ON THE TOWN:Immigration debate’s dirty little secrets

Her name is Barbara Lee Woollen, and she is a candidate for lieutenant governor in the state of Nevada.

On my way home from yet another trip to Vegas ? this one for pleasure ? I heard her campaign spot on my car radio just outside of town.

First, a word about the drive.

I am not very fond of Las Vegas, but I like the drive through the desert. For me, zipping through the desert is the closest thing I’ve come to experiencing meditation. I’ve even calculated that with the extra time needed due to airport security and with the other usual airport delays, I can drive to Vegas almost as quickly as I can fly there.

But driving to Vegas is tricky. You don’t want to drive there anytime on a Friday, and you don’t want to leave Vegas to drive home anytime after 11 a.m. If you do either, you risk sitting in horrible traffic.

We left Vegas last Sunday morning at 10:30. On the way home, just at the edge of town, I gassed up for $2.93 a gallon. Yesterday, at 17th Street and Irvine Avenue, it was $3.39 a gallon.

While waiting for my wife and kids to finish purchasing some snacks for the trip, I heard the commercial for Woollen, which was devoted almost entirely to her position on illegal immigration.

Curious, I thought, that a candidate would air a spot such as that when the town is so dependent on the cheap labor that the illegal immigrants provide.

Las Vegas, you see, has about 12 million hotel rooms at last count. There are also 4 million restaurants.

OK, I’m being silly, but you get the idea: The town runs on tourist dollars, and a lot of the folks who make things nice and clean for those tourists are here illegally. They clean the hotel rooms and wash the dishes in the hotel restaurants, among other things, just as they do here, except there are far more of them in Vegas.

I listened carefully to the spot and even made a few notes. Woollen came across as hopping mad about illegal immigrants, even though as lieutenant governor she would be powerless to change anything. So it’s just posturing on her part.

Actually, it’s worse than posturing, because her message was disingenuous at best; that is, just like the law-and-order tough guys we have here, the message is more disturbing for what is not being said.

What Woollen said in her commercial was that she supports proof of citizenship in order to vote. OK so far, even though she has no more power to direct that than you do.

Then she said she would prevent illegal immigrants from being eligible for something called the Millennium Scholarship.

After a little sleuthing, I discovered that the Millennium Scholarship was created by the state in 1999 and is awarded to high school students who complete a “rigorous program of study at a Nevada High School.”

Hmm. Now we’re targeting illegal immigrant minors.

Then she said she supported more secure borders.

Nothing special there, as both sides of the debate support that.

What Woollen did not say ? and what all the locals here will not say ? is that in order to fully support their position of “upholding the laws” we really should be arresting or citing business owners for hiring illegal immigrants.

And if we’re really going to take this law-and-order thing to its logical conclusion, we need to conduct raids on these businesses and in their homes, round up the illegal immigrants and ship them back by the boxcar to wherever they came from.

But these people don’t have the courage to take this thing to its logical conclusion because the thought of piling thousands of people into a boxcar and shipping them back across the border would remind everyone too much of something they did in Germany about 67 years ago.

And they don’t have the courage to tell businesses to stop hiring illegal immigrants because they know what the response would be.

Those two actions ? the two they don’t want to discuss ? are the dirty little secrets of the law-and-order crowd.

Can you imagine Barbara Lee Woollen telling the management of the Bellagio that they need to rid their hotel of illegal immigrants or she will conduct a raid and do it for them?

Not going to happen.

Mayor Allan Mansoor told me about two months ago that he was not in favor of raids.

But if we’re going to “uphold the laws,” I mean if we’re really going to go by the book, raids are mandatory, and asking businesses to certify citizenship is mandatory.

You can’t have it both ways.

In any case, I’ll buy tickets to see someone say they favor raids. It’ll be a lot cheaper than traveling to Las Vegas.