For all the noisy squawking in the nuevo capital of Mexifornia about the deportation of convicted felon Elvira Arellano, Saturday’s street rally in support of her had only a few hundred participants. If the brain trust at La Raza thought that the church squatter was going to be a big draw as a sympathetic image of alien sob stories, maybe they should rethink.

It’s more likely that the huge crowds will not be back until Mexicans and Aztlan fellow-travelers can demand goodies that would directly benefit themselves, like amnesty. Standing up for a symbol many be too much of a stretch for illiterate peasants.

A crowd estimated at only 500 to 1,000 people, carrying large photographs of Arellano and her 8-year-old son, Saul, and signs reading “I Am Elvira” and “Keep Families Together,” marched from Broadway and Olympic Boulevard to a rally at the U.S. Federal Building on Saturday afternoon.

March organizers had anticipated a stronger response after Arellano’s arrest and deportation. She chose to leave her U.S.-born son behind - putting him in the custody of a friend in Chicago where he is expected to enroll in school.
[Immigration-rights support lagging? Los Angeles Daily News 8/26/07]

As we can see from the photo here, the commies and Marxicans at ANSWER (i.e. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) were major organizers behind the march.

To the credit of the article cited here, the concerns of local black citizens were used to balance the far left rantings of open-borders extremists. In particular, veterans of the civil rights movement don’t like the unworthy demands of illegal foreigners being equated to their struggle:

Some African-Americans in Los Angeles have also taken umbrage with the immigrant-rights groups’ attempts to liken Arellano to [Rosa] Parks, a pioneer of the black civil-rights movement for refusing to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Ala. bus in 1955, sparking a historic bus boycott.

“(Arellano) was intoxicated with a false sense of power,” said civil-rights activist Ted Hayes. “How dare they flaunt themselves like that in the face of the American people?”

Stephen Dinan writes at the Washington Times:

A 2006 audit showed federal, state and local governments are among the biggest employers of the half-million persons in the U.S. illegally using “non-work” Social Security numbers — numbers issued legally, but with specific instructions that the holders are not authorized to work in the U.S.[Bush hit over jobs for illegal workers, August 23, 2007 ]

This is something that can and should be cleaned up quickly. Now, once again, we need to think about how to expedite that return home of these illegal immigrants to decent jobs and living conditions.

There also really ought to be a managerial shakeup in the governmental agencies involved in the practice of illegal employment. I doubt sufficient laws are on the books to handle this situation–but that can be changed.

After all these years, Pete Wilson is still the target of open borders anarchists.

On a beautiful California Saturday afternoon in San Diego, assorted La Raza goons and gay activists protested the unveiling of a statue honoring the city’s former mayor, U.S. Senator and California governor. [“Wilson Statue Is Unveiled As Latinos, Gays Protest,” Jeanette Steele, San Diego Union-Tribune, August 26, 2007]

We shouldn’t be surprised. If the reconquistas are still mad about the Mexican-American War more than 150 years ago, then Wilson’s support of Proposition 187 in 1994 denying benefits to illegal aliens is just yesterday to them.

Ask anyone in the immigration reform movement to name their heroes and two are certain to make any list: Tom Tancredo and Wilson.

Too bad Wilson can’t run for California governor again. He’d win in a landslide. Even the jerks with the bullhorns would agree.

Marcellus Armiger, a San Diego reader, was at the ceremony. His letter that we will post tonight, Sunday, provides more details.

Tamar Jacoby is such an obnoxious robo-cheerleader for the big business open-borders side that she does our work for us. (See Our Friends Tamar and MEChA.) Her screed in yesterday’s LA Times is another example.

The only problem: Much as we need better enforcement, on the border and in the workplace, that’s only half the answer. And without the other half–better, more realistic immigration laws–it will wreak havoc.

We’ve already had a preview of the likely consequences, and not just at the movies. For several years now, tougher border enforcement, plus competition from higher-paying hospitality and construction jobs, have deprived farmers in California and other states of the foreign workers they need to plant and harvest their crops.

The crisis peaks every year in August and September, and the photos start showing up in the newspapers: piles of rotting pears, strawberry plants choked by weeds, unpicked cucumbers grown to monstrous sizes and melons oozing in the fields.
California without a Mexican [August 25, 2007]

Tamar neglects to mention that agriculture can avail itself of unlimited H2A visas to hire foreign pickers. But the truth is too tiresome when there’s an extra nickel to be made by screwing the American public.

She also makes the same arguments as slave owners in the 1850s, bracero employers in the 1960s and mill owners in the early 20th century dependent on child labor–namely that their industries would collapse without exploitable workers.

If millions of Mexicans weren’t volunteering to work for coolie wages, then agribusiness would automate its production, just like every other modern industry. As a result of America’s dependence on foreigners to harvest our food, this country has fallen behind in agri-tech, and other countries are in terms of creating machines to do the drudge work like mowing,

To get an idea of what’s possible, check out some recent harvesting technology. A company in San Diego, Vision Robotics, sees the mechanized future and is designing for it.
Shown below is a harvesting machine specific for salad greens designed by another company:

Remember that in 2004, a low-skilled immigrant household cost the taxpayer around $19,588 annually, according to a study by Heritage scholar Robert Rector. That cheap labor gets more expensive all the time.

Recent betting on the Intrade Market places the odds of Ron Paul getting the GOP nomination at 5.8% vs. 5.6% for John McCain. According to that market, the leading contenders for the GOP nomination are Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson, with Huckabee, Paul, McCain and Gingrich coming in as the second tier candidates.

It was, of course, McCain’s advocacy of an enormous amnesty for illegal aliens and illegal employers that caused his campaign to collapse.