San Francisco is now remembering the April 18, 1906, earthquake a century ago that leveled much of the city. You could make an argument that America’s first illegal alien amnesty was created by that earthquake, which burned many of the city’s records, thereby enabling Chinese nationals to claim American birth [Out of chaos came new Chinese America, San Francisco Chronicle, 4/13/06].

Yet when government buildings were destroyed a century ago, so were the birth and immigration records inside. Scores of Chinese recognized the serendipity, claiming citizenship and bringing in their children.

In many cases, for a fee, they also brought in people who weren’t their children. Hundreds of those friends and strangers, who came to be known as “paper sons,” arrived in the Bay Area in the following decades, changing Chinese America forever.

The Bill Moyers PBS program celebrating Chinese immigration has a film clip explaining paper sons, with no apparent shame that many Chinese committed fraud to enter America. Then as now, the attitude is that immigration is a right of the would-be newcomer, not a privilege granted by the citizens of this nation.

Peggy Noonan has an immigration column so sentimental that I’m going to suggest that you don’t Read The Whole Thing. But she comes to an anti-Open Borders conclusion:

Whatever our sentiments and sympathies as individuals, America has the right, and the responsibility, to protect the integrity of its borders, to make the laws by which immigrants are granted entrance, and to enforce those laws.

I think open-borders proponents are, simply, wrong. I think those who call good people like members of the voluntary border patrols “yahoos” are snobs. I think those whose primary concern is preserving the Hispanic vote for the Democratic Party, or not losing the Hispanic vote for the Republican Party, are being cynical, selfish, and stupid, too. It’s not all about who gets what vote, it’s about continuing a system of laws that has allowed America to become, among many other things, a place immigrants want to come to.OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan, At the Immigration Rally | Having an open heart doesn’t mean supporting open borders, April 13, 2006

Peter Brimelow and reader Ryan Kennedy discussed Peggy Noonan’s deviationism from the WSJ position, the last time she wrote a column like this.

…now they’re coming for the Easter Bunny. The Catholic League has two news items:March 23, 2006, EASTER BUNNY EXPELLED FROM ST. PAUL CITY HALL and April 13, 2006 MAKING EASTER DISAPPEAR, which features Nexis research on how long this has been going on. We featured an item on this last year, although we also have featured more serious meditations on Easter.