Helmet-haired demi-MILF Linda Chavez provides this bit of surreality:

...Whether we care to admit it or not, most of us benefit from the services of illegal aliens, even if indirectly, and the law that ensnarled Kerik has turned many good people into scofflaws...

...I have special reason to be concerned. My own nomination to be secretary of labor was derailed in 2001 when it became public that a decade earlier I had taken into my home and given modest financial assistance to a battered and abused woman from Guatemala, who at the time was illegally living in the United States...

...Although some news organizations have suggested that other ethical and moral lapses doomed Kerik's nomination, this does not appear to be the case. The Washington Post reports, "White House officials said they knew in advance about other disclosures now emerging about Kerik's background, including alleged extramarital affairs and reported ties to a construction company with supposed mob connections, but had concluded that they were not disqualifying." So suspicions about mob ties don't doom a nomination but hiring an illegal alien does? Something is very wrong here, but it's not the White House's fault...

...The only solution is to make it easier -- not harder -- for immigrants who want to work to come here legally. The president's much-maligned guest worker proposal is a step in the right direction. But a solution still has to be found for dealing with those illegal aliens already here. It makes no sense to kick them out in order to bring in millions of different people to fill their jobs. A one-time fine of both illegal aliens and the employers who knowingly hire them, along with the chance for undocumented workers to legalize their status if they have not broken other laws, would seem the proper punishment. Then maybe we could quit disqualifying otherwise good candidates from serving the nation.