Dear Mr. Navarette

In your July 21, 2011, commentary on CNN (Immigrants, don't boo U.S. teams), it looked like you got it. But in the end, you missed it.

Like you, I am the child of immigrants. I am not "native American," a term which refers to tribes of peoples who emigrated to North America in an earlier era, and probably dispossessed those who had emigrated still earlier.

Unlike you, I am not Mexican-American, or American-Mexican. I am also not German-American, Scottish-American, Swiss-American, or African-American. I am AMERICAN; I am not hypenated, and neither should you be. Obviously, that's not to say you should forget your family heritage, but that ridiculous hyphen implies that you have grounds for divided loyalty to your country or that those who don't share your particular heritage are second-class citizens.

Now, you often suggest that the conservative cultural right holds an anti-immmigrant bias and is bigoted against Mexicans. After all, it seems to be a cornerstone of liberal belief that you hate people you disagree with, because they hate you if they disagree with you. And it is true that there are bigots. Yes, in both parties and in every political quadrant, but bigotry is not a cornerstone of conservativism. I don't hate you, even if I hate your ideas, and I do most certainly hope to change your mind.

Conservatives are bigoted, if that is the correct word, against "illegal." I recently saw an article stating that many are coming illegally from India. I have met people from India, one of whom was my instructor in college, a bright and able man, and I don't hate them, but I want that illegal inflow stopped. I also do know illegal aliens from Mexico. Some hardworking and loyal to the U.S. The others, well, not so much, I think. They remain loyal to Mexico. Oh, yes, they love the things they get here; thousands of dollars per year in government aid for most families (over $19,000 according to Kansas's Mr. Kobach) and tax-free income (file taxes? if they do, they forfeit all that free aid, and if they don't, the IRS can't find them and wouldn't waste money prosecuting for deportation if they could.) And they can easily get jobs. Their background can hardly be checked, and they can buddy up to split jobs and keep the effective wage well below the minimum wage employers must pay legal employees.

The problem is that you are not supporting Mexicans, and you are not supporting America. You support illegal. That is what falls flat to the law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working American. We are all for immigration; virtually all Americans are immigrants, and we recognize the value of immigration. But you support illegal. That rankles against the "law-abiding" part of conservative values. It's not that we are all perfect, but we intend to obey the law, whereas illegal aliens by definition are illegal. I do realize that many of the illegal aliens come from countries where poverty is endemic and rights are suppressed, but if their heart is truly in their country, they owe it to their country to fix their country.

You see, you are not quite correct in saying that the Mexican immigrants of today are different. Immigrants from Mexico, like any other immigrants, followed the rules and worked to come here legally because they sought to be Americans. Illegal aliens, from whatever country, did not. Pasting the label immigrant on illegal aliens does not make it so. As you have now seen, many have come to grab whatever money and benefits they can get; they are not here to be Americans.