Marchers Are Their Own Worst Enemy

In another "great minds think alike" moment, many other pundits are expressing similar views to yours truly that the thousands marching in favor of illegal immigration (see posts here and here) are actually doing damage to their cause. This from Instapundit:

I'VE GENERALLY FAVORED OPEN IMMIGRATION, but I find myself feeling less and less that way in the face of mass rallies by illegal immigrants like this one.

Illegal immigrants as individuals just trying to make a better life are sympathetic. Illegal immigrants as a mass movement making demands on the polity are considerably less so.

I'm not the only one to get this impression, as Mickey Kaus's report on the rallies in Los Angeles indicates. I think that these marches just made passage of strict immigration laws much more likely.

Kaus suggests that the organizers of yesterday's rally in Los Angeles wised up a bit about all the Mexican flags, because suddenly U.S. flags were about equally represented as were Mexican flags. As Kaus suggests:

...flaunting allegiance to a neighboring country was not a good way to make most Americans want to let in more people who share your attachment.

The idiot high schoolers who walked in Huntington Park on Friday and tried to create chaos at several other schools were busy shouting "Me-hee-co, Me-hee-co", which proves that they know nothing about making their argument palatable to those of us who didn't recently cross the border. The young skulls full of frijoles did more damage to their cause than good.

One major element of the immigration bill is the building of a wall along a major portion of the Mexican border. Kaus adds this about the wall:

Of course the very size of these rallies, when coupled with the pro-illegal immigrant sentiments and the Mexican flags, might hurt the cause of the ralliers. It seems likely to make many non-PC voters think, "Jeez, next year's rally will be even bigger. We'd better build that wall quick!"

If you build it, they won't come.