A day without hispanics is how the local spanish language radio station is billing it.  In most other venues it’s being billed as a Day Without Immigrants or some similar nonsense.  In either case, it’s bullcrap.  Neither hispanics nor immigration per se is the issue.

The local spanish language station said that the purpose of all this is, and I quote (because I can): <<Para demonstrar que los hispanos son indispensables para la economía de los estados unidos.>>  Or: “In order to demonstrate that hispanics are indispensable to the economy of the United States.”  Demonstrators are supposed to go to Denver, wearing white shirts to show their solidarity with our “brothers” and “sisters”.  Pues, ellos no son ní mís hermanos ní mís hermanas.  They aren’t my brothers and sisters.  My brothers and sisters belong to a colorless race called The Americans.   (On this same station on Friday, a caller told the host, <<Sí, no somos legales, pero tenemos derechos.>> “Yes, we are illegal but we have rights.”  I have written the spanish here because that is what I heard and that is what played itself over and over in my mind the rest of the evening and much of the weekend.  Tenemos derechos.  Tenemos derechos.  Tenemos derechos.  We have rights.  We illegals have rights, and the U.S. must give them to us.  And still they have yet to explain to us how they illegals have come by these rights.  Apparently, they owe us no explanation.  But I digress.)

Are they serious?  My first thought after hearing that garbage about how indispensable hispanics are to the economy was, “Well, my employer is indispensable to my economy.”  (My second thought was,  Who the hell made all this about hispanics anyway?  But then I remembered.)

Quite frankly, if every hispanic who felt this way—native, immigrant, legal or illegal—moved to the hispanic nation of his choice, though it would hurt at first, in the long term we would recover.

Clearly, the issue is really language.  When there is a debate, the first thing that must be done is to have key terms defined and the definitions agreed upon.  Our side of the debate has been consistently using the term illegal immigration.  We have made no reference to race, except to note that the vast majority of illegals appear to be coming from south of the border.  Our opponents have consistently made the issue—and have used the term—immigration.  If the debate is about immigration, then we lose, of course.

Our problem is that our opponents have refused to acknowledge our case about illegal immigration.  They are not debating us.  Quite frankly, that is in my experience how the Left always debates: they don’t.  They argue against strawmen; they argue against people who don’t, for purposes to those debates, even exist.  People who are opposed to immigration don’t, in any significance numbers, exist.  People who are opposed to illegal immigration do exist.  I am one of them.  We are just being ignored.

Once again: We are debating illegal immigration, illegal immigration, illegal immigration, and illegal immigration.  They are debating immigration, immigration, immigration and immigration.  And they will win that debate because no one opposes immigration.  Sadly, we may lose our debate because our debate over illegal immigration is being treated as if it were a debate over immigration.

I’ve just visited the Tanker Brothers'.  The Master Gunner has an excellent post on the role that words play in debates such as the present one.

Finally, if you would like to see some of what is behind all this check out http://aztlan.net/.  But first, brace yourself.  These folks ain’t friendly to you white people, or us “white-washed” people.  (H/T to Mike Gulf for the link.)