The well-oiled machinery of citizenship-destroying government was in the process of making a regularly-scheduled delivery of illegal aliens to the town of Murrieta, California last week when a group of unhappy local residents turned up, and engaged in what our friends on the Left used to describe as the essence of patriotism: they staged a protest. They prevented several busloads of illegals from entering the designated housing facility, obliging said buses to re-route and drop their payload in someone else’s community.

This prompted a retaliatory demonstration by illegal immigration activists on the Fourth of July, at which American flags were allegedly burned – probably not the right way to win hearts and minds, if those allegations prove to be true. Then again, this isn’t really about winning hearts and minds. The Ruling Class does not care at all what legitimate American citizens have to say about border security, citizenship, or immigration law. Rumor has it that a riot squad will be dispatched to make that point to the people of Murrieta, the next time our almighty central government decides to settle some illegal aliens in their community.

The immigration battle is an exercise of raw power by the Ruling Class against its citizens. We’ll be beaten into submission to the amnesty agenda; our communities will be loaded up with resettled illegals until it’s clear that protesting the next round of amnesty deals, and the one after that, is pointless. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming across the border today; tomorrow we’ll be told we can’t allow them to “live in the shadows,” deportation is impossible, and citizenship is the only choice. There is no “national discussion” about any of this, because the Ruling Class doesn’t want to hear what the people have to say. Administration policies and executive orders will be used to create a situation that we are told we simply must accept, without complaint.

After weeks of Obama and top Administration officials promising that “repatriation” is right around the corner, with the President making a big show of telling Central American families that if their unaccompanied children make it across the border “they’ll get sent back,” Democrats are smoothly transition to a hot new talking point about how this is all George Bush’s fault, because he signed some law that says the federal government has absolutely no choice but to use taxpayer-funded Border Patrol resources to resettle every Central American child and family that makes it across the Rio Grande.

Never mind that the law in question pertained to victims of human trafficking, as you can tell from its name, the “William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.” It’s been magically transformed into a blanket order for indefinite residency covering nearly everyone who makes it across the border with a child in tow, and next we’ll hear that simply allowing those people to languish in the shadows of America is unthinkable, so in effect we’ve made every family in the southern hemisphere a de facto American. They just have to get past the Border Patrol, plant a foot on U.S. soil, and they’re good to go. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement system will actually spend American tax money delivering them to family members living in the United States. It’s like a big reality-show game. Instead of building an effective border fence, we could just set up some wacky obstacles over pools of water and make it a big running episode of “Wipeout.”

That doesn’t seem like a very effective way to combat “human trafficking,” to say nothing of protecting American citizenship. But the Administration rigged up a massive processing and distribution system based on this interpretation of the law, and it’s already ingested hundreds of thousands of people over just the past few months, according to some reports. The total volume has been kept secret until now, so as not to produce any other Murrieta-style protests. A network of airplanes and buses is humming night and day to spread the new arrivals across the country.

To put it mildly, this isn’t what most Americans wanted. Remember the big amnesty debate from last year – the bipartisan one, starring Senators Chuck Schumer and Marco Rubio, in which we were told the “Gang of Eight” proposal would create a “pathway to citizenship” for the millions of illegals that were already here, while sealing off the border with enhanced security to ensure no further amnesty would be necessary? It was a total scam, a farce that distracted us from a massive system spinning up to process hundreds of thousands of new illegals. What’s the use of pouring more money into “border security” when the Border Patrol is there to welcome everyone who runs up to them with a child, and fix them up with plane tickets to the city of their choice? We were told we had to swallow the amnesty pill to deal with the massive and insoluble problem created by the last amnesty deal, but the next insoluble problem was already under construction.

The funny thing is that until today, or more accurately until last weekend’s Sunday talk shows, the Administration was swearing up and down that all of these new illegal aliens would be “repatriated” as quickly as possible. They even made a theatrical effort to pretend that the aliens must keep in touch with Immigration on the honor system, to keep tabs on the progress of their “deportation hearings.” But now, very suddenly – in the space of just a few days – the story has changed. Now we’re told the Administration knew all along that most of these people can’t be deported, because King Barack I might be eager to rewrite every other law that he doesn’t like, but this human-trafficking refugee stuff is apparently carved in stone. Now we’re told the whole thing was a done deal before the first news story broke. The invasion was a success before you ever knew it was happening.

And you’re not even allowed to talk about it, as you’ll learn from left-wingers who scream in outrage that use of phrases like “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” is racism or “un-American” treachery. Get a load of the opening paragraphs from this Associated Press article, reprinted at Politico:

An appeals court blocked Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s policy of denying driver’s licenses to young immigrants who have gotten work permits and avoided deportation under an Obama administration policy. The ruling Monday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marks a victory for immigrant rights advocates who argued the young immigrants were harmed by unequal treatment by the state. The appeals court agreed on that issue and said the advocates also showed a likelihood that the immigrants would be harmed by the state’s denial.

Oh, my God! Jan Brewer was preventing immigrants from getting a drivers’ license? That’s insane! Well, it’s insane until you add the crucial word the Associated Press thoroughly omitted from the story: illegal. They’re not “immigrants,” they’re border violators Obama refused to deport.

The Obama administration in June 2012 took administrative steps to shield thousands of immigrants from deportation. Applicants must have come to the United States before they turned 16, be younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, be in school or have graduated from high school or a GED program, or have served in the military. They also were allowed to apply for a two-year renewable work permit. Brewer issued an executive order in August 2012 directing state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young immigrants who get work authorization under the program. In May 2013, U.S. District Judge David Campbell rejected the argument by immigrant rights advocates who said Brewer’s policy was unconstitutional because it’s trumped by federal law.

And that’s the point of all this: the Ruling Class has decided that there will be high levels of illegal immigration, followed by amnesty deals, and their imperatives trump everything. Last year they made a game effort to convince Americans that it would be a huge economic boon to legalize the “undocumented” community en masse, but it didn’t work, so they won’t waste any more time persuading you about the virtues of open borders. They’ll just do it, portray the results as an irresistible moral and humanitarian imperative for legalization, and make it increasingly clear that native-born citizens and legal immigrants have absolutely nothing to say about any of it.

The mayor of Murrieta has been complaining that the federal government never contacted him or asked permission before shipping busloads of illegal aliens to his town. Well, why would they? He and his constituents are about to learn that the battle of Murrieta was over before it started.