On April 7, the United States of America narrowly averted—or at least delayed—a disaster. Congress recessed without passing an immigration bill that would have provided a track to U.S. citizenship for well over 12 million illegal aliens. Whether Congress will cave in to the increasingly vocal illegal alien protest movement when they reconvene remains, as of this writing, to be seen. Among the factors holding back the Senate that day were hundreds of angry phone calls to Senators. For a change, middle America spoke loudly and clearly: “we do not want amnesty-for-lawbreakers!”  Maybe our Senators are keeping that in mind since they have to face the voters this November. Because if they sell this country out further, the 2006 elections will be a bloodbath. We The People will send incumbents packing in record numbers. (Well, one can always hope!)
    Unfortunately, stopping bad immigration bills is only part of the battle. Possibly not even the largest part. The real question is: “What, precisely, are we going to do with between 12 and 25 million illegal aliens?” What are we to do when they are being openly encouraged by their own government, via Mexican President Vicente Fox, and not exactly being discouraged by our political and corporate establishment?
    Trying to round them up and send them back to Mexico would create more problems than it would solve. Given the marches by illegals we’ve seen so far, we ought not kid ourselves into thinking they would go quietly.
    I have occasionally heard the argument, “Let’s penalize those who hire illegal aliens with stiff federal fines.”  That won’t happen. Corporations have developed an addiction to cheap labor, after all, and so, indirectly (in the form of lower prices), so has the American public. Even if cheap-labor jobs for illegals were to dry up, for the same reasons as above we shouldn’t think the illegals would just pack up and go home. The entitlement mentality doesn’t work that way. Probably their ringleaders have been watching the disintegration of France. They would conclude they have nothing to lose by orchestrating the same thing here. My guess is, if a federal effort to prevent businesses from hiring illegals was mounted, the illegals would take to the streets. We’d see cars torched here—maybe worse.

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