Americans should know that the battle brewing over immigration is nothing new. And losing would be potentially fatal to the American republic.

For the coalition of the radical left, the media and academic elite, and those corporate campaign donors focused on the quarterly profit report, the battle will never end until their objective has been achieved: The official end of enforcement of those pesky immigration laws and the establishment of the free-flow of ever cheaper labor.

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Open borders

The coalition’s enemy in the battle over immigration? The taxpaying, patriotic American worker who subsidizes the “cheap” replacement labor.

Here is a little snippet that makes for a useful talking point: At more than one million, the United States takes in more real, legal immigrants annually than any other nation on the planet. We have nothing to apologize for on the matter of immigration, unless it is the fact that we are taking in record numbers of immigrants while approximately 20 million Americans are out of work.

Polls show as many as 70 percent of Mexicans would migrate to the U.S.A. if they could. Nobody can blame them for that logical desire. There are billions of people on the planet who are poorer than the poorest in Mexico. And who would work even cheaper.

However “draconian,” we cannot allow the entire world to migrate into America. That is why we have immigration laws.

Another little snippet of too much information: In 1986, having assured the American people that the humane — and certain — solution to the 20th century illegal immigration crisis was to legalize about one million victims of geography, the Reagan administration granted a “one time only” immigration amnesty.

The straight-faced official promise was that “after comprehensive reform, we will secure the borders and begin to punish the criminal employers who are hiring the black-market labor. This is the path to return to the rule of law. We promise.”

The 1986 amnesty ended up legalizing nearly three million illegals. Look around to see how the other promises were kept. We have proven beyond all doubt that amnesty, by any name, does not stop illegal immigration.

The untried but obvious solution is enforcement of our immigration laws. “comprehensive immigration reform” is merely transparently concocted 21st century newspeak for a repeat of the failed 1986 amnesty program.

For the open borders lobby, the battle is now further complicated because it has become more difficult to fool the weary but steadfast Americans who demand secure borders, reasonable, controlled, sustainable levels of immigration and a living wage in their own country.

And an equal application of the law that includes illegal aliens even if they come from Latin America.

The new American dream? Preserving the birthright to look for a better life without being referred to as a bigot for the desire to keep American jobs and the traditions, common language and sovereign nation entrusted to us. Like it is done in Mexico.

Another snippet: Nearly half of the illegal aliens presently “living in the shadows” did not enter the U.S.A. illegally over our intentionally porous borders. They came lawfully on visas with the promise to leave at an agreed date, and then fearlessly refused to go home.

A last snippet of obvious facts from someone who studies the issue: Building a business on the premise that illegal immigration will always provide servile and artificially low-wage, intimidated workers while denigrating Americans who won’t work for peanuts is extremely un-American.

However naively, conjuring up the decades-old, alarmist, boogey-man of a “$4 apple” — like the equally absurd “$5 head of lettuce” — as a talking point in favor of another amnesty is fruitless.

According to Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California-Davis, the labor cost in a head of lettuce is less than 10 percent. We could (and probably should) double the wages of legal “lettuce labor” and not significantly increase the retail price. Same for apples and onions, too.

Let’s stop the American-bashing hypocrisy and enforce our immigration and employment laws. If we won’t do so now, why would we after another amnesty? Si?

D.A. King of Marietta is a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration and president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for enforcement of immigration and employment laws. On the Web: (http://www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org)