Is This What the Star Spangled Banner Means to Illegals?

What exactly does America's flag and all it stands for mean to illegal immigrants?

Does the flag mean anything to those who have willingly ignored America's border laws and bypassed the entire process of applying for legal U.S. residency and United States citizenship?

Michelle Malkin has a must-read post on the immigration protests, including this "heart-stopping photo" that you have not seen featured prominently, if at all, in the mainstream media:

Whittier area students from Pioneer, California and Whittier high schools walked out of classes to protest the proposed federal immigration bill March 27, 2006. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upsidedown at Montebello High. (Leo Jarzomb/Staff photo)

Malkin writes:

I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington. The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail.

The battle for borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun.

The idea of handing the keys to legal residency and citizenship to illegals who view the American flag this way is stomach-churning.  We have border controls, citizenship laws, and an orderly immigration process for a reason.  One of those reasons is to ensure that voting rights and all the other privileges of residency and citizenship are conferred on people who genuinely understand and love this country. 

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The rights and privileges of residency and citizenship must be reserved for the kind of people who respect this nation and its laws; the kind of people who are moved by the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner; not the kind who have no idea what the national anthem is and care so little about America's system of government that they go out of their way to flip the American flag upside down and lower it to fly below another nation's banner.

Comments

[Washington]

My blood boils when I see that image. We can thank a Congress that refuses to take substantive actions to curb an invasion of our soil.

[Isrealcool]

Isn't reconquista the same as Zionism?

[Mike]

I see your point being pissed with such a horrific image. I'de feel the same if it was my flag in the same situation.However you must see the situation that us immigrants are facing.We're coming to virtually desperate measures to be heard by the government. This desperation causes us to lose some sense and respect for others which is clearly shown in the image. I am not Mexican, I dont claim you land as mine, and I never would. The US gained Mexican territory through politics and war. Which means the US lawfully earned these lands.
I do wish our people would get along once and for all, after all your people say "America, land of the free", I say "America, land of the free...for Americans"

Mike