Illegal Immigration: On the radio this morning I listened as a DJ complained about his neighborhood La Fonda being closed today to express its support of immigrants who work in this country, legally or not. He warned listeners that some of our favorite eateries could be closed. He felt he was "paying the price" - that is, his neighborhood restaurant being closed - so that illegal immigrants and their supporters could go protest and make their voices known.

We all pay a price. Illegal immigrants depress the price of labor by being willing to work for less money. But their willingness to be paid under the table is what makes many products and services affordable for us.

Illegal immigrants may be illegal, but that doesn't mean they're subhuman. The accident of our birth in this country doesn't give us the right to look down on them, to be sequestered in our comfortable lives and make cheap jokes about rounding people up and shipping them off or shooting them. 'Cause that's soooo funny, right? To mock people who have to escape where they're from in order to make a better life for themselves and their families?

In my family, I am a first-generation American. My parents are immigrants. They came here, legally, for their higher educations. They could have lived decently in Thailand, but they wanted to come to the U.S. for its opportunities and they wanted their children to have good lives here. Their life has not been easy. They have been productive people. They have pursued business opportunities, with some success and some failure. In recent years they have each become a U.S. citizen.

There is no question that people should come to this country legally and take the necessary steps to pursue work and citizenship. But it costs time and money to do that - and if you are poor and jobless and your family can't sponsor you, are you simply supposed to accept that you and your family are doomed to a life of poverty and squalor? You do what you have to in order to survive.

Survival isn't some stupid reality-show concept - it's a condition of life for many, many people in this world.

Immigration reform does not mean just throwing up a fence and paying for a militia to patrol our borders. A guest-worker program is the best viable solution for dealing with the problem. Reform the system that people have to go through so that they don't sneak into this country and work undercover. There should be a penalty for people who come here illegally, but that doesn't mean something draconian. If people are in the system, they can contribute taxes, their children can go to school, they can get medical assistance instead of hoping the illness will just go away. Yes, we have to deal with this issue, as we must deal with many others, but simply because we are better off and comfortably situated - not necessarily rich - our comparatively lofty situation does not give us the right to be smug, clueless, hateful, heartless people.