar Schindlers of our culture stand up and put an end to the legislative efforts by our representatives to marginalize, demonize, and criminalize those that are the least among us. Governor Huntsman why was not this part of your State of the State message, don't you care?

For those who cry foul over LDS involvement in this debate I say this is fish. The LDS Church leadership must continue to speak out on matters of human rights and dignity. If they did not take a stand on this issue would they be any different than how the Vatican behaved during the holocaust? Why were they afraid to step across some artificial line to condemn the atrocities of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis? The National Council of Catholic Bishops has it right this time and we can learn from them.

Please step forward Oskar Schindler and thank you Elder Ballard.