To the coastal commentariat, "undocumented immigrants" are the people who mow your lawn while you're at work and clean your office while you're at home. (That, for the benefit of Linda Greenhouse, is the real apartheid: the acceptance of a permanent "undocumented" servant class by far too many "documented" Americans who assuage their guilt by pathetic sentimentalization of immigration.) But in border states illegal immigration is life and death. I spoke to a lady this week who has a camp of illegals on the edge of her land: She lies awake at night, fearful for her children and alert to strange noises in the yard.
President Obama, shooting from his lip, attacked the new law as an offense against "fairness." Where's the fairness for this woman's family? Because her home is in Arizona rather than Hyde Park, Chicago, she's just supposed to get used to living under siege?
He makes the great point that many of those gnashing their teeth at Arizona's law are the Elite of Society...and will never, ever live in an Hispanic neighborhood, nor have any
personal dealings with any illegal immigrants. They will sit in their upper-class homes, in their upper-class neighborhoods, and criticize those that must live in the situation they themselves created.
But that's Democratic "love and tolerance" for you...