The organization US Border Control reports that, according to something called the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, fully 30 percent of the nation's two million prison inmates are illegal immigrants. Heather MacDonald, in her 2004 report in the City Journal, wastes no time framing the problem. "Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens," she writes. She goes on to report that 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (1,200 to 1,500 murders) "target" illegal aliens. Up to two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. What's worse, according to MacDonold, is that the Calfiornia Department of Justice has known since 1995 that at least 60 percent of the vicious 18th Street Gang in southern California comprises illegal aliens.

As I write this, it is almost April Fool's day of 2006. We Americans certainly are fools, as our politicians debate a law that is essentially amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. What's worse, the ingrateful national home invaders who are our illegal "immigrant" population consider even this law too harsh, claiming it is a cruel and xenophobic attempt to kick these "immigrants" out of the country, deny them the American dream, prevent them from obtaining health care and education, and generally oppress these hard-working, well-meaning, other-than-white fellow travelers. One presumes these evil lawmakers had to take time out of a busy schedule consisting largely of kicking puppies, to hear the illegal "immigrants" wail and moan over the idea that we might actually start enforcing our borders just a little.

In the last week or so, demonstrators ranging from indoctrinated, ignorant leftist high school students and their former hippie teachers to hundreds of thousands of "reconquista" supporters and their frequently communist sympathizers (waving Mexican flags, no less) marched, chanted, and bitched across the country. The AP reported that tends of thousands of students walked out of schools in California and elsewhere Monday, waving flags (the AP didn't bother to report that these flags were Mexican flags) and chanting slogans to protest "legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants." Protestors at the Capitol in D.C. were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs. California actually celebrates Cesar Chavez day, for pitys' sake, and on that Monday 36,000 brainwashed or Mexican children walked out of school in the Los Angeles area. Perhaps a thousand of these students surrounded Los Angeles' City Hall in order to intimidate L.A. mayor Antonoia Villaraigosa into a meeting at his office.

In Santa Ana, the kids threw rocks and bottles, resulting in 24 arrests. In Detroit, protesters waving Mexican flags marched from city's Hispanic area to the federal building downtown. The message in all these protests -- heralded as a new "civil rights" movement by our nation's more self-destructive pundits -- was clear. If you oppose the invasion of the United States by hordes of illegal immigrants who feel entitled to the social services we provide and for which they do not pay a dime, you oppose "immigrant rights" and you will be intimidated with threats of violence (or silenced through naked, initiated force) until you no longer stand in the way of the foot soldiers of the reconquista.

Communist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez characterized the United States as a "dictatorship" and said that all "Latin American revolutions" (as reported by the Miami Herald Wire Services) "must clash with Washington." He is part of what the AP's Traci Carl calls a "new wave of Latin American leaders -- variously labeled leftist, populist, nationalist, or socialist -- [that] is redefinining politics" south of the US-Mexican border. As these barbarian hordes gather at our southern gates, they share a common belief system -- that the richer, more powerful, more prosperous United States is an "imperialist" and "fascist" nation that should be opposed for daring to deny illegal aliens (and their countries of origin) an equal share of the fruits of U.S. labors. These fruits are, of course, taxes confiscated from U.S. citizens, who are shouldering the terrible social burden of the education, healthcare, and even incarceration of the millions of illegal immigrants burrowing like tapeworms into the American digestive tract.

The American government has failed to solve this problem on many levels. It has failed to preempt the reconquista by failing to protect our borders. It continues to fail by refusing to support programs that target, identify, and imprison or deport illegal aliens who commit violent crimes on U.S. soil. It has further failed by vilifying those who try to defend this nation's borders and culture through direct action, such as the Minutemen (citizens who watch the border in their states in an attempt to prevent further incursions by Mexican and terrorist invaders).

