Protest politely and respectfully, please

The Journal Sentinel's resident right-wing columnist, Patrick McIlheran, almost sounds as though he could live with lifting all restrictions on immigration, with a hands-off policy that goes a lot farther than anyone in Congress suggests.

But there's a problem.

People who support immigration reform are just too darned noisy and pushy:

The argument, however, is also about words, and it's here the advocates of immigration do themselves no favors.

Waving Mexican flags up 6th St. hardly sends that Fourth of July feeling. Calling your opponents racists does not bring them to reason...

Young French louts are now throwing their Red-whine snit about lifetime jobs. That's how France does it: Thousands march; the government caves.

That's not how it's done here. One revolution was plenty. I think fears of unassimilated Mexicans conquering California are overblown, but when 15,000 people in Milwaukee or 200,000 in Chicago think they can make us change the meaning of "illegal" by doing a French-student parade, it shows the immigrants have some political assimilation to do.

What's that mean? That rallies, marches and protests are some sort of imported, foreign tactics?

That's ridiculous, of course. Protest is a long-standing method of airing grievances -- and bringing about change -- in the United States of America, whether the issue is civil rights, ending a war, or immigration.

McIlheran joins many other right-wing critics of the marches in seeming to suggest that the people marching are illegal immigrants, when in fact many, if not most, are U.S. citizens and legal residents trying to bring attention to their cause and prevent the kinds of draconian changes in the law being proposed by Rep. F. Jim Sensenbrenner.

These aren't foreigners who need a lesson on how we do things in this country. They are using the time-honored methods that frequently have been the catalyst for change in the U.S.

Sometimes it takes more than a letter to the editor -- or even to your representative in Congress -- to get things done.