Another illegal alien sob story

From today’s New York Times:

After a False Dawn, Anxiety for Illegal Immigrant Students

MILWAUKEE—It was exhilarating for Maricela Aguilar to stand on the steps of the federal courthouse here one day last summer and reveal for the first time in public that she is an illegal immigrant.

“It’s all about losing that shame of who you are,” Ms. Aguilar, a college student who was born in Mexico but has lived in the United States without legal documents since she was 3 years old, said of her “coming out” at a rally in June.

Those were heady times for thousands of immigrant students who declared their illegal status during a nationwide campaign for a bill in Congress that would have put them on a path to legal residence. In December that bill, known as the Dream Act, passed the House, then failed in the Senate.

President Obama insisted in his State of the Union address and in interviews that he wanted to try again on the bill this year. But with Republicans who vehemently oppose the legislation holding crucial committee positions in the new House, even optimists like Ms. Aguilar believe its chances are poor to none in the next two years.

That leaves students like her who might have benefited from the bill—an estimated 1.2 million nationwide—in a legal twilight.

STOP.

Aguilar and the 1.2 million others who would have been legalized by DREAM are not in any “twilight,” legal or otherwise. Their situation vis-à-vis U.S. law is perfectly is clear and unambiguous. They are illegally in the United States. Period. The fact that Aguilar has been breaking the law with every breath she breathes since she was three years old doesn’t change that situation by one iota.

Note also the dramatic structure of the story, by which the Times invents a new victim/identity class for us to feel guilty about: illegal aliens like Aguilar who, in the false afflatus of believing that they were about to succeed in their campaign to end any distinction between legal immigrants and illegal aliens and thus bust America’s borders wide open to the whole Third World, prematurely announced themselves to be illegal aliens, and are now worried because their illegal status is now known and they may have a problem with the authorities. Too bad. Aguilar should have been more circumspect. In fact, she shouldn’t be here at all.

Am I being uncompassionate? I am not. If there were only a handful of persons in Aguilar’s situation, if America were not undergoing a legal and illegal immigrant invasion from Aguilar’s own country, the leaders of which for many years have proudly stated that the United States is Mexican territory which is being rightfully repossessed by Mexicans, then there might be room for humane adjustments for individuals like her who have resided here illegally since childhood. But the reality is, we are being invaded by Aguilar’s country which is openly waging an irredentist war against us, and there are millions like her, and to make a humane adjustment for her is to surrender to Mexico’s campaign to subvert American law and take over large parts of the United States.

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Julian C. writes:

A nice observation (#169) in the comments section to this article: “The NYT is so biased it makes me mad. She has not “lived in the United States without legal documents” anymore than a car thief is “driving your car without legal documents.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 09, 2011 07:46 AM | Send