Far from going away, however, the issue has come closer to home. Take what are known as "day laborers" -- those bands of job-seeking men, often illegal, who, in pursuit of work, have made a stereotype for themselves as small-time sexual harassers and big-time public urinators. This phenomenon has reached a breakpoint in towns, neighborhoods and Home Depot parking lots across the country. With the failure of the federal government to enforce the nation's immigration laws, some communities are seeking relief by proposing to administer, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, day-labor recruitment centers where the men and their day-employers can mix and match. But not only do such sites enable illegals to participate in American life, they encourage American citizens to break the law. Which is not a Rockwellian scene any way you paint it.
After the northern Virginia town of Herndon decided to open such a site, Kilgore voiced his opposition. "I just don't think we should be using taxpayer dollars to fund illegal behavior, to promote illegal behavior," the former Virginia attorney general told MSNBC.com. "I think it says to those illegally in this country and to those wanting to come illegally, 'We'll make a place for you if you violate our rules.'"
Timothy M. Kaine, Kilgore's Democratic opponent, calls this approach "mean-spirited"; Kaine's solution, meanwhile, is both to defer to local officials and rely on federal enforcement -- which is no solution at all. An independent candidate, H. Russell Potts Jr., calls Kilgore's law-and-order position "the worst form of demagoguery." A Kaine spokesman called it "grandstanding." Kilgore had succumbed to "the temptation to fan the flames with a naked appeal for votes," according to The Washington Post, itself succumbing to the temptation to mix metaphors. The newspaper also dubbed the Kilgore plan to follow the law "populist nonsense" and "a wedge issue."
Sounds as if Kilgore is on to something. Really vital concerns are always "wedge" issues in that they divide the electorate into clear-cut camps from which leaders emerge to govern. That said, this is one weird wedge. Whoever would have imagined that a campaign to enforce the nation's laws would be considered "mean-spirited" "demagoguery" and "populist nonsense"?