Herndon, Virginia's mayor set up a tax-funded employment hall for illegal aliens to replace the congrested 7/11 parking lot that had previously served this illegal purpose. Soon, Mr. Mayor may need to visit the employment hall he created. He's out of a job as of July 1. A thirtysomething, health-club owner, political novice defeated the mayor on a single issue: illegal immigration. Herndon voters ejected two city council members who supported the day-laborer site, and a Salvadoran candidate who also supported it. Voters installed four new council members--all opponents of the tax-funded illegal-immigrant center--to join the single sitting member of the council who opposed the subsidized illegality.

I lived in Herndon, off and on for a few years, when I worked at Young America's Foundation. The place has changed, dramatically, in the eleven years since I lived there. Once a sleepy suburb, Herndon has been victimized by crass strip malls, town-house developments, and an influx of residents who don't speak Herndonese. I noticed this latter transformation after I moved from Herndon to a townhouse owned, ironically, by a Moroccan immigrant in Chantilly, a more outlying suburb barely within DC's gravitational pull. Once, when my car was in the shop, I bummed a ride to work from my immigrant friend/landlord. We stopped to pick up some of his co-workers who lived in Herndon. I looked up from reading, and thought I was in the Twilight Zone. "What's going on? Why are all these cars parked in the street?"

It was surreal. Cars were triple-parked in the street. The townhouse complex's lot looked like it had been valet-parked, bumper-to-bumper, door-to-door to conserve space. Cars were everywhere. "You don't know? Hispanics live here," my landlord increduously responded. "So. What does that have to do with anything? Why are all these cars here?" He exlained that Hispanic immigrants lived fifteen to a three-bedroom townhouse, sleeping in shifts. My brain started to make sense of the situation. If just a few residents per unit owned cars, then that would explain the used-car-lot feel to the area.

That was my introduction to illegal immigration. It wasn't a concern in Massachusetts in the early '90s. I had never even eaten in a Mexican restaurant until I moved to Virginia. But in Herndon, in the mid-'90s, the genesis of the problem revealed itself: non-First-World living conditions, underpaid and mistreated immigrant workers, rising crime, depressed wages for blue-collar work, etc.

Now, more than a decade later, folks in Herndon have had enough. They're not the only ones.

The absolute deafness of Republicans on this issue opens the door for a third party.

I love hearing stories about the electorate taking control and successfully using the power of the vote. This is especially exciting when it comes to displacing advocates of illegal immigrants.

After the Bush/Clinton/Perot fiasco, I was pretty po'ed about third party candidates. But, as it is apparent that both parties are pretty much the same, I would love to see the emergence of a viable third party.

If and when one develops, Pat Buchanan would be my guy.

Now if this voter rebellion would only repeat itself nationally in the 2006 midterms...