Americans Say Immigration a Rising Concern

That's a understatement.

The rise in public concern about immigration over the last three months has been substantial.
When people were asked this past week to name the top national problem that came to mind, 13 percent said immigration — four times the number who said that in January. Roughly the same number, 14 percent of those polled, named the economy, according to the poll of 500 adults conducted April 3-5. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

More than 11 million illegal immigrants are believed to be in this country now, with thousands more coming in all the time. About 1.2 million illegal immigrants were apprehended last year along the nation's border with Mexico, according to immigration officials.

Ron Smith of Corpus Christi, Texas, has a front-row seat.
"A lot of it is happening where I live," said Smith, who lives about 150 miles from the Mexican border.

There's a lot happening away from the borders. Immigrants in states far afield from the borders are causing concern. CNN recently did a special about the problems of immigrant communities in Georgia that are mirrored in other states all over the union.

Immigration "rallies" are planned nationwide. Rallies here is a euphemism for hundreds of thousands of individuals in one place demanding the rights that belong to citizens. Rallies is a euphemism for the threat to shut down the economy on April first and April 11 to "demonstrate their power over that economy."

Rather than the flags of foreign nations, today, March 9, 2006, marchers waved American flags. Marching by the hundreds of thousands and waving flags is not what Americans do. Americans write letters, call their congressmen, they don't demonstrate in the streets, a custom of third world countries.

Marching in the streets, even with American flags waving, to put pressure on Congress will only further alienate the majority of the 280 million American citizens who view such behavior with distaste, give or take a few million. Who knows with all the coming and going exactly how many are legal citizens and which are not? According to Mark Steyn there are 298 million "documented" people in the United States, many of whom are actually citizens that would like to have a say over how the country is run.

Earlier "rallies" were more honest. The marchers displayed their true intentions. They aren't interested in assimilating into mainstream culture. If they were, they would have already learned the social mores of U.S. citizens. They would have already learned to speak English, they would have learned that waving of flags other than the Stars and Stripes is anathema in the United States. They would have already learned that living in insular, segregated communities where English is not spoken is contrary to U.S. values, and they would have learned the lesson of that mass marching in the streets is one step from rioting and is more frowned on and will gain the antipathy of the American public.

It takes more than flag waving or the repetition of a few words in the swearing in during a citizenship ceremony. Citizenship is a state of mind and the majority of the "marchers" have demonstrated that they have no intention of altering their state of mind regardless of the flags they wave or the words they mouth.