Illegal Immigration

WaPo:

Several hundred immigrant supporters and religious leaders from across the country marched to the Southwest Washington headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency yesterday, strumming guitars, beating drums and waving colorful homemade banners exhorting President Obama to halt immigration raids and promote legislation offering illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

I'm glad the euphemism of choice, undocumented worker, was not used in this passage. It makes stupid people think -- Why don't they have documents? That seems easily fixed; give them some documents.

I admit that the illegal immigration issue is complicated. Furthermore, I agree that most of the people who come here illegally are coming for work. However, that does not change the fact that they are breaking the law by coming here. If I rob a bank to pay for my daughter's heart transplant that is a better reason than for a Ferrari, but I still robbed a bank.

The correct argument is to say that immigration law should be made looser in the future, not to justify the breaking of the law in the past. The law is the law. Disagree with it or not.

The respect for the law is, in fact, one of the things that makes our multicultural, immigrant nation work. If we remove that respect for the current crop of immigrants we are undermining precisely what makes and has made this country great. So, arguing in favor of illegal immigrants not only undermines the law, but by extension the country and what will appeal to future immigrants.

Oh, sure. There'll still be immigrants who want to come here simply for work. But the ones we really want, the ones who admire American values, of which one of the most important is respect for and equality under the law, will be disheartened and discouraged.