Cardinals back cry to ignore day of walkouts
WASHINGTON -- Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley yesterday joined his fellow Catholic leaders -- along with President Bush and the Senate's top Democrat -- in calling for immigrants to ignore plans for a nationwide day of walkouts to demonstrate the impact immigrants have on the economy and society.
O'Malley and two other US cardinals, Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Theodore McCarrick of Washington, said they feared that widespread participation in the work and school boycotts immigration activists have set for Monday could incite opponents who want to defeat a comprehensive immigration reform bill presently before Congress.
''Any kind of action or strategy that could give us a negative backlash of some kind is unhelpful in passing the legislation we need," Mahony told reporters at the Capitol, remarks O'Malley said later that he endorsed. ''We do best by having people at work, having students in school, but using time during Monday to learn more about the immigration issue."
President Bush said yesterday he does not support the boycott.
Senate minority leader Harry Reid concurred, predicting that the boycott will be ''very limited in nature" because so many Hispanic and religious leaders have spoken out against it.
''The wind has been taken out of its sails," said Reid, a Nevada Democrat. ''I personally feel that their time could be spent doing things like working and other such things."
The protest has divided immigration reform supporters.
Organizers believe the immigrants could dramatically affect the economy and flex some political muscle, while some allies fear it will further provoke the public and politicians who want to seal the borders and deport undocumented immigrants.
The cardinals were in Washington yesterday to discuss the immigration bill that's now deadlocked in the Senate. O'Malley urged Democratic and Republican senators to take advantage of the ''historic moment" when the nation's attention is focused on the immigration issue.
''As a country, we have benefited so much by the energy, the talent, the desire to work, and the desire to be Americans that our immigrants bring with them," O'Malley said. ''We're counting on a sense of American fairness, justice, and compassion to forge wonderful, bipartisan legislation that will benefit the entire country going forward."
Three weeks ago, Senate leaders from both parties said they had agreed on the framework of a bill that would allow most undocumented immigrants to stay and work legally in the United States and enter a path toward citizenship.
But that deal collapsed under criticism from conservative Republicans, as well as from some Democrats who questioned whether the bill would change significantly in talks with the House. In the House, Republican leaders favor a more hard-line approach, dismissing any provisions that would allow those who entered the country illegally to become citizens.
Reid has had regular talks with Senate majority leader Bill Frist in the past week to discuss the bill, and both leaders say they are making slow but steady progress. Reid said he has insisted that Frist commit to keeping the Senate bill largely intact in negotiations with the House.
Delays in his flight from Boston to Washington kept O'Malley from arriving in time to join the other cardinals in a meeting with Reid and top White House aides, including Karl Rove.
But he landed in time to sit down with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and with Frist, a former heart surgeon who told the cardinal that he lived in Boston for 10 years, during and after medical school at Harvard.
''You didn't pick up the accent," O'Malley joked.
''No, the accent's going to stay there," Frist quipped.
