NRO's Andy McCarthy pretty well sums up the current state of the raging argument about illegal immigration.
[S]lings and arrows like “interlopers” and “invaders” don’t turn the temperature down, but I’m not sure the temperature ought to be turned down. The people on the pro-side of the immigration question have not been engaging in rational argument. Their rhetoric is Orwellian. They rationalize illegality as if it were somehow a social good and rig the game in a way that brazenly screws the law-abiding -- and they put on airs that assume the rest of us are too stupid to see through it all.Posted by Alan at April 11, 2006 12:10 PMThen, to add insult to injury, they are enabling these demonstrations in which people who came here understanding the deal was that their presence was unlawful now have the nerve, not to respectfully request, but to claim entitlement to be regularized. Meanwhile, the schmucks who try to do it the lawful way – much like the Americans who try to comply with the Byzantine rules for dealing with legal immigrants, and the Americans who have to pick up the tab for the exorbitant added welfare state subsidies for illegals – are left out in the cold, with the message that the only way to get America’s attention is to break her laws.
I’m a New Yorker with an immigrant heritage. I did not start out whipped up by this issue. But I’ve gotten angry listening to this jive, and I can understand why other people have, too. You can only have your intelligence insulted like this for so long -- and by your leaders, no less, telling you it's all for your own good.