The Times is in no way happy about how the debate on immigration reform is going, judging by the tone, bothpathetic and inflammatory, of Tuesday's lead editorial, "The Great [1]Immigration Panic [1]."
The Times trembles at how the future will judge this wicked generation, who favor secure borders and insist on enforcement of the laws of the land.
Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don't mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.
A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.
What "nation" would that be? The senitmental label appears to be the paper's attempt to enoble the diaspora of mostly Mexican immigrants. Are illegal immigrants not free to return home and "live lawfully" there?
The Times makes legally justified raids sound like the Gestapo coming for you in the dark of night:
An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. After the largest raid ever last month - at a meatpacking plant in Iowa - hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison....The restrictionist message is brutally simple - that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope.