The virulence and inflexibility of illegal immigration activists and their Democratic Party allies, as well as their refusal to answer the simple question of whether the U.S. should have any borders or say-so on who gets into the country, does come across as an...ideology.

This is why a seminal essay on the matter by Victor Davis Hanson, who is close to ground zero of what illegal immigration actually means in Central California, is so well worth reading.

Hanson shows the scope in his opener:

Illegal immigration has become so deeply embedded for so long within contemporary power politics, demography, and cultural change, so charged with accusations of racism, nativism, and xenophobia, that we have forgotten its intrinsic contradictions.

We saw a glimpse of reality with the recent "caravan" of Central Americans.  With a strong wink and nod from their Mexican hosts, the travelers assumed an intrinsic right to march northward into the United States.  Had they done so, they would have confirmed the impression, advanced during the last administration, that the border is porous and that a sovereign United States and its citizenry have scant legal right to secure it.

He then elaborates on the scope and implications of this new ideological addition.

Illegal immigration activists.  Credit: Fibonacci Blue via Flickr.

He's circling what the real problem is as illegals come front and center in the U.S. public debate.

He does point out that elites of Latin countries do indeed benefit from shipping millions of their least educated and least productive people to El Norte to take care of, and then benefits from their cash remittances shipped back home, turning burdensome people who are otherwise likely to revolt against them into fountains of cash.

There are other beneficiaries worth noting, and both are ominous as well.

One is the cartels and drug dealers who take migrant money to smuggle people into the U.S. for a tidy profit.  The recent surge of migrants into the U.S. after an initial drop-off, noted in this Federalist piece, suggests that. Smugglers profit from illegals, and they don't like their money cut off.  Make no mistake: they are playing a role in encouraging illegal immigration for profit's sake.

As Hanson notes, there are massive contradictions involved, including in this aspect of the illegal immigration transaction.  How is it that someone who is supposedly fleeing gangs can go up to the gang that is supposedly bothering him, hand them $6,000 or $10,000 for the smuggling journey, and then set up shop in a Central American neighborhood brimming with more gangs and their violence?  This doesn't sound like someone really serious about fleeing from gangs.  Yet the gang flight argument is always used as ideological grounds for the U.S. admitting more illegals.

Here's another contradiction based on ideology.  The Central American countries the biggest waves of illegals are fleeing are all officially democratic countries.  These are recognized democracies, and people have the right to vote and the right to vote for change.  Yet the claims from the open borders lobby are that the illegals they support are migrating north only because they are fleeing oppression?  What's really going on is that these voters sell their votes for bags of beans and believe every populist promise about Bad Gringo being the source of all their poverty and ills instead of their local elites.  They then vote socialists into power, dislike the result, and head to El Norte for the free stuff they had expected earlier in the home country that never materialized.  It's never brought up in the press that the countries being fled from are democracies with rights to vote. 

Don't think there isn't an explicitly ideological basis for that.  At an illegal alien protest I attended in Murrieta, Calif., I got a chance to listen to the other side in the matter: a pro-illegal immigrant activist leader, who was an older guy covered with gang tats on his arms and who told me he had been a former Salvadoran communist guerrilla.  Why was he advocating for illegal immigration to the land of the hated yánqui imperialista?  He calmly explained to me that it was part of the ideology: to punish gringo by shipping millions and millions of illegal migrants to the U.S. from places the U.S. had unfairly colonized (his logic, not mine).  It was to force the U.S. to atone for its errors.  Hence the ease with which he supported illegal immigration.

There is an ideology from illegal immigration, and it's a multi-headed hydra of contradictions.  What it isn't is one set of laws for everyone to obey.  That makes it a threat to democracy, and don't think a former Salvadoran guerrilla wouldn't know what he was talking about in the matter of destroying a democracy.