It's hard to imagine that the schoolchildren who engaged in a pro-illegal immigration rally yesterday helped their cause much, except to harden the polarization already felt on both sides of the issue. While our politicians in Washington talked about how the illegals came to the US to enjoy the American dream, their actions speak much more towards the reconquista that, as Michelle Malkin has written, lies at the heart of the triumphalism that they now espouse. The Los Angeles area school districts allowed 22,000 students to protest border security and the enforcement of immigration law Monday, and it produced moments like this one:

That is a Mexican flag over an upside-down American flag on the flagpole behind the students that raised them. Note the display of unbridled patriotism of these American students -- for Mexico.

Of course, the schools themselves see it differently. They say that the Mexican flag doesn't demonstrate disloyalty to the US, but rather allows the students to show "unity":

But UC Irvine professor Frank Bean said the flag doesn't signify loyalty to Mexico but rather loyalty to one another.

"They are saying, 'We are together in fighting against these people who are trying to make felons out of us,' " said Bean, co-director of UC Irvine's Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy.

No, Professor Bean, by flying American flags upside-down under the Mexican flag, they're showing a loyalty to Mexico that overrides their loyalty to the US. And then they have the temerity to demand that we allow them to live here without following our laws governing entry into the US as well as continue to provide government services to them. In the meantime, people who come here legally and wish to stay wind up having to go home and reapply for permanent residency. Joe Gandelman has a guest poster from Britain who cannot avoid leaving the US after coming here legally and showing nothing but loyalty to his new home.

The rallies in Southern California only ripped the lid off of a well-known dynamic in the culture that mixes native guilt with radical illegal-immigrant activism to fuel the La Raza dream of Aztlan, the reconquest of the the Southwest and its return to Mexico or existence as a separate nation. This radical notion has been around since 1969 and plays a part in the fringe politics of the Southwest. However, the increasing sense of entitlement for illegals in the area has led this impulse out of the shadows and into the forefront of the amnesty movement by enabling people to argue that the illegals are returning to their own land and that the US lacks the sovereignty to declare otherwise.

If the illegals and their support groups think this will win over the American people, they are very much mistaken. If they think they can intimidate Congress into action with these demonstrations ... that may be another thing entirely, I'm afraid.

CORRECTION: Changed a typo from "American" to "Mexican"; thanks to several CQ readers for pointing out the mistake.

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