Abstract
On December 16, 2005, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 4437, which threatened to further militarize the southern border and criminalize as felons undocumented immigrants and those assisting them in any way (Nevins 2002, 61–62, 68–69, 74, 78). Like Martin Luther King a generation ago, the Roman Catholic cardinal Roger Mahony instructed his priests to disobey HR 4437 if it became law, arguing that “denying aid to a fellow human being violates a higher authority than Congress—the law of God” (Fetzer 2006, 698). In 2007, competing interests in the US Congress continued to debate the content