Elvira Arellano

Story background here:

"An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.

Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary. She announced last week that she was leaving the Adalberto United Methodist Church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers."

Anyone who read my blog from before knows that I have much sympathy for the illegal immigrants from Mexico. I still do, but I have been swayed by much of the discussion on the right on how necessary it is to secure our borders and to do something significant about illegal immigration.

Let's face it. Arellano is the Cindy Sheehan of the illegal immigration movement. Do I feel sorry for those in her plight? Yes. Do I think she and others like are only trying to have a better life? Yes. But we have laws that must be obeyed. Effort to change them is admirable. Efforts to thwart them are not.

We just winked at these laws for decades and now we are paying the price with division and resentment on both sides.

Legal Mexican immigrants need to speak out more about their journey. Obviously our citizenship path needs to be looked at. I have a neighbor from Africa. He said it took 12 years for him to obtain citizenship. That is ridiculous. But what do you expect from a bloated bureaucracy? And this is the same government that the left wants to run health care. Scary indeed.

In the end, we all want Arellano to be with her son. And she can be...in Mexico. Or she can go through the normal process, as frustrating as that may be, and become a citizen.

I have a question for you. Why do you think this has become such a hot button issue now? I mean this has been with us for decades now.