Two developments this week on the immigration front have been in the news: the fawning over the "Rosa Parks of the Immigration Movement" and comments that have probably doomed what slim chance Newt Gingrich had at the presidency.
In the first item, 32-year-old Elvira Arrellano is being hailed as a martyr by immigrant rights activists after she was deported this week to Mexico. Arrellano came to the United States illegally years ago and had a son who automatically was a U.S. citizen. She was ordered deported, but instead of following court orders, she holed up in a church in Chicago for months. She managed last week to slip out of the church and went to Los Angeles, where she was picked up by federal authorities and sent to Tijuana.
She's being held up as a model in a troubling aspect of immigration enforcement, which is the breakup of families as an illegal member gets deported while others, often children, stay here without parental support. I believe I dealt with this on a previous post, but let me restate. Minors have very limited rights, and if their parents are deported, they should have to go, too, unless there's agreement for them to stay in the care of an aunt or uncle.
Elvira Arrellano is probably not a bad person, but she was here illegally and did not take the necessary steps to legalize her status here. Having a son could have prompted her into action that would have made things better for both of them. That she didn't is her fault, not that of our immigration policy.
Meanwhile, Gingrich would have you believe that "young Americans in cities are being massacred" by the likes of Elvira Arrellano. He was referring to the terrifying execution-style slayings of four college-bound black teenagers in Newark, N.J. The prime suspect in the case is an illegal immigrant.
Well, that's one case. I can give you another, the 2003 slaying of an Oceanside, Calif., police officer by an four-time ex-convict gang member who was an illegal immigrant. Uh, yeah. Well, there's two. You reading this on your computer might think of one more.
Being close to the criminal justice system in a hotbed area for illegal immigrants, I can safely report that murder is nowhere even close to being a major issue in the debate over illegal immigration. It happens, sure, but no more so than in any other segment of the population. Maybe less. Don't get me wrong, there are criminal problems, particularly drunk driving and child abuse -- both physical and sexual.
But there aren't millions of illegal Mexicans up here going around killing Americans. If Gingrich decides to run for the presidency, his comments on this subject are going to be used against him like a sledgehammer. It's too bad, because he's normally a pretty astute observer of the American society.
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If you ever wanted to know what driving the Toyota Prius, the popular hybrid sedan, is like, I can give you a mixed bag of comments -- from someone who is not a car guy nor a radical environmentalist. Just a regular guy who types onto a computer for a living.
My own vehicle, a popular Japanese sedan, was being serviced, so the dealer gave me a courtesy car. The Prius was all that was readily available, so I took it.
Just by sitting down, you can tell there is more different about this car than just the battery. First, to turn it on, you push a power button. There is no ignition switch. The only key you have are the equivalent of the remote locking and unlocking computer chip you get on most new cars these days. You stick that thing in a slot and push the power button.
Once you've done so, the car powers up so quietly, you don't even realize it's on. The "gear shift" is just a little flipper handle that you push into "reverse" or "drive" and it immediately returns to its original position.
Actually driving the car isn't bad. The overall feel is that of a small car in terms of seat comfort, handling and road noise. Acceleration is good, but the rub is that when your foot is pressing the gas pedal, the gas engine is being used. When your foot is off the gas, the battery is in use. I noted a lack of smoothness in the engine when driving at freeway speeds. The climate controls and radio are all accessed from a touch-screen computer on the dashboard, and are fairly easy to use.
Just using the car for a day, I didn't check trunk space and didn't take time to learn the cruise control or climate/radio buttons on the steering wheel, but I'm sure they're convenient for someone.
The computer display showed me getting about 38 mpg on the freeway when the gas tank was nearly full, and 41 mpg with the gas tank half-full. I drove about 130 miles, mostly on the freeway.
My current sedan is more than 10 years old now, and I'm planning on a replacement within the next year. I've previously considered the Prius as a possibility, though a pricey one. Now that I've driven it, my thought is that if it was about $5,000 cheaper than the $22,000 estimated sticker price, I might consider buying one. But just replacing my sedan with the same model is less expensive, and the car gets a solid 30 mpg highway, is far more comfortable and has great backseat room and trunk room. As long as my only gain from a Prius is a few extra mpg, and I lose a lot in other areas, then it's certainly not worth the extra few thousand bucks.
