Right-wing radio hosts such as KVI's John Carlson have gone to great lengths to focus their immigration rhetoric on "illegals". Their goal is to hide their nativist sentiments behind a law-and-order, not-really-about-race camouflage. However, if you look closely at their arguments it becomes obvious that "illegal" is nothing but a disingenuous code word for hispanics.

From the July 12th edition of the John Carlson Show:

CARLSON: The third issue, I think, is just the impact that illegals have on surrounding neighborhoods, which people who see the issue closely, you know at eye level, are increasingly exasperated about, again, whether they're Democrat of Republican.

This has been a key argument made by Carlson over the last 6 months - regular everyday people are deeply upset by illegal immigrants invading their nice neighborhoods and generally causing crime and other mayhem. But my question is how anyone can tell the difference between a legal and an illegal immigrant? If you see an increase in crime, how do you know that the perpetrators are in the country illegally?

Of course there's no way for anyone to recognize an illegal on sight. People who are upset about illegal immigrants are actually just upset about immigration. They don't see "illegals" -- they see people with different skin color and hear them speaking a different tongue. They feel deeply threatened by different people with different cultures and different languages. No matter how much they might try to argue that it is about fairness to legal immigrants or the rule of law, it's actually completely driven by an emotional, fearful, traditionally nativist reaction to change.