The Dallas Morning News has announced their "Texan of the Year," and their selection should make John McCain happy...
He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won't, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him.
We can't seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody's figured out how.
He's the Illegal Immigrant, and he's the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year--for better or for worse. Given the public mood, there seems to be little middle ground in debate over illegal immigrants. Spectacular fights over their presence broke out across Texas this year, adding to the national pressure cooker as only Texas can.
The Morning News says their selection doesn't glorify illegal aliens, but rather will encourage debate. I'm not buying it, especially given the last several paragraphs of their lengthy defense.
If critics are correct, we could be seeing the advent of the kind of fractiousness that bedevils public life in Canada and other nations where peoples who speak different languages, and come from different cultural backgrounds, live together only with mutual suspicion and unease.
On the other hand, perhaps the alarmists are wrong. Maybe these ambitious, hard-working immigrants, whatever their documentation, will write the next great chapter of a story that's still deeply American, though with a different accent. If the optimists are right, much work remains to be done to incorporate all immigrants fully into new cultural traditions.
We end 2007 no closer to compromise on the issue than when the year began. People waging a culture war--and that's what the struggle over illegal immigration is--don't give up easily. What you think of the illegal immigrant says a lot about what you think of America, and what vision of her you are willing to defend. How we deal with the stranger among us says not only who we Americans are today but determines who we will become tomorrow.
To the Dallas Morning News, our sovereignty is nothing more than a culture war. The influx of people who aren't supposed to be here doesn't speak to national security of the strength of our border security. Rather, it's a statement that people who want to close illegal immigration down are nothing short of racist. They say they're trying to encourage debate but, in reality, they're attempting to advocate on behalf of illegals and paint those of us who don't want them here as intolerant and uncaring.
This editorial by the Dallas Morning news is offensive and blatantly transparent.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
