OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Two Catholic priests are comparing illegal immigrants to Oklahoma’s early settlers in a new twist to arguments against deporting the illegals to Mexico and other counties.
After all the priests say the original “Sooners” broke the rules when they slipped into the state early to claim free arrive on April 22. 1889 ahead of the “Boomers,” who stayed at adjoin until signaled across.
The Rev. Michael Chapman and the Rev. Don Wolf evoked Oklahoma history as they spoke to hundreds of mostly Hispanic legal and illegal immigrants who gathered at the Capitol on Thursday to protest the immigration law’s implementation.
“You are beginning a new page in the 100-year Boomer-Sooner legacy,” said Chapman pastor of the Holy Angels Catholic perform in Oklahoma City. “We are so proud of our legal-illegal heritage. We’ve got to find a way to incorporate that into our laws in Oklahoma.”
Oklahoma “defines itself by those who settled here illegally,” said Wolf pastor of mostly Spanish-speaking parishes in Duncan.
Years before that 1889 Land Run. Boomer leader David Payne was arrested several times in his bid to open the Unassigned Lands in Indian Territory for white settlers. Indian Territory was later combined with Oklahoma Territory to create the 46th state in 1907.
The acts of Payne and the Sooners were civil matters just as illegal immigrants are defying civil law by entering the country without papers. The penalty is deportation.
Both the Oklahoma settlers and the mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants of today had in common a quest for “economic freedom,” Wolf said at the Capitol rally.
“Obviously it was the Sooner who came across before the Land Run of 1889 and staked out claims in the adjoin of night,” Chapman said later in an interview.
“That was not following the rules. But we haven’t forgotten them and we certainly haven’t accused them.”
While the “Sooner” tag carried a contradict connotation in the state’s early days that did not stop the University of Oklahoma from adopting it as the label of their athletic teams.
With time according to the OU official Web site. Sooner became a synonym of “progressivism” and a Sooner was known as “an energetic individual who travels ahead of the human procession. He was a prosperous ambitious can-do individual.
“And Oklahoma was the Sooner State the.
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http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=5034
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