So says the Dallas Morning News.

Why?

The illegal immigrant is the waiter serving margaritas at our restaurant table, the cook preparing our enchiladas. He works grueling hours at a meatpacking plant, carving up carcasses of cattle for our barbecue (he also picks the lettuce for our burgers). He builds our houses and cuts our grass. She cleans our homes and takes care of our children.

All jobs, of course, that no American wants to do.

Why else?

Antonio resented any suggestion that he should consider returning home or that illegal immigrants don’t belong here. He seemed to regard his presence here as exercising a right.

It is the illegal immigrant’s right to violate our laws.

Here is a headline to consider:

Migrant activists manage few wins

So here are a couple of questions:

• What exactly is a “migrant activist”?
• What is a win for a migrant activist?

The article for the above headline reveals a great deal about these questions. Apparently, a migrant activist is someone who promotes breaking laws they see as unfair. They are considered heroes for this by the media and a small minority of voters. They cannot generate enough support to make any changes to the law, so they openly break them or advocate same.

Along this line of thinking, consider the following as new terms for some other law breaking industries:

• Coca Activist
• Identity Relief Activist
• Auto Appropriation Activist
• Self Investment Activist
• Almost Truth Activist
• Intimate Companionship Activist
• Population Reduction Activist

This is supposed to be a nation of laws, yet a “win” for “Migrant Activists” consists blocking the following legislation:

…adding new roadblocks to the U.S.-Mexico border fence and delaying the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Democrats used their majority to block proposals to punish sanctuary cities, to add more funding to go after smuggling-observation posts on U.S. soil and to expand workplace enforcement. They also refused to withdraw funding from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit challenging the Salvation Army’s English-in-the-workplace policy.

But what could Democrats have been doing with their majority instead of blocking legislation designed to make the borders more secure, expand enforcement, and deter smugglers?

Democrats did not secure an expansion of temporary work visas for programs such as the H-2B seasonal foreign-worker category, and he said they failed to deliver any broader agreements to decide the status of illegal aliens or streamline current legal immigration.

If Congressional Democrats put the kind of energy into expanding the guest worker programs already in existence, instead of using their considerable power to perpetuate a dangerously porous border, there would be no need for “migrant activists”. These Democrats and the migrant activists are perpetuating the deaths in the desert. Rather than work hard to create a means by which seasonal workers can come through border checkpoints in air-conditioned buses, they advocate the need for people to enter the country, illegally, through the grueling, hot desert.

Here is the paraphrase:

We should respect illegal immigrants more than lazy American young people because the illegals are more willing to be exploited to do our menial labor.

This refers to an article by a would-be politician, Aaron Maloy, who states he wants to continue the work of Rep. Shirley Gomes (R-MA). I guess you have to admit the destruction of social services and schools while making a case for illegal immigration to get elected as a Republican in Mass. You also have to blame the citizens using elitist hyperbole.

How many times have we heard the Republican Presidential candidates scapegoat undocumented workers for their own selfish political gain? Enough. And enough IS enough. When watching clips from candidate town hall meetings and debates you are likely to see undereducated rednecks and young college graduates asking the candidates questions like “What will you do to stop the illegal immigrant terrorists,” (as if they go hand in hand) “What is your plan to send all 13 million illegals back to where they came from,” etc, etc. What do they both have in common? Joblessness.

Aaron, First of all, you presume too much. Truly, when was the last time you saw a jobless redneck or a jobless, over-educated 20-something at a town hall meeting? You are trying to pigeon-hole a vast majority of Americans into your elitist definition of redneck and overeducated, but underemployed. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (so not NewsMax), 89% of Americans define illegal immigration as problematic. That is one heck of a lot of rednecks.

Secondly, your statements are really not something you can translate into policy. You cannot simply accept the factual destruction of social services and the ruination of the state’s education system as an acceptable by-product of the emotional respect for people who are willing to break our laws to make a buck.

Also, with the prospect of fewer jobs, fewer illegal immigrants are willing to make the very dangerous trip across the border illegally. This will mean a good deal to us, as an estimated $20 billion (some say 30) a year is transfered out of the country by people who are working in the US illegally.

Finally, you should be appalled at the ease with which employers of day laborers are able to exploit illegal immigrants doing back-breaking work for your quoted 5 or 6 dollars an hour. You should also be appalled by the safety risks to employing so much unskilled labor to do things like frame your potential constituents’ houses, office complexes, and such. With the elitist view that Americans have way to much money and time on their hands, the excuse for illegal immigration as a means to keep products cheap is pretty ridiculous as well. Perhaps we can afford it after all.

You are right on one thing: Enough is enough, Aaron. It is high time Americans stop making excuses for creating yet another bigoted class system in the US. There are no valid reasons to accept illegal immigration. None.

UPDATE: A commenter to this article notes that FAIR may not be the best source of impartial information regarding illegal immigration - or immigration at all, for that matter. I don’t know anything about them, so let me give you some better sources of the huge majority of Americans who find illegal immigration problematic.

Compared to other problems facing the country, eighty-one percent of registered voters nationwide say illegal immigration is an important problem facing the country.
Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll; November 30-December 3, 2007

Sixty-three percent of likely American voters believe illegal immigration is a major problem. McLaughlin & Associates poll; April 12-15, 2007

Fifty-nine percent of Americans polled believe the more effective way to deal with the potential treat to national security posed by millions of illegal immigrants living within the United States is to crack down on illegal immigration by toughening the enforcement of existing laws, deporting illegal immigrants and prosecuting the employers who illegally employ workers.
UPI/Zogby Poll; April 13-16, 2007

There are dozens of similar polls with similar results.

