PLAYING BY THE RULES – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  We try to teach our children to play by the rules.  Unfortunately, some people who play by the rules wind up being thrown out of the country, while those who didn't play by the rules portray themselves as victims of "fascist" Arizona.  From The New York Times:

WELLS, Me. — It was an unusual sign, even for a restaurant here along the Maine coast, where seasonal home-grown businesses are a way of life.

“Closed. Gone to try and get a new visa,” read the hand-scrawled message taped inside the window of Laura’s Kitchen, a cozy eatery that specialized in corned beef hash and omelets and where the tiny tables were still set with brightly colored napkins. “Hope to see you in the spring. Dean & Laura.”

The sign turned out to be overly optimistic. Dean and Laura Franks, a British couple who opened the restaurant in 2000, found that after nine years of running their business, they could not renew their visa, forcing them to shutter the restaurant and leave the country.

And...

...immigration advocates say they are hearing more and more accounts of renewal applications being turned down. It has been an enigmatic process for the Franks, uprooting their lives even though they have paid all their taxes, own the restaurant and its adjacent rental house, and have no debts except a mortgage on their home in Arundel, about 35 miles away.

COMMENT:  The authorities will give all kinds of reasons for these denials, such as claiming that the businesses run by visa holders like the Franks don't generate sufficient income to meet some subjective standard.

But, bottom line, people like the Franks don't have any political clout.  There is no "visa vote" for the Democrats to grovel after.  They cannot be portrayed as ethnic victims.  They don't have a President Calderon coming to the United States to lecture us on their behalf.  They work hard and live clean, and so the political left considers them uninteresting. 

When we start throwing out hard-working people, and figuring out ways to "legalize" the illegal, we are in trouble.  But we've known that for years, haven't we?

May 30, 2010