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Reported an Illegal Immigrant Lately?
Places like the Park Cities get queasy when it comes to immigration law

Anybody riding through the Park Cities last Sunday afternoon — azaleas in bloom, people playing tennis down by Turtle Creek with banks of flowers all around them — would have been hard pressed to come up with the thought of immigration law and what should be done about it.

But they would also be hard pressed to find houses in a single block of Highland Park or University Park that have not made use of illegals from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America to keep their homes clean and their yards beautiful. Mexican immigration is as natural to Texas as barbeque.

But it will be a rare day if we ever see students from Highland Park ISD, like the ones in DISD, pouring out of their schools to protest against the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437) — popularly known as the Sensenbrenner Bill — making it a crime to aid immigrants and denying citizenship to the children of illegals born in this country. It doesn’t affect them a bit. At least not yet.

The fact is, Texas does very little to help illegals, unlike California, which supports many services for them at the expense of its taxpayers and fosters resentments in the process. But is our way better? Illegals who work here are not supposed to get sick? To educate their children?

By making illegals an integral part of our local economy, we assume a responsibility to repay their contributions to that economy with certain safeguards, which will be provided by voluntary agencies even if they are not provided by the state — whether Congress likes it or not.

While our Texas economy depends on legal and temporary immigrants, illegal immigrants are too often exploited. Some businesses like them because they get paid less, can’t complain, can’t file sex or other kinds of discrimination suits, and don’t get Social Security and other benefits. If illegal immigration were terminated, these businesses would find themselves having to operate in a competitive environment they have used illegals to avoid.

The fact is, even without the Sensenbrenner Bill, we have failed on our side of the implicit social contract that comes into being when we ask someone to perform a job we are unwilling to perform ourselves. This failure consists in allowing exploitation by unscrupulous employers and by not providing any social services beyond first aid. The president is right to try to correct this abuse.

On the other hand, a nation has to be able to define what it is and how it understands itself. It has to have some way to distinguish between what is and is not intrinsic to it. Not to be able to do so is like not having an immune system.

The new Senate Judiciary committee recommendations announced earlier this week strike a reasonable compromise on this matter. They do not grant a general amnesty to illegals, which would be a recipe for more abuses. They do allow those already present to stay here and work toward citizenship without having to leave — if they pay fines and back taxes, learn English, and meet other requirements.

Most of those protesting against the Sensenbrenner Bill over the past week have common decency and a sense of justice behind them. For those people, the compromise on this issue is a very generous solution. Behind some of the protests, though, lie deeper. Some unscrupulous people are trying to compare the illegals to the Palestinians — by claiming that this was Mexico before it was the United States, for example.

So are these illegal immigrants really coming to the United States because it’s been Mexico all along? Give us a break.

They’re coming because in some crucial respects, the United States is better than they think Mexico will ever be. That’s worth bearing in mind, too — and worth protecting.