Free Republic

Los Angeles debates the treatment of illegal immigrants. Sometimes a solitary tragedy can weave all the tangled threads of a far-ranging debate into a sharply focused picture, one that only the willfully blind can claim not to see. Here in Los Angeles, one such tragedy has been the murder of Jamiel Shaw, 17, a high-school student and star athlete who was shot to death on March 2 of this year. Pedro Espinoza, a 19-year-old gang member, has been charged with Shaw’s murder. More than 100 people have been murdered in Los Angeles so far this year, and if this was...

With his grades and high school activities, Pablo is an ideal candidate for college, except for one hitch: He's illegal. Four high school students in military uniforms were horsing around in a cinderblock corridor deep inside Coors Field. It was fifteen minutes before the Rockies would take on the Phillies, and two decades into the latest surge of immigration into the United States. One of the students was named Pablo. He had pale skin, short dark-brown hair, ears that stuck out a little, and a long face. A ribbon pinned to his green uniform indicated that he was an expert...