This is what passes for the New York Times’s idea of rational debate:
Let’s concede an indisputable point: people should not be in the country illegally. But forget about the border for a moment — let’s talk about the 12 million who are already here. What should be done about them?
A. Deport them all.
B. Find out who they are. Distinguish between criminals and people who just want to work. Get them on the books. Make them pay what they owe — not just the income, Social Security, sales and property taxes they already pay, but all their taxes, and a fine. Get a smooth legal flow of immigrants going, and then concentrate on catching and deporting bad people.
C. Catch the few you can, and harass and frighten the rest. Treat the entire group as a de facto class of criminals, and disrupt or shout down anyone or any plan seen as abetting their evildoing.
Forget A. Congress tried a version of B, but it was flattened by outrage.
And so here we are at C. It’s a policy that can’t work; it’s too small-bore, too petty, too narrow. And all the while it’s not working, it can only lead to the festering of hate.
Oh, okay. Just “Forget A”. That’s all, don’t talk about it, don’t think about it, don’t even mention it except to dismiss it… just forget it. Never mind the fact that there have been dozens of successful mass deportations that did not occasion mass violence throughout history, or that there are more than 20 million illegal immigrants currently invading the USA, not 12 million. The NYT is very eager to avoid discussing deportation because a sizable minority of Americans already support it; within five years, that sizable minority will become a majority and by that time, the deportation debate will have moved on to include a portion of the legal immigrant population, a development that has already taken place in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
What “ain’t America” is Mexico. This is not only true in the political and national senses, (if not the continentally geographical), it is downright tautological.