While Touching, Protest Was No Civil Rights March

It is one thing to fill columns and radio shows with bold views about tough laws and tough borders to stem illegal immigration.

It is a wholly different thing to look into the eyes of a man standing beside his wife and two small children, knowing that if I had my way, the whole lot of them might be shipped right back across the border to Mexico.

Walking among the protesters Sunday in downtown Dallas put my head on a collision course with my heart. My brain knows that our porous borders have created problems for our economy, our culture and our national security.

But how am I supposed to feel as I talk to this man holding his baby son, as his wife tends to another son in a stroller?

His two children, born in America, are U.S. citizens. He and his wife are not. As such, supporters of strong immigration laws are often tagged with the stigma of seeking to "tear families apart."

What a curious placement of responsibility. I also favor the laws against bank robbery. Am I anti-family for suggesting that a single dad who robs a bank needs to go to jail and that he should have thought of the kids before committing the crime?

I know there is a difference between a bank robber and a bricklayer who came to America for a better life, but both are matters of law, a point overlooked by many in Sunday's march.

The signs painted a picture of a crowd that wished to be favorably compared to civil rights marches of the 1960s. "We have a dream, too," said one, invoking the imagery of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

Not so fast. One can take whichever side one wishes in the immigration debate, but that comparison, clung to by speaker after speaker across America this week, is an offense to history and morality.

The civil rights marchers of past generations sought to stop the mistreatment of American citizens by their own government. The marches we have seen this week embrace the goal of having illegal behavior rendered legal, currently and retroactively.

That's why the "A" word still packs a punch. Those seeking - at a bare minimum - the enforcement of current immigration laws energetically attach the label "amnesty" to the guest worker bill and any cousin of that measure that allows illegals to remain with relative impunity.

With Congress in recess, members are in their home districts getting a snootful of public opinion from all sides. The question they wrestle with this week surrounds how much attention to pay to hundreds of thousands of people in a march.

The marches are impossible to ignore and impossible to measure in terms of real political power. For starters, how many of the amnesty-loving throngs from coast to coast can even vote?

Of those who can, how many will? And what of the Hispanics who did not march because they do not agree with softening our borders or our laws?

A Pew Hispanic Center poll last summer revealed 34 percent Latino opposition to illegal immigration. When do those folks take to the streets?

And why isn't that number far higher? If there's anyone who should be frosted by the notion of a big welcome for those who skirted the law to get here, it's those who obeyed the law to get here.

So, as you can tell, the march did not change my mind. I was truly touched by the massive show of American flags, the attitudes and work ethic of the people I spoke with and the upbeat, peaceful nature of most of the day.

But at the end of any day, we have to figure out what's best for the people who are already Americans. That will probably involve some sliding scale of consequences, depending on the circumstance of each illegal alien. Individuals freshly across the border will need to go back. Families like the ones I met probably will be accommodated in some way.

But no matter what we do with those who are already here, we must learn from the mistake of our border laxitude and start on the virtual or literal wall that will ensure we do not repeat it.