As an illustration of my remark in this space yesterday that Americans who

have never encountered the immigration bureaucracy are irredeemably clueless

about the subject, I offer John Podhoretz’s piece in today’s New York Post . Try this

sentence, for example: “One of the most peculiar elements of the

anti-immigrant intellectual movement is just how many of its members are

themselves immigrants – John O’Sullivan, John Derbyshire and Peter Brimelow

from England, and George Borjas from Cuba.”

OK, let’s take it slowly. I am indeed an immigrant; my wife is also an

immigrant; half our friends are immigrants; so… HOW IN THE NAME OF GREAT

JEHOSAPHAT AM I “ANTI-IMMIGRANT”? What, in fact, would it mean to be

“anti-immigrant”? Would such a person have to disapprove of, say, Albert

Einstein? This is low-grade stuff, John.

What I, and John O’Sullivan, and Peter Brimelow, and a mega-landslide

majority of the American people are anti-, is **I**L**L**E**G**A**L**

**I**M**M**I**G**R**A**T**I**O**N**. And the thing that baffles you so

much, John, the “peculiar” conundrum that is keeping you awake at night, the

unfathmoable mystery whose depths you cannot for the life of you plumb –

the fact that we, immigrants, are so loud and hostile to Bush’s lame-brained

amnesty proposal, actually has a very simple explanation: We are all

**L**E**G**A**L** immigrants.

I do understand that there are two sides to this issue, and look forward to

a debate on the Bush proposal among conservatives of all opinions. It’s not

going to be much of a debate, though, if we don’t start off understanding

the difference between the words “legal” and “illegal.”