What is it about liberals - and the Dead Fish Wrapper editors in particular - that they just don't get the word "illegal", as in illegal immigrants? Don't they understand that laws exist for a reason, and that, in the case of immigrants, breaking them means the law breaker should not be allowed to live here until they do obey the law? In another fine editorial today, the editors make the claim that we should not be building a fence along the border to keep illegal immigrants out.

That was fortuitous timing Thursday when President Bush met with Mexican president-elect Felipe Calderon, who takes office next month. Both men, we suspect, were feeling a bit touchy about fences. Both seemed in the mood to do some serious fence-toppling. Calderon was focused on the 700-mile fence the United States plans to build on the Mexican border, which many of his soon-to-be constituents find deeply insulting.

Insulting to them?!? Why do they find it insulting that we are merely trying to enforce our laws and secure our borders? I find it incredibly insulting that they think they can ignore our laws, and then come here and expect government assistance!

If it is coming to symbolize a simplistic, cynical "solution" to illegal immigration on this side of the border, on the other side it symbolizes failure, death and a U.S. brushoff.

It should symbolize failure - the failure of the Mexican government to provide for its own people. Maybe if they spent the time they now use writing pamphlets telling the people how to cross our border illegally and evade detection to improve their economy and give the people a chance to prosper in their own country, there wouldn't be the need for Mexicans to come here.

As for the failure, President Vicente Fox has not succeeded in forging the economic partnership with the United States that both countries need. Calderon, who takes over Dec. 1, knows he must build that partnership if he's going to achieve his ambitious "Mexico 2030" plan to put Mexico's economy on a fast track. Calderon, who also met Thursday with officials at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, hopes to boost annual per capita income in Mexico from $8,000 to $30,000. Nothing -- and certainly no fence -- would be more effective at decreasing the desperate poverty that drives Mexicans to flee their country and enter the United States illegally.

Well, Calderon's on the right track. Fortunately for Mexico, he is a PAN (Partido Autonomo Nacional) member and doesn't belong to the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional); they were the biggest bunch of thugs and power hungry politicians Mexico has ever had, and they had no concern for their own people.

But a fence will increase the number of Mexicans who die each year attempting to cross the border. That's why, in Mexico, it's called "the death fence." It's come to symbolize U.S. indifference.

Indifference? Where do these editors come up with this stuff? If we were indifferent, we would just let them starve and not give them assistance that is paid for by the taxpayers, not them. We wouldn't have granted amnesty back in 1986. Indifference would be just letting things go as they are, with no concerns for fixing the situation. Chuck Colson makes a great point on this issue:

Yet while we need immigrant workers to keep the economy going, we are tolerating them at the expense of the rule of law. Once you discover that you have 11 million illegal aliens in your midst, you cannot in fairness grant amnesty. If these new alien workers are going to be assimilated into American life, they have got to understand that we live according to the rule of law. By allowing them to continue to work as undocumented aliens, we are telling them that we really don’t care about the law; that we just want them here to use them as our slaves in our agricultural fields so we can eat cheaply.

One thing these illegal immigrants don't seem to realize is that the reason we have a place for them to come to is because we are a nation of laws, and those laws bring order and, fortunately for them, prosperity. However, if they break those laws, they do not deserve to reap the benefits of living here. As Colson states again:

Those who make illegal entry to a country and who violate its laws—for example, by taking wages “under the table,” as it were—as well as those who have but scant regard for the language, customs, and traditions of their adopted land, cannot expect to share in the blessings of that land while they flout the very things that have made such blessings flow.

And finally, the brilliant suggestions of the editors:

Comprehensive reform involves not just border enforcement, but, equally important, a guest worker program tailored to meet the needs of the U.S. economy, and some incentive, like the possibility of earning citizenship, that will motivate the existing illegal population in the United States to come out of the shadows.

Out of the shadows? Where I live, they don't live in the shadows - they dominate the neighborhood. As for incentive, how about just obeying the law of the country in which they choose to live? There are paths to citizenship, but just because it's not easy is no reason to violate immigration laws. To suggest so is an insult and a slap in the face to all of those who have obeyed the law and become citizens by following the law and doing what is required.