I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and while I enjoyed the area for its diversity and its many fine choices for living, working, and entertainment, it has always had an aura on unreality. Angelenos literally demonstrated this yesterday by rallying a half-million people in favor of unsecured national borders in a time of war:

A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.' southern border.

Spirited but peaceful marchers — ordinary immigrants alongside labor, religious and civil rights groups — stretched more than 20 blocks along Spring Street, Broadway and Main Street to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting, "Sí se puede!" (Yes we can!).

Well, that description doesn't show any reportorial bias, does it? "Ordinary immigrants"? Believe it or not, this is a news report and not the start of an editorial. (I should mention that this is the Los Angeles Times.)

Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts.

Less than a half-million people demonstrated in California during the entirety of the Viet Nam War? Not only are Hector Becerra and Teresa Watanabe biased, but they can't write worth a damn either.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

I'm sure they think of it this way, but illegal immigrants have been getting a free pass in California for decades. The state has never had the will to actually do anything about cracking down on illegals and their access to government services. Proposition 187 passed overwhelmingly but got hijacked by the Ninth Circuit, and successive state governments have washed their hands of the problem ever since.

The problem isn't immigration or immigrants -- and they know it. The problem is illegal immigration, an uncontrolled wave of people flowing into the country. Even in peacetime this creates a huge problem for law enforcement and a host of government services, including education, welfare, and health care. In an era where Islamofascist terrorists seek entry to the country in order to attack it, the notion that our borders should be thrown wide open and immigration laws go unenforced is suicidal beyond imagination.

This country has always been the most welcoming of legal immigrants. My great-grandparents on my mother's side came here from Italy and Eastern Europe, and three generations before that my father's great-grandparents escaped the Potato Famine. In all cases, they managed to enter the country legally, respecting our laws from the outset of their relationship with America. No one is entitled to enter this country unless they follow those laws and meet the requirements.

I have some sympathy for the idea of guest-worker plans, but those only work once the borders have been secured. In truth, the marchers in LA don't believe in borders at all; the leaders of the "immigrant" community still believe that the southern border is illegitimate and that the Southwest was stolen from Mexico, and that they have an entitlement to cross them at will. That's what lies behind the march yesterday and the activism in Southern California that fights every effort to enforce border control. I have no sympathy for people who refuse to respect our borders and our laws, regardless if they march in the hundreds of thousands or not.

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» Illegal Immigration Watch: 500,000 Rally to Protest Immigration Bills from FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
Thousands Protest HR 4437 in Los Angeles. City Hall in background. Los Angeles Times: 500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest feder... [Read More]

Tracked on March 27, 2006 12:17 AM

» Protest This You Criminals! from Demonrats
Its been a month of protests. First all the uproar over the cartoon jihad had thousands of Muslims taking to the streets to protest (i.e. physically abuse people, burn and destroy property that isn’t theirs, scream death threats to any one and everyo... [Read More]

Tracked on March 27, 2006 7:34 AM