Pathetic tradeoff

Conservatives hurt their cause with harsh rhetoric against illegals | Joel Belz

Marilyn Humphries/Showcase pix

In an election year when conservatives face all the hurdles they can imagine just to hang on to the meager position they presently hold, why keep doing things that seem only to make a bad situation worse? Especially on the issue of immigration, why keep piling up our woes?

It happened again in New Bedford, Mass., a couple of weeks ago—not in some grand episode that by itself changes the national political landscape, but in one of those little stories that, when added all together, remind you why things turn out as they do.

Financier Robert Hildreth of Boston had decided he would take up the cause of some 40 immigrant factory workers who had been arrested and sent on the first leg of a trip back to Latin America. "All I did," said Hildreth—after investing $130,000 of his own money in bail bonds and legal costs—"was to allow these people to have their day in court. Some of them have already been deported. Their day in court has happened, and I'm OK with that."