David Garbe is a reporter for the Suburban Chicago News (owned by the Chicago Sun-Times group) and he offers the latest in a very long line of similar reports on the mobile Mexican consulate coming to small towns to pass out their ID cards to their citizens, most of whom are here illegally: "Hundreds line up at mobile Mexican consulate". While his article is fairly standard for the genre, it does provide a tiny bit more information than most, but it also has the same downsides as the others. Let's take a look at it and see if we can help David Garbe support what's in the best interests of America:

AURORA - Hundreds of Mexican immigrants lined the sidewalk at Bardwell Elementary School Thursday, awaiting a chance to get identification cards from their native country.

The school's gymnasium is playing host to the mobile operation of the Mexican Consulate in Chicago, which will be available to assist Mexican citizens there through Saturday.

The vast majority of people waiting in line were seeking to get a matricula consular, a photo ID card designed by the Mexican government primarily for its millions of citizens living in the United States without American documentation.

American immigration hawks criticize the matricula cards for making it easier for illegal immigrants to continue living in the United States...

...Banks are keen on selling their services to the estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants in America.

"You're missing the boat if you're not serving that population," said Sandy Lorenz, a regional manager for Fifth Third Bank...

Here are some questions the SCN might consider asking if they want to be a real newspaper:

* Shouldn't he have questioned the bank in a bit more depth? For instance, isn't that bank profiting from illegal activity? Would they, for instance, go after deposits from those who traffic in cigarettes or pot?

* What is a foreign country doing passing out their IDs to illegal aliens in a United States school (link)? Who authorized their use of public facilities? Was it Thomas Hartman, the principal (email: thartman.bardwell *at* d131.org)? Or, was it a higher-up? Should public facilities be used by a foreign country that wants to pass out ID cards to its citizens who are here illegally? What kind of "lesson" does that teach to the students at the school?

* Should Garbe have refered to those who want to enforce our immigration laws as "hawks"? What term would we use for those who support a foreign country's agenda?

Let's write the reporter and his editor and see if we can help them understand what they should have done:

dgarbe *at* scn1.com
rnagel *at* scn1.com

NOTE: I bought some Adwords in that paper last year, but I won't be making the same mistake again.