It Depends on What Your Definition of the Word 'Illegal' Is

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Imagine getting into a debate with someone who suggested that driving while under the influence of a substance was no different than driving sober. The debate wouldn’t get very far, would it?

This is the very reason that the illegal immigration debate has gotten nowhere in the United States. One side is opposed to illegal immigration; the other side doesn’t think that there’s a difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration and has simply classified both under the “immigration” banner.

I noticed this situation about two years ago while discussing the issue when the brouhaha in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, erupted. Critics of Mayor Lou Barletta’s crackdown on illegal immigrants were routinely referring to “immigrants” as opposed to “illegal immigrants.”

A few days ago there was a protest in San Francisco over Mayor Gavin Newsom’s illegal immigrant sanctuary program which helped to hide an illegal immigrant from ICE agents after two arrests. The illegal immigrant then murdered three people.

Maria L. LaGanga of the Los Angeles Times reports:

A small group of Minuteman Project activists demonstrated Wednesday against this city’s sanctuary policy, but their call for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ouster was drowned out by hundreds of chanting immigration rights supporters.

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal-immigrant group, stepped inside City Hall, where he told reporters that Newsom should resign because of “his endorsement and support of sanctuary city status that led to the horrific slayings of the Bologna family.”

Newsom, he said, is “indirectly” responsible for the June 22 deaths of Anthony Bologna, 48, and his sons Matthew, 16, and Michael, 20, who were gunned down in their Honda Civic while heading home from a family get-together.

Three days later, police arrested Edwin Ramos, 21, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with alleged ties to the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Police initially said the killings occurred after Bologna inadvertently blocked Ramos’ car on a narrow street and the suspect pulled up and started shooting.

But Lt. Michael Stasko, head of the San Francisco Police Department’s homicide unit, said Monday that the killing was probably a “gang-related” case of mistaken identity and “had nothing to do with road rage.”

[…]

The slayings drew national attention last week after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ramos had been convicted of felonies twice as a juvenile. Because of the sanctuary city policy, however, he was never handed over to federal immigration authorities.

[…]

Retired San Francisco probation officer Judith Terracina was one of a dozen or so Minuteman supporters in front of City Hall on Wednesday. Although she is not a member of the group, she said she approved of its efforts to overturn sanctuary city policies.

In the adult probation department, she said, “we had big issues regarding illegal aliens. The issue had to do with our hands being tied. We were ordered not to report them” to federal immigration authorities.

[…]

Renee Saucedo, an attorney with an organization called La Raza Centro Legal, appeared at the protest “to send a message that we…represent inclusiveness and acceptance and not hate and scapegoating.”

Before I get to my main point, something else that caught my attention in this story was the comment made by Lt. Michael Stasko. The killings weren’t road rage; they were probably just gang-related. Does this somehow make the killings okay? Has gang warfare reached a level in San Francisco that a gang-related murder is as commonplace as parking tickets? Does it matter if a triple-homicide were road rage-related or gang-related?

With that out of way, I wanted to point out the sign that is being waved in the photograph above, which is an AP photo that was used in the Los Angeles Times story. It reads “no one is illegal.” Really? People who are here illegally aren’t actually illegal?

It’s not the first time that this idea was used in the illegal immigration debate. A little over a year ago I saw a photo of a sign which read “There’s no such thing as illegal.” In January, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said, “No woman is illegal,” during a campaign stop in Las Vegas after a man in the audience commented that his wife was an illegal immigrant.

In the photo section of Yahoo! News, an AP photo of Cindy Sheehan at the San Francisco protest (I guess that this is her new issue du jour) has a caption which refers to her walking “through a crowd of immigration supporters.” It doesn’t mention that they’re illegal immigration supporters—just immigration supporters.

I’m in full support of legal immigration. I have an uncle who became an American citizen after having grown up in Vietnam. He followed the procedures to gain this citizenship.

This debate isn’t going to get anywhere because one side is simply in denial—or they’re just that ignorant—of the issue at hand: the illegal nature of the immigration in question. If we begin to equate illegal acts with legal acts we might very well start to see drunk driving equated to driving legally or rape equated to consensual sex.

References

Ball, Molly. “Las Vegas Stop: Clinton Pitch Hits Home.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. 11 Jan. 2008.

LaGanga, Maria L. “Minuteman Project Protests San Francisco’s Sanctuary Policy.” Los Angeles Times. 31 July 2008.

“U.S.-Mexico Border Issues.” Yahoo! News Photos. 30 July 2008.

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