I learned one important lesson while hosting a political radio talk show: The people who call in are not representative of all the people. To paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln: Talk show callers can represent some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time but they do not represent all the people all the time.

The best measure of public opinion comes from statewide elected officials. On point is how statewide elected officials take positions on controversial issues. For example: Immigration reform comes to mind.

The sound of concrete cracking surrounds us now that millions of illegals and supporters of their future hit the streets.

Pundit Dick Morris writes how the Republicans can win-win the situation by supporting a border fence to appease the infuriated Right and guest worker and temporary work permits to appeal to vast numbers of Americans who routinely support such permits in survey after survey.

In the Senate we see Republicans and Democrats discussing their differences, not on the substance of previously agreed to comprehensive immigration reform but on procedural questions. How many, for example, amendment votes should be permitted? Who should serve on the looming conference with the House that will reconcile the House and Senate immigration bills?

Pro-reform Republican Senator Arlen Specter, author of the compromise reform bill in his Judiciary Committee, states he will be on any conference committee as will Delaware Democrat Senator Joe Giden, another reform supporter.

More importantly, the Republican Speaker of the House and the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate have announced that any immigration bill that arrives at the President’s desk will not have provisions that make felons of 5-year old illegal alien children or the nurses that might help that child.

Adding to the speeding train of immigration reform are indications that Colorado Congressman and anti-Mexican critic Tom Tancredo may be right when he observed that though he thought most Americans were repulsed by the millions on the streets, that some of his colleagues were wavering towards comprehensive immigration reform.

Case in point, Senators John Kyle (R-AZ) and John Cronin (R-TX) who were against the comprehensive immigration bill fashioned among Senators Arlen Specter, Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez, are now offering a compromise of their own.

Originally, they introduced a bill that would require all illegals present to leave then to apply for normal entry. They were adamant about their bill and spoke against the compromise and voted against the Specter bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Now, after the millions of demonstrators hit the streets in peaceful, quiet and festive demonstration of how many are here and how they feel about becoming legal, Kyl and Cronin are offering a new compromise that would use “deep roots” as criteria for legalization of those millions already here.

The Hagel-Martinez compromise declared that those illegals here for more than five years could automatically get legalized. Those here 2-5 years would have to cross the border and return immediately legally while they apply for total legalization and those here less than two years would have to return home and apply through normal channels for a new work permit.

Kyl and Cronin would go one step further by using “deep roots.” Kyle told the Los Angeles Times that, “If you look at family, if you look at roots, perhaps it’s a better way of distinguishing (among illegal immigrants). It’s an objective criteria based on a value that most people can agree on.”

Movement, that’s what we have, movement on comprehensive immigration reform. It’s forward March, not retreat.

On the other hand, the pathetic critics whine about Spanish words for the Star Spangled Banner. They organize a 10-13-20 (?) car caravan to recruit members from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. They talk about building a private fence on tiny parts of the border to keep illegals out, illegals that laugh their way through the Minuteman “patrolled” desert in record numbers.

While a handful of unemployed Americans congregate at the border to “patrol” it against illegals, millions of illegals show up for work everyday throughout the country. They produce and they don’t whine. The Minutemen whine and don’t produce. Take your pick.

All the while, the Senate moves towards immigration reform. On the House side, F. James Sensenbrenner, Junior, Chairman of the House Judiciary still supports his felony provisions of the House bill H.R. 4437. He would make all present illegally instant felons and make felons of, say, nurses who might give them medical care. He would declare illegally present 5-year-old children felons.

He still supports this unconstitutional bill despite public pronouncements from the Speaker and Majority Leader that they will not permit that provision to survive a conference between the House and the Senate.

So, on one side we find Sensenbrenner and Congressmen like Tom Tancredo and on the other we find the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, the Democratic Minority Leader of the Senate, as many as 70 Senators and the President of the United States. Who will prevail?

The United States of America will prevail, as will the millions who will become legal and enter a tortuous path towards citizenship. Who will lose, the Sensenbrenners and Tancredos of the country.

How do we know these things? We know because the sound of concrete cracking around the feet of Senators Kyl and Cronin is proof that the tide has turned and it has turned towards logic, reason, reality and justice. When these men are done, we can ask Sensenbrenner. Tancredo, conservative hysterical talk show hosts and their listeners and callers—WHAT PART OF LEGAL DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?

Contreras’s newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA published by Floricanto Press is available and reviewed at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com