I wasn't upset last week when Time Magazine named Vladimir Putin as it's Man of the Year. After all, as it often reminds readers, the choice is the person who most impacted the world for good or evil.

Thus 1938 saw the award go to Hitler, followed by Stalin in 1939 and again in 1942. Another Soviet dictator, Nikita Krushchev, got the nod in 1957, while China's Chairman Den Xiaoping won in 1978 (and again in 1985) and Ayatollah Khomeni in 1979.

I'd have to argue that a similar argument can therefore be made about the selection made by the Dallas Morning News as Texan of the Year -- the law-breaking, border-jumping immigration criminal (although they called him "The Illegal Immigrant").

He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won't, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him.

We can't seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody's figured out how.

He's the Illegal Immigrant, and he's the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse. Given the public mood, there seems to be little middle ground in debate over illegal immigrants. Spectacular fights over their presence broke out across Texas this year, adding to the national pressure cooker as only Texas can.

And as with any such criminal, he is clearly detrimental to those of us who he victimizes by his presence.

Nationally, a Congressional Budget Office report released this month said illegal immigrants cost more in tax dollars than they provide, especially in the areas of education, law enforcement and health. Indeed, 70 percent of babies born in Dallas' Parkland Hospital in the first three months of 2006 were to illegal immigrant mothers. Taxpayers spend tens of millions of dollars annually subsidizing births in that one hospital.

Yes, boys and girls, that's right -- you and I are the victims of these folks, as they reach their hands right into our wallets to take from us money to provide them with benefits to which they have no legal or moral entitlement. The notion of some soft-heated, soft-minded judges that these folks are entitled to anything other than a bus ticket home and a computer entry denying them the privilege of ever crossing the border into the US again is the main thing preventing crackdowns on such benefits and the presence of such folks in our communities. Well that and the desire of Democrat politicians to get these folks legalized and voting Democrat, and businessmen who would rather hire cheap illegal worker than American citizens at American wages (and yes, that does include you, Bob Perry).

I don't care about most of the cultural issues -- I have no problem with new pieces added to the mosaic of American life. I speak Spanish (with a serious gringo accent, according to some of my students), like Mexican food, and love certain of the customs that these people bring with them. But I do believe that a measure of assimilation is a necessity, and to that end believe that learning English is a necessity rather than setting up the parallel cultural institutions we have seen develop.

Do I believe that we need to fight illegal immigration? You bet I do -- every bit as much as we needed to fight the twin menaces of Nazism and Communism, and as we need to fight Islamism today. Yet at the same time, I welcome legally immigrating foreigners from every country, provided they are willing to embrace America's history and values even as they share elements of their own with us. The choice is not between having immigration and having none. Rather, it is between having an orderly system with enforced immigration control, or the pell-mell invasion of our country by those who take more than they give.

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