I’m glad someone finally had the chutzpah to take the gloves off on Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigration activist who was finally tossed out of the country after seeking refuge in a storefront church in Chicago run by a shady so-called “clergyman” sympathizer. Trying to paint herself as a symbol of the illegal immigration movement, all she ended up doing was revealing to everyone just how screwy she was and how much she deserved to be deported. As Michael Reagan writes in his NewsMax.com article:

Who is this woman who has tugged so successfully at the heartstrings of the nation’s liberals?

She snuck into the U.S. years ago, was caught and sent southward in the late ’90s.

That was just a minor setback in her career — in a matter of a few days she was back in the U.S. where she got pregnant and got a job as a cleaning woman at an airport thanks to a phony Social Security card — rather serious offense for which would be a sure ticket to the slammer for most people. But not for Elvira. It took 9/11 to get her charged with the crime and ordered out of the U.S. — again.

She didn’t go. Instead she conned a church into giving her sanctuary where she stayed until she rashly ventured forth to promote the virtues of illegal immigration. The Feds nabbed her and promptly deported her, offering to let her take her son — you know, the one she insisted she could not be separated from.

She said no. After all, the kid is a better propaganda tool here in the U.S., allowing her to bewail her “enforced” separation from him.

As it turns out, Arellano’s downfall was caused by her monstrous ego and her sincere belief that it was she who had become the face of the illegal immigration debate here in the U.S. Not those who quietly and honestly work hard jobs on a daily basis simply to try and send money home to their families, and not those who, while illegal in terms of our nation’s laws, nevertheless contribute to the economies of the cities and towns they live in. No, Ms. Arellano saw herself the poor single mother (I’ll refrain from any comment on that) and her son as the symbols of the mean, unfair, and unjust United States. And, in doing so, all she did was alienate those who should have been amongst her supporters – a fact duly noted by in a recent editorial staff in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks, Arellano managed to even rankle African Americans, who might have sympathized with her plea to stay with her U.S.-born son, Saul. She further estranged herself from the public when she didn’t bother to learn English during her year cooped up in Adalberto Methodist Church, the storefront church run by the Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman, a man who is more apt to elicit ire than form consensus. Arellano also put her own interests above her 8-year-old son, exploiting him to draw sympathy. There was an element of cool self-interest in much of what she did and said. The more publicity she got, the more she turned people off.

Arellano wasn’t tugging at too many heartstrings either by shacking up in a rent-free church where she was fed and cocooned from the outside world. Boredom and a severe case of cabin fever were her biggest foes because authorities certainly weren’t going to tarnish their image by storming into a house of worship and snatching her away. Others busted for illegally crossing the borders twice, using a false Social Security number and fraudulent ID should be so lucky.

Look, there’s no doubt that there are a lot of people on the pro-illegal immigration side of the debate who not only mean well, but – no matter where you stand on the issue – make more than their share of sense when it comes to the debate, but Elvira Arellano is and never was one of them. Not only is she a fraud, a criminal, and a fundamentally misguided egomaniac, but when she put her own needs and priorities before those of her son, she showed herself to be a lousy mother as well.

Good riddance, Elvira Arellano.

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UPDATE: I knew I should have added as a coda to my original post something to the effect, “…But I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of you.” Sure enough, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune via Matt Drudge, this nugget: Arellano has applied for a visa to return as a – get this – “peace activist”:

“What I’m asking for is a diplomatic visa so that I can be an ambassador for peace and justice because I’m not a terrorist and the United States can’t continue treating undocumented migrants as terrorists,” Arellano told reporters after meeting with President Felipe Calderon at the presidential residence, Los Pinos.

I mean, this is absurd. The woman is obviously suffering from Cindy Sheehan Syndrome, otherwise known as CSS – you know, that syndrome where a single person uses the power of today’s mass communication channels to prop herself up as a somebody when in fact she’s really a nobody. Thirty years ago, public pests like Arellano would never be heard or seen, now in today’s media-saturated Internet/YouTube/cable network culture, anyone and everyone thinks they have their own bully pulpit. It’s enough to make you crazy.

Hey Elvira, I have a better idea – why don’t you focus on raising your son to be a good man and being a good little Mexican citizen and an agent for change in your own country. Now THAT would be a novel idea, wouldn’t it?