The leaders of the civil rights movement did not seek extra-constitutional rights or benefits. They merely sought the protection of their right to participate fully in society and government with the vote, and they sought to overturn the discriminatory laws that prevented them from participating fully in the economy. Conversely, leaders of the movement to secure rights for illegal aliens – as well as their supporters in Congress – want to undermine and destroy the Constitution and the rights it guarantees legal U.S. citizens.

Just as Ms. Huerta is misleading her followers on the facts of the 20th Century civil rights movement, she is deliberately deceiving them about Cesar Chavez’s views toward illegal aliens. Steve Salier, in the February 27, 2006 issue of The American Conservative, writes that the late Mr. Chavez was a successful labor organizer and union leader who fought for reforms in wages and working conditions for farm workers. Chavez keenly understood the basic relationship between wages and labor supply in a market economy – more supply equals lower wages. To protect the interests of his UFWU members, Chavez had to insure that illegal aliens willing to toil in harsh conditions for low pay did not dilute the domestic labor supply.

Cesar Chavez was surely proud of his Hispanic heritage but, like civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., he fought to protect the rights and interests of legal U.S. citizens.

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech to the Illinois Republican State Convention. Regarding the issue of slavery Lincoln stated, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”

Similarly, a nation divided between its laws and lawlessness cannot stand.

President Bush and Congress are sending a message to legal U.S. citizens and the world that they are willing to tolerate a “house divided” by allowing 11 million illegal aliens to openly break the law. They are then willing to stand by and watch the illegal aliens flaunt their lawbreaking in our streets while waving the flag of their native country.

We are a nation of legal immigrants, and there is a road to citizenship. Along that road are legal entry, our Constitution, the rule of law and the flag of the United States of America.