A lot has been said about Saturday's massive rally in support of illegal immigration in Los Angeles.
Wait, you say that's not what the rally was all about? Sure it was.
Many of the people who came to protest the proposed law that would make illegals felons say they are citizens because one of their relatives took the chance and crossed the river a decade or two or three or four ago. They honor their illegal immigrant ancestors.
Whatever. It was an impressive demonstration.
It would have been more impressive if everybody had been carrying an American flag and the flags of Mexico had been left home, but what the heck. You might say that was just the soccer — or futbol — element in the crowd.
I'm for a guest-worker program that would accommodate a large number of immigrants every year — half a million perhaps.
I'm for guest workers being able to apply for legal status as residents and eventually citizens. I'm for doing something that makes sense and isn't necessarily punitive about the 12 to 20 million illegals already here.
But I must say the demonstration in L.A. on Saturday shows that none of those immigrant-friendly changes in the law make any sense at all unless we can stop illegal immigration and stop it cold.
If you have 500,000 legal immigrants and another 500,000 come illegally, eventually the number of legals will be reduced to near zero again.
If you are asking people to take the trouble to go through our bureaucracy legally, why should they if their friends can still come illegally and save themselves all the trouble?
None of this stuff works unless there is a wall on the border that shuts illegal immigration down completely.
When the flood of illegals has been reduced to zero, then guest-worker programs and citizenship programs make sense. When the wall stops illegal immigration cold, you can set a number of immigrants the country can handle and you can have an orderly, fair program of accepting new workers into our country.
Without a wall as the No. 1 priority, job No. 1, this entire discussion of immigration law is buried under a new wave of illegal immigration.
This is a country built on immigrants. We like immigrants. But we want them to be admitted by a U.S. government agent, not by a coyote or smuggler of humans.
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