A little more than three years ago, Victor Davis Hanson wrote something called "Mexifornia," and he caught a lot of grief from the open-borders crowd for his insensitivy, though he observed that some solution for the illegals already here had to be found other than mass deportation. These days, he says, the grief he gets over the book is from the middle and right. What happened?
While there remains controversy over amnesty and a guest-worker program, there is now little disagreement over first enforcing the law and closing the borders - whether through periodic fortification, more Border Patrol officers, tough employer sanctions or viable identification cards.
In the last three years, while I haven't changed my views about the need for an earned-citizenship program or the impracticality of deporting 11 million illegal residents, an angry public has passed "Mexifornia" by. Once caricatured as illiberal for calling for an end to illegal immigration, the book now reads as middle of the road, if not passe.
Indeed, if extremists continue to demonstrate for open borders, blare out ethnic and linguistic chauvinism, and flout the law, then this current public anger against illegal immigration will unfortunately appear mild in comparison to what is on the horizon.
That strikes me as true. The seething anger over illegal immigration in a broad cross-section of "middle America" has been one of the most underreported stories in the last several years, and it's not going away. I've seen evidence of it in the recent campaign ads and statements of Rep. Mark Souder. He's always been both sympathetic to President Bush's desire to create a "path for citizenship" and cognizant of the need to better protect the borders. When we talked to him in the spring before the primary, he spoke at length about the illegals already here. Today, he talks almost exclusively about the border -- a sign, I suspect, that he's heard his constituents loudly and clearly.
