The rally has drawn somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000-plus participants. The latter estimate contained in a pro-rally article filed this afternoon in the Los Angeles Times, which describes the participants thus: "The marchers included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life and a love for this country."
That is a very romantic view. This rally, like others around the country, is to oppose a U.S. House bill that would crack down on illegal immigration. The purpose of the rally is to enable people who have already broken the law in their coming to California and America to stay here. People came here illegally out of self-interest. They seek to stay here illegally out of self-interest.
The rally seems definitely larger than the famous event in the fall of 1994, in which some 100,000 marched in L.A. in opposition to Proposition 187, the ballot measure backed by then Governor Pete Wilson. As a senior advisor to the Democratic Party, along with others, I advised that the party's candidates, from gubernatorial nominee Kathleen Brown on down but especially Kathleen, actively oppose Prop 187, for several reasons; in short form, because the initiative was mean-spirited (tossing children out of school is always a bad idea) and because of long-range politics.
Will today's massive pro-illegal immigrant rally in L.A., like others elsewhere in the country, sow the seeds for future victory? And what would that victory be? Or will it reap a backlash from the still far larger numbers of Americans who oppose illegal immigration and worry about its economic and cultural effects?
We can use a real debate in this country about illegal immigration. As it is now, the Border Patrol is more a regulatory agency than a real law enforcement agency, making an effort to moderate the number of people coming here and staying here illegally, not to actually end the practice.
The dirty little secret is that California and America both benefit from and are hurt by illegal immigration. Having a large and growing pool of low-paid workers is good from an economic efficiency standpoint. It is bad from the standpoint of propping up wages in an era of globalized competition. (Among other things, it has played a huge role in the decline of the United Farm Workers.) Illegal immigrants both pay taxes, in many though hardly all cases, and are large consumers of public services. There are also major cultural impacts. I'd like to see an informed discussion about this. I don't see it.
I don't know a single long term former Mexican national that thinks illegal immigration is a good thing today. Zip!
I have wanted to throw up all day seeing these rallies.
the irony of it all....My tax dollars paying for police to keep the peace so a bunch of criminals--illegal aliens-- can protest OUR laws in OUR country.
I say, crack down on this NOW!And I can say this VERY easily and NO one can argue with me...cause I literally came off the boat as a LEGAL alien! So go to H@ll you illegal criminals.
What a great mood I'm in today. ha.
Examples of this kind of "love":
- The love a wolf feels for a sheep just before that lunge for the throat
- The love a rapist feels just before he grabs his victim
- The love that the Spaniard Inquisitors felt just before ripping out the tongues of the Jews or Protestants
- The love...oh, you get the idea...
And speaking of Spaniards, isn't it interesting that we have the descendants of the vicious, rapacious Conquistadors now terrorizing our streets, while claiming that we should bow to their will and let them rule us? Sigh...isn't it great the way some things never change? So nostalgic...
These people are logic impaired, and the press is complicit in the scam they are trying to pull....
susie
That is a lot of folks in one place. It makes that famous Martin Luther King speech on the Washington mall seem small. Color me skeptical about the numbers. If I am too skeptical, the pics must be awesome. The folks must be spilling into the streets for blocks around, since LA City Hall does not have a large commodious mall.
Woman, you are proof for why we need to make it harder to immigrate into this country.
Yeah- we had a similar protest in Atlanta. Half my kids didn't show up for classes on Friday. One of those who did had the temerity to suggest that the American economy would fail without illegal workers. Once I stopped laughing, I told him it just wasn't so and that any- ANY- country had the right to protect its borders. I asked him and the rest of the class how THEY would feel if some, overstaying their visas in whatever country they were from, killed 3000 of THEIR countrymen, HOW would THEY feel. It was funny to watch their faces...
The Southwest is going to be Kosovo writ large in about 10-15 years.
I hate how they lump all immigrants, legal or not, together. Nobody has a right to break the law. By definition, an illegal immigrant is a law-breaker. To be anti-illegal immigration is not to be anti-immigration, per se.
Angered by what they see as increasing hostility toward immigrants, hundreds of thousands of people converged on City Hall SaturdayI have NOTHING against immigrants.
Ilegal immigrants, otherwise known as Criminal Aliens, on the other hand, make my blood boil.
I'll bet most of them are illegal.
Deport all illegals and their families.
What makes them think they are entitled to break our laws and then be rewarded by us for doing so.
Who paid for, coordinated and organized these Mexican flag
waving rallies, work stoppages,and school shutdowns?...
The dirty little secret is that California and America both benefit from and are hurt by illegal immigration. Having a large and growing pool of low-paid workers is good from an economic efficiency standpoint. It is bad from the standpoint of propping up wages in an era of globalized competition. (Among other things, it has played a huge role in the decline of the United Farm Workers.)How do illegals prop up wages?
Simple they had to pass out free American flags, but it seems Mexican flags were more natural to the surroundings.
The Democrats used to be against it but they've changed both a result of a large pool of new welfare dependents to exploit and just out of a sheer loathing for America. So you've got a coalition of strange bedfellows that normally agrees on nothing but sees illegal immigrants as of benefit to them financially and politically.
Will tougher laws be passed to counter the problem? Its really hard to say since we live in a deeply divided house in America. If we cannot even agree on the menace of Islamofascist terrorism abroad, its questionable whether there will be a genuine, sustained national effort to combat the illegal immigration crisis at home.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Not long ago my local paper interviewed a group of illegals standing around on a street corner in the barrio they have created in a nearby city.
Their main complaint?
"Too many Mexicans. Not enough work."