HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE? The Northern Star's coverage of the local immigration amnesty rally (or is it a general strike?) includes this instructive graphic.

Original source unknown.
DeKalb County is in the second row of counties south of the Wisconsin border,
four west (Cook, DuPage, Kane, DeKalb) from Lake Michigan.

Rallies (or general strikes) also took place in Chicago and Milwaukee.

Chicago Sun-Times photo by Rich Hein.

Editorialists for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Chicago's Sun-Times and Tribune weigh in. All three papers reveal a preference for the Senate version of immigration reform. As the Sun-Times puts it,

This page has supported a bipartisan Senate bill calling for tougher border enforcement while setting up a mechanism for those who are here illegally to become citizens by paying fines and jumping through certain hoops. As President Bush said, it's not realistic to try to force all undocumented workers to leave the United States.

They continue,

Mexicans are drawn to the United States by our thriving economy, creating a political problem for this country. Mexicans then respond to our debate about solving the problem by hurting their own economy.

Indeed, lost in much of the immigration debate is the fact that our problem would be largely solved if Mexico could get its economy on track. Mexican President Vicente Fox recognized that fact when he said that his government must ''generate opportunities here in Mexico.'' That won't happen anytime soon.

Particularly, as I have long maintained, if the current and much-maligned border management policy of the U.S. is eliciting illegal immigration by the most entrepreneurial of Latin America's uncredentialed people. A government cannot "generate opportunities;" about the best it can do is remove impedimenta to opportunity seekers.

The Tribune contemplates another dimension of the problem.

Americans say they primarily want a crackdown on illegal immigration, particularly at the U.S. border with Mexico. They also want stern enforcement measures against employers who flout existing immigration law by hiring illegal immigrants. But for all this concern about the federal government's slipshod enforcement of existing laws, Americans also tell pollsters they're open to a liberalized protocol that would allow some of the people in this country illegally to pursue citizenship. By definition, though, the third of those three pillars of a new immigration scheme creates a fourth question Congress absolutely must answer: Going forward, how will we juxtapose the rights of illegal immigrants with those of law-abiding applicants for citizenship who are waiting overseas to be admitted here?

Particularly if the legal channels are so jammed that illegal entry becomes a tempting alternative. Why not offer more legal permits for sale but at a higher price? Pay more, enter sooner. Or pay a smuggler, take your chance on a subsequent amnesty. (Wait a minute, that's this paper.)