Illegal immigrants want rights without responsibilities

By: WILLIAM LOLLI - Commentary:

March 21, 2007

The NCT front-page story ("Police policy targets criminal illegal immigrants, but could affect all," March 11) on Escondido's policy to press law enforcement with the ancillary duty of identifying illegal aliens focused on a person named Eva.

Eva's life was used as an intimate example of the impact of this new policy, which could result in Eva's deportation to Mexico.

The story illustrated that Eva was brought here illegally as a child of age 3, graduated from Escondido High, has a job and is raising three children. She is admittedly neither a citizen nor has made any effort at legal residency. She freely admits to driving without a license.

"If I get stopped and they send me to Mexico, what am I to do?" she is quoted as saying.

Her reaction is to be expected: She was brought here as an illegal alien, raised by illegal alien parents, taught by her parents and her societal associations, including the government school system, that she could do as she pleased.

She has been taught about her "rights" but nothing of her responsibilities, And since she is not a citizen, she has no responsibilities. Laws are for the "other people" and are things to be obeyed only if convenient.

Because of these circumstances, she is part of a vast number, a whole generation of people, who live under the benevolent shadow of an oppressive subclass status.

She is neither slave nor free, but for all her life has lived in a netherworld of partial freedom, yet constantly in fear.

As more and more people recognize the injustice of the continuing of her situation, the dehumanizing, un-American foundation of it, it is only right and just that she be deported.

Only then can she and others like her return to the U.S. as truly free people, through the obedience to and under the protection of our laws.

Anything less is to perpetuate slavery.

-- William Lolli lives in Escondido.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03 ... _20_07.txt