The "good" illegal aliens and their role in political debate

Wizbang takes on something that's been a bee in my bonnet for a long time: the Left's effort to make sob stories out of every illegal alien. (I've already blogged about the Left's efforts to make sob stories out of every terrorist.) Thus, Wizbang tells of a newspaper article that reports the teary and inspiring story of a Brazilian family that came here as tourists, broke the law by staying, and started a delivery business, which is very successful. The poor things, though, are a bit worried that the law might catch up with them. In this regard, the family reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara, in Gone With The Wind, weeping and tippling because her second husband got killed in a KKK-style raid the men felt they had to undertake because she was harrassed earlier after breaking social rules and going out unescorted. Ignoring the horrible racist connotations behind it all, Rhett Butler's words to Scarlett (which I quote from memory) are instructive: "You remind me of the thief who is not sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he got caught." The real issue, of course, isn't the family's angst either about breaking the law or fearing to be caught. The real issue is the MSM's belief that this fear has relevance to the illegal immigration debate. What is relevant to the debate is the fact that we have laws and people routinely break them. We need either to decide whether we want to keep those laws as they are and actually enforce them; or if economic realities in America (such as the fact that most produce wouldn't make it to the table without illegal labor) require us to change the laws, and then to enforce them as changed. What is not relevant to the debate is some family's worries about the fact that its various members might get caught because they're breaking about a gazillion different laws with every breath they take (Wizbang thoughtfully details some of those violations). Get's keep the debate honest and remove the gooey and irrelevant emotional details about individual lawbreakers. UPDATE: Here's Peggy Noonan writing about the fact scofflaw problem inherent in our current approach to illegal immigration. And to what she says, I add "ditto."