There are a number of hard-working people who enter the country illegally. I have always contended that you don’t start your citizenship in this country with a crime. I hear it all the time - these are hard working people - they’re not criminals. Since when does hard work make somebody immune to criminal activities?

Although this debate has become mostly about people who enter the US via Mexico (whether Mexican or OTM), the US is a haven for illegal immigrants from many countries. And while the proponents of illegal labor are mostly looking for the exploitable kind of workers - manual and unskilled - illegal immigrants span every industry and many levels. Illegal workers are in industries such as IT, Hospital, food service, food manufacturing, to name a few.

The question of what to do about the 12-odd million illegal immigrants already in the US becomes more important with each passing year - with each passing illegal population benchmark. No one wants to be a bad guy and say anything controversial. But the truth of the matter is, we have no idea who is in our country. We have no way to control who enters and who stays illegally.

I hear a lot about giving illegal immigrants a “path to citizenship”. Let me show you a few examples of people who would get a path to citizenship:

Kesi Cole is being held on $750,000 bail at the minimum security jail for women in Burlington County.

Investigators have determined that Kesi Cole is a native of Trinidad and an illegal immigrant because she did not fill out the required paperwork to be in the U.S. legally, police said.

An illegal immigrant charged in connection with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old Millville girl last year is expected to plead guilty in court this afternoon to aggravated sexual assault.

In August, deputies announced that another suspect, Luis Miguel Beltran Gonzalez, 25, had been booked on three counts of first-degree-murder and alien smuggling.

Investigators described all four suspects as undocumented immigrants who are believed to be frequent border crossers.

So, who gets a path to citizenship. Those who have only committed one federal crime or those who have already committed more crimes we don’t know about yet? People who come into your house unannounced through the back door are considered part of your family, right?

Citing an inevitable “climate of fear” among illegal immigrants, Alex Navidad, an immigration lawyer and illegal immigration advocate, makes the following threat to the City of Phoenix:

Changing Phoenix police’s immigration-enforcement policies will create a climate of fear in Phoenix that could lead to multimillion-dollar lawsuits and even riots, speakers said Thursday at a raucous town hall.

And

Don’t let Phoenix become the next Watts, the next LA riots,” Alex Navidad, an immigration lawyer, said in an impassioned plea to the panel. “That’s what’s going to happen. A community that’s fearful, with loads of police, can only lead to tragedy.”

So, create a climate of fear through threats of lawsuits and riots simply because the city wants to institute a policy which allows them to ask a simple question during their interactions with people requiring police attention. The question is, “Are you a US citizen?”

Hillary is having a tough time with a policy decision regarding giving driver licenses to illegal immigrants. It seems, she is not quite sure what her policy should be:

First, Hillary is for the measure, if Governors are for it. Maybe.

October 16, Hillary supports Spitzer’s actions to spark action at the federal level to bring illegal immigrants out of the dark.

October 30, Hillary states Spitzer is proposing the illegal immigrant driver’s license because President Bush has not signed any bills into law bringing about immigration reform - omitting that her party, which controls both houses, has been unable to present such a bill to the president. Then she retracts her support of the measure in the same debate. then she supports it again.

October 31 - she Supports the measure

November 2 - she supports it generally, but doesn’t know all the details

November 4 - She’s not for or against it, but she supports Governor Spitzer’s efforts because it is President Bush’s fault.

November 13 - She supports it depending on what state it’s in.

November 14 - “As President, I will not support drivers’ licenses for undocumented people and will press for comprehensive immigration reform that deals with all of the issues around illegal immigration including border security and fixing our broken system.”

What is most interesting to me is she acknowledges in the November 13 interview that there are a great number of people in her home state who are not there legally. If she knows they are breaking the law, why does she not call for the law to be enforced? Isn’t one of the first rules of life in our society that if you don’t like a law, you change it - not break it? Is that not her first duty to the constituents of her state?

The DREAM Act would ensure children who were brought into the United States before they were 16 by their illegal immigrant parents had a path to citizenship. The path being that the children “planned” to attend college or “planned” to join the military.

First, I can understand why it was called the DREAM Act. Whoever proposed this insidious piece of legislation must have been dreaming to think it would get enough votes to pass. But you can’t ignore the insidious nature of this proposal. The lack of any manageable criteria on the part of the child makes this proposal untenable. How do you enforce someone’s plans to go to college or the military? What if they do nto qualify for either, do we allow them to take that path to citizenship because they had good intentions? Additionally, this proposal creates an entire new class of anchor babies. A measure such as this would actually increase illegal immigration to the United States, as it provides an incentive with no cost.

What proponents of this measure hope to achieve is break down the arguments against amnesty, one demographic group at a time. If you are born here, you are a citizen. Next, if you are brought here you can become a citizen. After that it will be, if you brought someone you can be a citizen. The goal of these guys is to create generations of people completely dependent on government for their very lives. This is how they intend to stay in power.

Another wonder I have about this legislation - Democrats are always lamenting about the possible plight of anchor babies in the US. Why would they propose to create more?

Secure the border first. After that we can discuss what to do about those illegal immigrants already here - I’m open to all kinds of ideas, maybe even some form of amnesty. To the Lefties, you can keep DREAMing, but we are not buying what you have to sell.