Immig-Rant Revisited

I'm not going to say a whole lot on this subject, since I wrote a very long post about it a few months ago. But I did take note of a big story here in the Dallas area for the past couple of days. It involves the City Council of the north Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, which has a new issue on the table: A set of regulations that would make life a lot less comfortable for illegal immigrants:

City Council members had little to say Monday night about suggestions from two of their colleagues that they adopt measures that would make it harder for illegal immigrants to live and work in the city.
But their constituents had plenty to say in a work session marked by heckling and interruptions by both sides. Many opponents cried "racism," and many supporters said the measures had nothing to do with race and only aimed to make the city less attractive to people who are here illegally.

Several dozen residents crowded into the council chambers to discuss whether the city should restrict illegal immigrants through such measures as making it illegal for landlords to lease property to them; fining businesses that employ them; making English the city's official language; and halting funding for children of illegal immigrants to participate in Summer Funshine and other youth programs.

[...]Mayor Pro Tem Ben Robinson had more ideas. He suggested that the council also consider prohibiting the assembly of day laborers; requiring contractors to abide by all federal laws, including immigration laws; and having police who question the residency papers of people they encounter on traffic stops or accidents make copies of those documents and submit them to immigration officials.

Read the whole thing. As I said, I don't have much to say that wasn't already stated in my earlier post, except for this: The people who cried "racism" just showed that they really didn't have any argument of substance; their only hope was to use an often-powerful word that has, many times in the past, cowed people into not standing up for their beliefs, out of fear of being branded with this word.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. What does refusing to support criminal activity have to do with race? The misguided activists who cry "racism" at every turn still fail to see that it has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the people in question and everything to do with the lawlessness of their acts. As I asked last time, what part of "illegal" don't you understand? The paper may not have said anything about it, but callers to Ernie and Jay today noted that many of the people at the meeting who were in favor of the proposed policies were Hispanic--many of them people who came here legally from Mexico and are just as resentful of the freeloaders as anyone else. But you'll rarely see this in the mainstream media, because, in many cases, the people with the loudest voices, rather than the most reasoned ones, have taken over the debate.

Isn't it time to take that debate back? Sure, Farmers Branch will get sued by the ACLU if these regulations get passed; they've already threatened to do so in the news article. But if any idea deserves its day in court, it's this one...and maybe after a while, more and more people will refuse to be beaten back by those who would call them names just for standing up for the rule of law and the sovereignty of our nation.

This subject won't be going away anytime soon...