Language on illegals masks real issues

CHICAGO -- This week's large immigration rallies, led in numbers by the estimated 150,000 marchers here on historic May Day, showed some new attitudes of illegal aliens that, if they were thinking squarely, they would not want revealed.
The revelations come, as so often, with the language used in the rallies across the country, words and phrases such as "anger," "rights," "path to citizenship," "immigration nation" and "legalization for all immigrants." Finally, there is the curious, almost innocent refrain that "We are not illegals."
Anger? These hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens -- not the fashionable "undocumented," but the genuine "illegals" -- were angry because the country they had literally broken into, without showing that respect for the nation that proper documentation entails, dared anyone even to question their right to be here. Yet the only people who really have a right to be here are citizens who have solemnly pledged their troth to America, or visitors with proper visas or other appropriate papers.
Demanding a "path to citizenship" is yet another curious claim. The United States already has a path to citizenship; it is a road that starts with applying legally, waiting your turn, and earning citizenship according to America's needs and decisions, not your own.
Instead, these folks are demanding their own special shortcut. They demand citizenship because they want it. Anything else is the equivalent of a double-cross.
Nation of laws
Consider the phrases "immigration nation" and "legalization for all immigrants." The first, implying that the United States is primarily a nation of immigrants, has been used to death. Actually, ours is principally a nation of laws and sociologically a nation of citizens. Immigrants have usually been welcome, but only within the structures and limits of those two baselines of America: respect for the law and acceptance of the responsibilities of being a citizen.
But it is the final phrase -- "We are not illegals" -- that stands at the zenith of all the others. The dialogue of the entire immigration debate has become so convoluted and so filled with dishonesty that these "visitors" to the United States now really believe they are not illegal.
One young man in Los Angeles, where violence unfortunately broke out between the marchers and the police, went so far as to carry a sign saying, "There is no such thing as an Illegal." Doubtless this young man's mind was floating in some utopian world where no borders are necessary to order man's existence and where no man is an island.
Several changes stand out from the ebullient marches of the spring of 2006. Those marches, which were larger in numbers and were defined for many by the political mistake of marchers carrying Mexican flags and pictures of Che Guevara, were planned to show America it could not go "A Day Without Illegals."
This year's marches were far more demanding in their calls: that America accommodate them, not that they should accommodate, much less honor, America. Focus was on criticizing the recent deportations of illegals and, in particular here in Chicago, on recent police raids against ID fraud (perfectly legitimate, given the extent of the problem). Indeed, the idea underneath everything was that America was unbearably unfair and cruel to the "undocumented." But there were few Mexican flags this year -- they had learned.
Deportations
The most cynical change was the use of children to raise sympathy. As more illegals have been deported, it was inevitable that families would be split up. This is always sad, often regretful, sometimes a tragedy. But let's be real. The children left behind are here because their parents chose to give birth to them in America, most often as a way of staying themselves, as the parents of a citizen (under the 14th Amendment, every child born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen). Just visit any hospital on the American side of the border and hear the stories.
As Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff commented correctly early in the day: "We're sympathetic, but you have to understand it was the parents' choice to break the law."
In short, we are seeing a new lobby form, mostly Hispanic and potentially powerful in numbers.
Only a few years ago, we spoke of 3 million illegals in America, then 5 million. Today it is between 12 million and 20 million.
Universal Press Syndicate