Illegal conundrums.(illegal immigrants and their succeeders)

NEW YORK, APRIL 11

DEMOCRATIC protocols get pretty elusive these days. In an attempt to sort it all out, we hovered for a moment on a wild idea. Why not send the illegals to France?

But delirious ideas have short lives, as they should have, and one seeks to learn from experience. We begin today by saying that, in France, the mobs don't exactly rule, but they seem to have a veto power. The utter capitulation of President Chirac disgraces him, his party, French democratic processes, and economic common sense. And, incidentally, it reminds us of the authority of the mob in French history, beginning with the inglorious revolution which even politicians of singularly independent dispositions--like Charles de Gaulle--feel the need to propitiate by public obeisances ("Vive la Revolution!") on ceremonial occasions. The mobs all but chased de Gaulle out of town in 1968, and they have shown us, in the past weeks, their continuing power to triumph over thoughtful republican procedures aimed at reforming retrograde French practices.

Over here, the mobs have not quite yet assumed power, though it is possible that they have paved the way to supremacy on the issue being currently debated, namely how to cope with the illegals.

It pays to give a little thought to the magnitude of the problem. Some demographers believe that the real figure for the illegal population is not 11 million, but 16 million. It is possible that the figure is somewhere in between, which raises the question: How're you going to get an accurate count, exactly? One recalls, in the final chapters of apartheid, thought given to how to figure out whether a South African human being was white or black or colored. The problem did not come to a bloody boil, because it was finally, wearily, decided that the best way to handle that vexed question was to declare that everybody who lived in South Africa was a South African.

By such reasoning, everybody who lives in America is an American. But of course that is to deal lightly with the authority of America, Inc., to decide who is and who is not, properly speaking, ...