What's left to tithe? - Here's an oddity brought to our attention by Stephen over at ChristWeb.
Apparently it's ok for illegal aliens to sneak into the United States but not for Christians to go to church across the border.
What in the world am I talking about? Well, Stephen points us to a news piece by the Associated Press on Yahoo!® News titled: Man Fined $10,000 for Going to Church.
The AP article reads:
TOWNSHIP 15 RANGE 15, Maine - A resident in this remote northern Maine outpost along the Quebec border says he is being fined $10,000 for doing something he has done most his life: Going to church.
Richard Albert, 52, said the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection recently notified him that he faces two $5,000 fines for twice crossing from Quebec into Maine on a Sunday when the local border crossing station is closed.
Albert's home is 30 yards on the Maine side of the border, right beside the U.S. Customs office. But the church is on the Canadian side of the border, which means he has to cross the boundary illegally to attend church services.
Albert has attended church across the border for sometime. But it turns out that the U.S. guard station is always closed on Sunday. So until recently he just drove around the locked gate that was placed across the road back in May. Three weeks ago a security camera caught him going around the gate coming back into the U.S. and so the feds have levied a ten thousand-dollar fine against him.
Charles Grandmont for Reuters has a similar report on Yahoo!® News titled: Cross-Border Church Visit Costs Man $10,000. He writes that:
Two days later, Albert was summoned to the customs office, where an officer told him he had been caught on camera crossing the border illegally.
He hasn't gone to church since.
Of course the excuse from the border patrol is probably something like, 'We're just protecting the U.S. from people that shouldn't be crossing the border into the US when an agent isn't present.'
I hope someone informed the real bad guys of this fact. Because we all know they wait to cross when the boarder station is occupied.
U.S. citizens are penalized for trying to get back into their own country, but illegal immigrants are given what amounts to a free pass into the U.S.
It's an awful double standard that makes no sense at all. But then we are talking big government.
The Great Separation continues.
