Today, in Arizona, more than 4,000 people will enter our country illegally.

They will overwhelmingly be Mexican.

And they will be the death of us.

It�s not the Osamas we need to worry about. It�s the Joses. They�re not terrorists, they�re invaders. And we might as well kiss California good bye.

The flood of illegal immigrants today will equal 60 planeloads. Today and every day. That amounts to 22,000 flights a year. That�s what �Time� magazine calculates.

In fact, the magazine calculates that this year there will be three million illegal immigrants into the United States. That�s more than three times the number of legal immigrants.

And that will be the death of us.

The death of our culture, our prosperity, our language, our values and, quite possibly, our liberty.

This isn�t like Ellis Island.

This isn�t people joining the melting pot, this is people taking over. This is the importation of more than people, it�s the importation of the Third World.

In generations past, as wave after wave of immigrants has come to the United States, they have left the old country behind. They have learned English and adopted American values and ethics. They have added spice to American culture, but they have ultimately adopted American culture.

But immigration isn�t like that anymore.

Particularly among illegal immigrants.

Each one arrives with a chip in his shoulder, unable or unwilling to survive in the old world, but insisting that it was culturally superior to their new world. They retain their old language � for years and even generations � and cling to old beliefs and values and a hostile separatism.

They haven�t come to be Americans, or even Mexican-Americans. They have come to be Mexicans in America.

Their homeland fails to properly educate or care for millions of its own people and then implements policies which encourage and even reward illegal immigration into the United States. Those people become a tremendous drain on the American taxpayer, sucking government services dry and mailing hundreds of millions of dollars back to Mexico.

The second largest industry in Mexico � after petroleum � is money sent back by immigrants to America, virtually all of whom are illegal.

This is not to say that there aren�t good-hearted and hard-working illegal immigrants. But their impact on our country is ruinous. It is popular and politically correct to say that we are the beneficiaries of illegal immigration, that the labor provided and the taxes paid by these people are indispensable to our economy.

That�s nonsense.

The taxes paid by illegals don�t make up a fraction of the services they consume. From schools to health care to law enforcement, to the various welfare programs they and their children use, illegal immigrants are a suffocating burden on the American taxpayer. Their use of taxpayer-funded services is a colossal international theft.

Illegal immigrants artificially lower American wages, hurting us all. And they take the jobs which honorable people on welfare could use to earn their way to self-sufficiency.

The only beneficiaries of illegal immigration are the Mexican government, unscrupulous American employers and the trade union movement. Each ends up profiting by the influx of illegals.

But the damage is clear.

The percentage of Americans having a high school diploma is dropping, as millions of uneducated Mexicans illegally come into the country. A survey last week showed that in Los Angeles County � with its huge illegal population � half the people over 16 can�t read or write at a grade-school level.

In the past, immigrants have fueled the fire of American prosperity and progress. But that was then and this is now. Illegal Mexican immigrants are a drain on this nation. And they are a subtle conquest, an invasion that is steadily and illegally creating majority communities hostile to American heritage, language and values. As more and more cities and states come to be dominated by people with loyalties to Mexico, the political center of gravity for those areas will move to Mexico. We will lose territory without having fired a shot.

The problem is clear, and those who ignore it are complicit in the gutting of America.

Unfortunately, no one in national politics is speaking out against this calamity. Both parties seek to curry favor with Latino voters by embracing their illegal Mexican cousins.

And they are selling America down the road as a result. They are planting the seeds of a future civil war.

Instead, we should have a clear and enforced immigration policy. Determine how many unskilled Mexicans the economy can absorb, bring them in in an orderly and legal fashion, let them become citizens if they support themselves and contribute. That�s how it was for our grandparents and their grandparents, and that�s how it should be today.

The melting pot metaphor was correct.

To come to America, you must want to become an American. And you must do so legally.

It�s the only way.

--Bob Lonsberry--

I COULDN'T AGREE MORE!!

Written by Jere at 4:43 p.m.