ANSWER: Cokie & Steve Roberts say we do.

The April 16-17 edition of The Daily Dunklin Democrat has another article by Cokie & Steve Roberts with their continuing education course of "Illegal Immigrants 101".

Those of us hopelessly stupid and "tinged with a rancid whiff of xenophobia," (the Robert's favorite word) have always thought the millions pouring across the border were doing so to escape a country that has forever been plaqued with revolutions, coups, executions, governments vile in corruption, and swollen with political & commercial bribery -- not to mention a gross imbalance between so few with so much, and so many with so little.

No, the Roberts elucidate us. What these people truly represent are mom's apple pie, traditional conservatives, anxious to be patriots and serve this country with the best intentions. (While remaining, of course, to be our lackeys, working at sub-standard wages, to make our lives easier, and more profitable.)

This almost has -- dare we say it -- a conservative, Republican ring about it. In fact the Roberts say it for us in the last paragraph of their article, when they write: "If conservatives don't understand that, if they turn their backs on people who share their values and their dreams, they deserve the political disaster about to engulf them."

Will those students in the back of the room who don't grasp this pristine concept please stay after school for further consultation.

You have to wonder how the Roberts have arrived at this glorious conclusion. Did they get it from the radical leaders who put away their Mexican flags in the last demonstration? Or maybe they got it conducting interviews, while bouncing along in a truck driven by a smuggler carrying human cargo? It's hard to imagine the Roberts darting past the border cop searchlights, and crawling under wire fences -- all to find the real truth. But who are we to question our instructors?

The Roberts say that we have always believed that the great genius of America was drawing the most ambitious, most enterprising, most courageous seekers from other countries.

Sorry, teachers, that hasn't always held true.

Our country has often been guilty of maintaining certain quotas and immigration restrictions. This has been to our detriment, and nothing to be proud of.

On May 13, 1939, the ship St. Louis left Germany loaded with 900 Jews. Many of them were doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers and writers. They were all desperate to escape the horror of Nazi Germany.

The St. Louis arrived at the Port of New York where it was identified that over 700 of them had immigration numbers. But for the most of them there would be a waiting period of between three & three and one-half years before they could enter the U.S.

The ship moved on to other countries where they ran into the same immigration restriction. Most of them were eventually scattered over several European countries that became occupied by the Nazis, and most of them arrived in concentration camps, and the gas chambers.

This is a national disgrace that undoubtedly would not have happened if we had known in 1939 the full extent of Nazi atrocities. There would have been a humane cry that would have invalidated the immigration restrictions. It is only pointed out to show that the Roberts are not that keen on laws concerning immigration, or our history in that regard.

Before we are placed on the dunce seat, or dropped a grade level in our schooling, or considered too hopelessly mired in xenophobia, we would like to ask the Roberts just two questions:

1. What happens to our legal immigration system in the wake of millions of illegal immigrants who have no intention of going through any kind of waiting, being medically documented, on hiding in the bushes until they are patted on the back and given citizenship?

2. Isn't there just the remote possibility that if millions and millions of more Mexicans keep illegally swarming across the border, that they can unknowingly make our country what Mexico already is?

QUESTION: Has there ever been a nastier time in United States history than the bitter confrontations between today's liberals and conservatives?

ANSWER: The period from 1850 to 1865 would make today's little bickering look like a polite meeting of a ladies garden club.

Doris Kearns Goodwin has written a masterpiece of United History entitled "Team of Rivals."

This is not meant to be a book review. The book is far too comprehensive to encompass in a few sentences. It's primary purpose is to show how Abraham Lincoln presided over a cabinet of men whose own ambitions had been to be president.

One thing the book provides is hope. If we can look back and see what took place between 1850 & 1865, and know we somehow survived, then we can survive anything.

There were the Kansas/Missouri border wars, John Brown's murderous trail to Harper's Ferry, acid confrontations between fire eating abolitionists, and equally fire eating slave owners, violence in the streets, and on the floor of the U.S. Senate, men going armed to public meetings -- all of it culminating into a Civil War that put 600,000 men under the ground. (More than all the U.S. wars combined, up to and including Iraq.)

The problems today are not trivial. But they can be overcome. History has proven they can be.