Week 11-Opinion Article

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMMIGRATION_RALLIES?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-03-25-02-15-35

The news this weekend is full of tens of thousands of people marching against Congress' proposed crackdown on illegal immigration. Congress is considering making it a felony to be in this country illegally.( currently it is not a crime, even though it is against the law to be here illegally all that happens is that the person is returned to their country of origin. ) Congress is also considering extending the current border wall with Mexico 700 more miles .

"Enough is enough of the xenophobic movement," said Norman Martinez, 63, who immigrated from Honduras as a child and marched in Los Angeles. "They are picking on the weakest link in society, which has built this country." According to a PrincetonU web defintion, the meaning of xenophobic is : "suffering from xenophobia; having abnormal fear or hatred of the stranger or foreigner wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn" Obviously that is not what we are talking about here. There is no abnormal fear or hatred of strangers. There IS a desire to get a serious problem under control, namely, restrict the influx of illegal immigration into this country, the vast majority of which occurs across the US-Mexico border. MILLIONS of people come to this country illegally each year, and that is outrageous. The article goes on to say : " But many protesters rejected the national security claim, noting that the legislation would hurt Hispanics the most. " It hurts Hispanics the most because they make up the largest group of illegal immigrants. Most of the countries to the south of the US are Spanish speaking, if people are crossing the southern border illegally it would be a reasonable assumption that they might be Hispanic. They are the largest segment in the illegal immigrant group.

And as far as any so called "amnesty" program for people who've been here illegally for a certain number of years, that has to be the most foolish idea I've yet heard on this subject. Why not just tell everyone who might like to come to the US, 'just get into the country anyway you can, and sooner or later, if you can hide long enough, we'll say everything is forgiven and make you a citizen'. If that doesn't send the number of illegal immigrants soaring, nothing would.

No nation can afford to have unsecured borders, and certainly not the US, which has huge numbers of persons sneaking into it. Congress should pass this law, make it a felony to be here illegally, and send illegals packing. No more amnesty. And to stop the 'revolving door', build a wall to help stem the horde of illegals from just turning around and coming back in. Until Congress takes serious steps to address the problem, it will only continue to get worse.