A Day Without Immigrants?

The Star Tribune headlines: “Many Twin Cities businesses closing Thursday for ‘Day Without Immigrants’ protest.”

A growing number of restaurants and other businesses across the Twin Cities will close Thursday in solidarity with a national protest dubbed “Day Without Immigrants.”

The one-day protest organized through social media urges immigrants not to attend work, open their businesses, spend money or send their children to school in reaction to President Trump over his immigrant policies.

What “immigrant policies” are those? The Strib is missing a key word: illegal. That word appears nowhere in the article.

The idea is to send a message that the “country is paralyzed” without immigrants who do everything from run corporate boardrooms to clean them.

Is the country paralyzed without immigrants? Or without illegal immigrants? The organizers of this protest obviously are trying to blur that fundamental distinction.

“Immigrants of all kinds make this country run,” the Mesa Pizza post said. “Many have families here, deeply-rooted lives, and we are horrified to think that, for example, parents could be arrested and taken away while their children are at school, simply because of their immigration status.”

So they are talking about illegal immigrants.

The Strib says that “many” Twin Cities businesses will close tomorrow. I suppose that might be true, but the article mentions exactly six: Mesa Pizza, El Burrito Mercado, La Guadalupana, La Loma, Boca Chica and Mercado Central. I think it is a fair inference that those six restaurants employ illegal immigrants, which is a violation of federal law.

The real story here is that lawbreaking, with respect to illegal immigration, has become an organized, politicized movement. This is due, in part, to our last president’s shameful violation of his oath of office. But, when it comes to enforcing the laws that our people’s representatives have enacted, better late than never.