It isn’t just that illegal aliens will do jobs Americans won’t do. But of course they will. They will pick fruit, wash cars, wait tables, perform colonoscopies, design computers and test weapons systems, sometimes for hours on end in the brutal heat of a hospital examination room or the hurtling, pressurized cockpit of a jet fighter. You and I couldn’t do that, my friend. Don’t even say you could.

But illegals also read the books Americans won’t read: Orwell’s 1984, Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Beckett’s Trilogy, even the works of snarky French postmodern novelist Robert Pinget. You won’t find any Americans willing to put up the endless effort involved in wading through these fiendishly difficult tomes from cover-to-cover. Real Americans read Grisham and Steele and other page-turning lightweights. Only our Hispanic brethren are willing to submerge themselves in the murky, Rio Grande-like depths of governmental theory and experimental fiction, and come up smiling. And they do it, for the most part, with less than a high school education and no fluency in English, and often right after scaling fences in Texas and Arizona and running from border guards and vigilante groups. That’s determination, paisano. You don’t have that fund of determination, and neither do I.

And illegals from across our southern border also watch the TV reruns Americans won’t watch. Reruns of Leave It to Beaver, reruns of Ozzie and Harriet, reruns also of Fury, the Story of a Horse, and of The Phil Silvers Show, and musty old footage of Mr. Peepers, The Danny Kaye Show, and Chico and the Man. No American will watch tripe like that. No American is that desperate for a good time, or that hard and tough. I know personally a Mexican immigrant of questionable legal status who watched bad American TV shows all day long without complaint: Sky King, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, even My Little Margie, in black and white no less. Never did he once change the channel until he found out he could. After that he tuned in Everybody Loves Raymond right away, just like an American, but I still give him unlimited credit for viewing an entire season of Burke’s Law without once griping or becoming ill. And a man who can watch Burke’s Law can also watch Mod Squad without breaking his back or bleeding to death. What’s more, he’ll get up the next day and do it all over again, and then write his family in Guatemala about it. I’ve seen it done, citizen, but not by you or me.

I could go on and on about the unpleasant things that illegals do for you and me in America, and for which we should be truly grateful: illegals drive the cars that Americans will not drive, wear the shoes that Americans will not wear, vote for the politicians that Americans will not vote for, obey the laws that Americans will not obey, and inhale the marijuana that Americans will not inhale. Illegals speak the languages Americans will not speak, attend the schools that Americans will not attend, join the armed forces that Americans will not join, drop the nukes that Americans will not drop, drink the water that American citizens will not touch a drop of, and use the public restrooms that the American public will not go near. And for this they deserve our thanks. We really could use millions more of them.

But perhaps nothing is more praiseworthy than the undocumented impressionists in our comedy clubs who do impressions of ancient Aztecs and Old World Spanish explorers that American impressionists will not even begin to impersonate. They’ll do archaic Mayans too, on request. I’ve seen aliens right here at the Go Bananas nightclub in Cincinnati, Ohio, smack dab in the American Midwest, take the stage at night and do a flawless Montezuma. In practically the same breath, they’ll turn right around and do a perfect Cortez. If the applause is right, they’ll throw in a passable King Quetzalcoatl from Chichen Itza. These are guys whose day job is picking apples in an orchard or teaching calculus at a two-year college, my friend. I couldn’t do it, and neither could you. Not even if we were comedians. I wouldn’t even try. I get torn ligaments and a sore throat just thinking about it.

For these reasons I propose the following immigration measure: after they have lived in our country and used our worst products and done our most unpopular jobs for 75 years, all the illegal aliens, most of whom I have met and like, must return home to touch base. They must then turn around and come right back, if they’re not too old. Anything more is xenophobia, anything less is amnesty.