Nyukleheads

The dirty little secret of illegal immigration is that a wholesale evacuation of all the people who are here without permission is not supported by many businesses.

That accounts for the weak anti-illegal immigration response by President Bush and many members of both houses of Congress.

Businesses, including your favorite restaurant, car wash and warehouse, need the cheap labor provided by illegal immigrants, and many people who would otherwise support a series of illegal immigrant sweeps understand that it is just not that simple.

It is simple to the “Three Scrooges,” Mayor Allan Mansoor and Councilmen Eric Bever and Gary Monahan of the Costa Mesa City Council, who couldn’t wait until after the holidays to get their hands around the throats of the busboys, gardeners and house cleaners who came here to work.

So earnest was their zeal that they forgot the rule that timing is everything.

Was it really so urgent that their illegal immigration crackdown get approved only days before the celebration of the birth of the most tolerant man in history?

No, it was not. But that did not stop them from trying to ride on the coattails of congressional also-ran Jim Gilchrist, who placed a disappointing third in the race for former Rep. Chris Cox’s seat.

Yes, with all of the hype and talk radio support from a major program, Gilchrist didn’t even take second. That honor belonged to Steve Young, a Democrat.

Despite his occasional plea to the contrary, Gilchrist was a one-trick pony, and when the discussion turned to something other than illegal-immigrant spotting, he could not keep up with John Campbell.

Gilchrist lost even with the support of John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI’s “John and Ken” show, an extremely popular afternoon talk radio program. The “Rant Brothers” are turning out to be paper tigers, for with all of their hard work, they failed in their “political human sacrifice” to force Rep. David Dreier out of office, they failed to get even one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiatives passed and they failed to get Gilchrist elected, despite election day pleas.

On their radio show after the election, they tried to spin their latest defeat, calling Gilchrist’s third-place finish “amazing.”

The sad part of the Rant Brothers’ spin is that had one of their guests been doing the same thing, they would have torn him to shreds.

Gilchrist’s defeat would seem to dispute one Daily Pilot letter writer’s claim that “81% of Californians [believe] that illegal immigration is a major problem.”

Perhaps the pollsters asked the wrong question. Answered that way, it could be that some of those 81% believe that illegal immigration is a problem because there isn’t enough of it.

The easy thing to do is bash the Three Scrooges for what will certainly appear to some as a mean-spirited and not-so-thinly-veiled attempt to drive illegal immigrants out of town.

Another possibility is that this is a back door attempt to close down Costa Mesa’s Job Center.

If so, I hope they succeed. I hope the Job Center shuts down and all of the workers scatter all over Placentia Avenue looking for work, the way they used to, making the entire Westside a free-for-all job center instead of the controlled program it is now, with the resulting peace and order.

Only then will the boys remember that, “Hey, that chaos is why we created the Job Center in the first place!”

Either way, the boys would have done well to consider illegal immigration after Christmas.

Mansoor, Bever and Monahan may be right in their belief that this is what Costa Mesans want, even that it’s the right thing to do. But it’s the wrong time of the year to do it.

This is Christmastime, guys. If for no other reason than we must allow ourselves a couple of weeks each year to take a break from divisive issues, this motion was proposed at a bad time.

Despite the claims of folks such as Mansoor and Gilchrist, illegal immigration is not a brown and white issue. The gray areas include the aforementioned secret business support of this underground population and the trouble that comes when illegal immigrants don’t report crimes, one of the points that former Costa Mesa Police Chief Dave Snowden has made.

The reluctance to report crime is no small point. Say, for example, that you are here illegally and witness a felony, such as armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon. Let’s say you get a good look at the suspect; you may even know who he is.

But the newly empowered police will make you think twice about reporting the crime.

While we wait for the other jackboot to drop, watch for the city’s slogan to change from “The City of the Arts” to “Bah, humbug!”

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.

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