Immigration Laws Should Be Enforced

By The Intelligencer

Throughout the United States on Tuesday, “immigration rights” groups staged demonstrations demanding, in effect, that the nation tell 12 million people who broke our laws that all is forgiven — that they should be given the same rights as citizens who came to this country legally and obeyed its laws before going through naturalization proceedings.
That is objectionable enough to many Americans — but another demand of the protesters this week is even more outrageous, in a way. Along with insisting on citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the United States, many of the demonstrations also demanded an end to enforcement of current immigration laws. Specifically, the protesters want federal agencies to stop conducting raids on businesses that employ large numbers of illegal aliens.

President Bush and some members of Congress have indicated that they indeed do want to offer citizenship to those already in the United States illegally. Public outcry may be the only thing that has prevented such action. But, Bush and most members of Congress, to judge by their actions in providing more tools to enforce current immigration laws, are not in favor of simply throwing our borders open and doing nothing to regulate immigration in the future. In that, they are in agreement with the vast majority of Americans. Many of the protesters on Tuesday made it clear that they do not agree with enforcement — period.

That is unfortunate, but it also indicates that the open borders crowd will be satisfied with nothing less than scrapping each and every law on the books concerning immigration. Citizenship for the 12 million illegal aliens already here might well be a first step toward that — and as such, is not acceptable.