It was billed as "A Day Without Immigrants." According to its propagandists, official and media, the purpose of the May Day walkout from schools and jobs and boycott of shops and stores was to show how much immigrants contribute and how they deserve appreciation and respect, and not to be treated like criminals.
But if this was all it was about, there would have been no need to go on strike. Americans have always welcomed immigrants. They are better treated here than anywhere on earth. While most Americans believe we now need a timeout to assimilate the 36 million here and their children like the moratorium we had in the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy years no one urges any denial of rights to legal immigrants.
What, then, was May Day really all about?
May Day was a strike against America. It was a show of force, a demonstration of raw street power to force the government of the United States into granting to 12 million illegal aliens, who have broken our laws and broken into our country, not only the full benefits of U.S. citizenship, but full citizenship.
It was brazen act of extortion to coerce Congress to grant amnesty now, and not to enforce our immigration laws or secure the Mexican border or to be ready for big trouble in the streets.
Congress cannot capitulate. The response of any Congress that calls itself American to such extortion should be a direct one:
"We are not intimidated. There is going to be no amnesty. The border fence goes up this summer. Those are our non-negotiable answers to your non-negotiable demands. Demonstrate all you want. We're not capitulating."
The message that would go out to the world would be electric: Congress will have said, first, that the United States will not be cowed by strikes or boycotts by law-breakers. Second, America intends to re-establish control of her border. Third, the invasion route from Mexico is going to be closed, forever.
Fourth, those who come to America henceforth will be those we invite in. And, as guests, they will behave as guests or they will be going back home. As for businesses that cannot get along without illegal foreign labor, if some of their CEOs are prosecuted and put to work in Arizona building that security fence, they will rapidly rediscover how to make a buck without colluding in an invasion of their country for commercial purposes.
We are at a turning point in American history. In July of 1954, President Eisenhower, discovering that illegal aliens were pouring into the Southern United States at a rate of a million a year, put in motion Operation Wetback, which halted the invasion and sent back scores of thousands of illegals to Mexico. Many more returned voluntarily.
Thirty years later, Ronald Reagan declared an amnesty for 3 million illegal aliens, conditioned on sanctions on U.S. businesses that did not cease to hire them. Following that amnesty, the flood began. Now we have 12 million illegals here.
Between 2000 and 2005, 4.5 million were caught at the border. Four million are believed to have gotten in. No one knows exactly how many. Even Bush concedes that, among the illegals, one in 12 has a criminal record. If we have 12 million illegals here now, that means the U.S. government, in dereliction of its duty, has let into this nation in the last 20 years 1 million criminals like Beltway sniper John Lee Malvo to prey on American citizens.
While almost half of all Mexicans, in a national poll, indicated a desire to move to the United States, the rest of the Third World has gotten the message. One in every 10 citizens of Central America and the Caribbean countries has already arrived. During the War on Terror, the number of those coming into the United States illegally from countries "other than Mexico" (OTM) has tripled.
These OTMs are coming from as far away as China and Iraq.
Fifteen years ago, when this writer ran in the California GOP primary against the first President Bush, calling for a border fence along the crucial 70 miles where illegals were massing and coming in by the thousands every day, there were 3 million to 4 million illegals here.
Nothing was done. There are now 12 million. If these 12 million are amnestied and the border fence is not built along all 2,000 miles, the next amnesty will be for 20 million or 30 million.
During the "Generals' Revolt," when half a dozen senior officers called for the firing of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush saw a challenge to his authority and had to throw it back. If Congress does not throw back this challenge, if Congress now capitulates to this extortion, America should start shopping for a new Congress in November an American Congress.