The dearly deported Elvira Arellano was in this country illegally, and she used a fraudulent Social Security number to obtain a job at O’Hare airport, where she washed airplanes. But Kirsten Powers doesn’t see any problems with this. She said repeatedly during tonight’s segment on The Factor that being able to come to the US is a “human right” in the context that freedom of movement is a human right. By that logic, the entire world ought to be made US citizens by fiat. Why not, if we’re going to just let them all violate our sovereignty and traipse across the borders without any semblance of order or any attempt to keep foreign criminals, terrorists and the like out of our country? This point of view makes hash of any attempt to secure the nation from any threat whatsoever, be it terrorism, narcotrafficking, human smuggling, whatever. If you live in Laredo, TX or any of the other US cities under constant threat from Mexico’s drug wars, your right to live in peace in your own country is of no concern. If you work in an industry in which illegals depress wages by working for less than you can afford to, and upon which they pay little or no taxes, your right to work in your own country for a fair wage is of no concern. If you live in a city or state where social services are being pillaged by illegal aliens and their children at your expense, tough. And don’t you dare complain about any of this, or you’ll get called a “nativist” or worse. Your emphasis on having an orderly system of migration is an unhealthy obsession. Your attempts to impose order on chaos are either misguided or racist.

If you’re a legal immigrant who waited your turn, paid the fees and live by the law now that you’re here, you’re a sucker. The respect that you pay to US law and sovereignty is not appreciated in the least.

And Powers is one of the reasonable Democrats. Let that sink in. And then watch tonight’s Factor segment with Michelle, Kirsten and Bill. The boss and Bill make all the right points, but they fall on deaf ears.

Fraudulent use of a SSN is a crime. Elvira Arellano broke US law to get here twice, and had a sensitive job that ought to have required a thorough background check that would have found her out. Since she had that job, presumably someone else who lives in this country legally couldn’t have that job. That’s three crimes en route to a job that she should not have held in a post 9-11 world. Then, when deported Sunday night, Arellano chose politics over her son and left him here in the US with strangers, while once again slamming the US (which is far more welcoming of immigrants than Mexico is or ever will be) on her way out. This is a hero? According to reasonable Democrat Kirsten Powers, yes. One who ought to be allowed to live in the US regardless of her crimes or her attitude of entitlement toward a country of which she is not a citizen or legal resident, and against which she committed fraud.

If you peel the skin off this thinking, the law is meaningless and US citizenship is worthless, not something to be striven for or sought through effort. It’s just a human right to grant to any would-be identity thief on the planet, no matter what effect that has on US security, sovereignty or economics. In a world run along this kind of thinking, there is no reason whatsoever to obey the laws. Manufacture SSNs to your heart’s content, no matter whose identity you steal or what effect your actions have on the integrity of the American legal system. Don’t concern yourself about that. Just get what’s yours as a “human right.” If you’re a photogenic person with a sob story, all the better. You’ll make a great prop.

Update (AP): What Powers is saying isn’t even left-wing; it’s simply insane. It amounts to a United States without borders, an idea you’d be hard-pressed to find a single prominent Senate Democrat willing to agree with publicly, I suspect.

I don’t know if she’s sincerely drifted left in her thinking, if she’s feigning it as part of the center’s grand pander to the nutroots, or if she was always this nutty and I just didn’t see it, but I’ve misjudged her significantly enough that I think it warrants some sort of formal acknowledgment. Sorry for the error and for having wasted your time.

Update (BP): Sevenload did something strange to the video. I’m in the process of fixing it.

Update (BP): Video fixed.