Illegal aliens in the United States are repeatedly, incessantly, characterized as innocent, hard-working people who just want to find a better life for themselves and their families. The imagery of these invaders as hapless would-be citizens fleeing poverty, willing to "do work that Americans simply will not do," is so pervasive that it constitutes a de facto propaganda campaign. Just as "bums" and "winos" have become "the homeless" (who are repeatedly mischaracterized as misunderstood and disadvantaged people who are simply "down on their luck," rather than as the unpredictable, frequently diseased, often drug-addicted or mentally unstable societal predators that they too often are), illegal aliens have become "undocumented immigrants" in an attempt to equate them with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free who walked wide-eyed through the gates at Ellis Island. The fact that they crawled past barbed wire fences, raped a few ranchers' wives along the way, and now accept under-the-table wages while dodging the beleaguered police forces seeking them on murder charges, is dismissed as irrelevant; it does not, after all, fit in with the imagery our popular media strive so hard to create.

The fact is that, legally and morally, illegal aliens have no right to be in the United States. There is no entitlement to a "better life" at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. If you wish to immigrate to this country, you must do so legally or not at all. You are not entitled to anything simply because you have successfully crossed the border without permission; I don't care how long you've been here or whether you've had children since you arrived. We need, quite frankly, to change our citizenship laws. Birth in this country should not be enough to establish legal citizenship if your parents are here illegally in the first place.

I have no right to live and work in Canada, no matter how nice I might find Toronto. I cannot expect to benefit from Canadian social services if I cross the border and then stay in the country instead of returning home. I should not expect not to be ejected if I am found without documentation working as a dishwasher in Ottawa. No matter how entitled I might feel to be there and to stay there, even if I've had illegitimate Canadian children and I've been living in the country for years, I have no right to these things. When I am arrested or deported, my rights are not being violated. Those who protest on my behalf are not fighting for "civil rights" -- they're marching in support of criminal behavior!

If we're going to make utilitarian arguments about amnesty for illegal aliens, the outcome is the same. We may, in fact, be economically dependent on an illegal underclass to perform certain low-end jobs for less than minimum wage. If these workers are removed from our economy, however, the economy will not end. Prices for certain goods will simply rise. I don't know about you, but I'll pay more for an apple if it means there's less chance my wife will be raped by migrant workers. I'll pay more for just about any consumer good if it means the employees I encounter in the store are less likely to be violent felons. I'll pay higher prices at the gates of the New York State fair if it means the toothless carnies running the rides at least speak English.

The crimes committed by illegal aliens completely undercut any argument made for the utility of allowing these invaders to remain within the country, but the economic argument is even more convincing. We simply cannot afford to keep paying for welfare, social services in general, education, and healthcare for "undocumented immigrants" (who, for example, are treated in hospital emergency rooms despite the fact that they have no insurance and cannot pay for treatment). The waves of illegal aliens swamping us are already overrunning our ability to foot the bill for all these things. If we do not protect our borders the financial burden of illegal "immigration" will only become worse.

A home invasion is a particularly brutal crime in which innocent people, believing themselves safe in their dwellings, are attacked by lawbreakers who violate the sanctity of their victims' homes in order to prey on others. The need for self-defense in the face of home invasions is obvious. When violent criminals enter your home uninvited in order to take from you what you do not wish to give and what these criminals have not earned, no reasonable person would fault you for using force -- even lethal force -- to repel the invaders and preserve your family's lives. How are the invading forces of the reconquista any different? Illegal aliens are national home invaders, entering the country without invitation and taking from U.S. citizens what those citizens do not wish to give. The disporportionate population of illegal aliens imprisoned or sought for violent crimes is chilling proof of the very real danger these invaders represent; the financial burden they create, even when on their best behavior, is no less real.

Demand that the United States enforce its borders and its citizenship laws and you will be accused of "hatred." Identify this problem explicitly and you will be called a "xenophobe." Recognize that the illegal immigration problem in the United States is overwhelmingly a Mexican immigration problem, occurring with the explicit support and encouragement of the Mexican government, and you will be called "prejudiced." Objectively acknowledge the violent crimes committed by illegal aliens in the United States and you will be called "racist." This is the propaganda of those who would see us swamped with aliens. This is the mischaracterization of those whose self-destructive policies facilitate the "reconquista," regardless of their recognition of this fact.

We must engage in self-defense on the national level. We must protect ourselves from these invaders. We must fight to keep our families safe from these criminals -- and we must work to ensure that our children and their children have the chance to do the same. The problem is not "immigrants." Illegal aliens are not immigrants at all.