If I were bloggress Ann Althouse (and how can you be sure I’m not?) I’d begin this post with a quote from the story, like:

“But Perez-Bravo had most of his family and several members of his church at the hearing, and his lawyer said that he was “connected to the city in deep ways.” He regularly cooked for 60 people at church barbecues. He had a son who was about to graduate from high school, a boss who wrote letters testifying to his work ethic, and a pastor who was willing to pay a $1,000 bond on his behalf and risk her house as collateral. “This is a kind family and they help everybody,” the pastor testified. “We’re going to help him.” The judge ruled that he could return home with an ankle monitor until his next court date as long as he stopped using Kluver’s name and Social Security number….”

… Then I’d add a wry and probing observation or two, maybe a pedantic discourse on what “connected to the city” means, and leave it to commenters to analyze the story. I’m tempted to do an Althouse impression here, but I won’t, because I want to be unequivocal.

This situation isn’t as complex and wrenching as the Times reporter tries to make it. An Guadamalan came to the the U.S. illegally, broke the law repeatedly to stay here, and screwed up the life of an American citizen in the process. Finally he was caught, and that’s good. I have no sympathy for noble illegal immigrant the Times weeps for: he got more out of his dishonesty and disrespect for American sovereignty than he deserved.

Instead of the one quote from “Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price— Thousands of undocumented workers rely on fraudulent Social Security numbers. One of them belonged to Dan Kluver”, I’ll give you several with this gift link. Note that the Times, of course, uses the still-in vogue cover-phrase for “illegal immigrant.” When I read “undocumented worker,” I know I’m being misled by a biased source with an agenda.

Here are the quotes with some brief reactions from your heartless host:

• “His case was one version of a problem that’s been spreading across the country for years. The government estimates that as many as one million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers — a survival tactic used to pass background checks and get jobs”

“A survival tactic.” When a mobster chops up a body and covers it with lye in the hole where he stashes his victim in a desert, do we call that “a survival tactic”? Language games are another insidious way the Axis news media tries to subtly make readers sympathize with illegals. They’re only trying to survive!

• “Perez-Bravo had come to the United States for the first time at 16 to help earn money for his family, traveling alone to join his father in Marshall, Minn. He hiked out of the Guatemalan highlands, rode atop a freight train for three weeks across Mexico, nearly drowned in the Rio Grande and took a Greyhound to Middle America, where life somehow felt harder. He slept on a couch in his father’s apartment and enrolled in high school despite speaking almost no English. Then he began to look for a job, but no one would hire an underage worker without papers.”

This is the illegal immigrant who stole the identity of Danial Kluwar. But how can you blame him? He just wanted “to help earn money for his family.” And look at all the ordeals he went through! How can you blame him, you heartless, privileged reader?

My answer: Easily.

• “The first years were lonely and exhausting. He started to drink, which led to a string of D.U.I.s and other minor offenses. He was deported back to Guatemala in 2005, 2008 and 2009, but each time he returned to the United States and purchased a new ID for work.”

The Times wants us to consider: How can anyone impugn whomever he is (the Good illegal Immigrant has had at least three fake identities) for those DUI’s (why was he driving with a fake license?) and “minor offenses” (I wonder how “minor” they were…)? After all, he was lonely and exhausted!

But then, so am I…

• “He sought out new documents from the black market, sending a few text messages and then meeting a middle man on a street corner in Nebraska to pay in cash. This time the Social Security card was for Daniel Kluver. Perez-Bravo didn’t know if that person was fake, or dead, or a victim of identity theft, or somehow in on the scheme. But the number worked at a succession of factory jobs across the Midwest.”

It worked! And since he didn’t know if his stolen ID was going to cause problems for an innocent, legal citizen, how can he be criticized if it did?

• “Like millions of undocumented immigrants, he paid federal and state taxes that were automatically deducted from his paycheck. To Perez-Bravo, that meant he was contributing thousands into a Social Security fund from which he would never collect”

See what a Good Illegal Immigrant he was? And there are “millions” like him. How can ICE be so cruel as to deport someone this productive and noble?

• “Perez-Bravo wanted to live and work under his own name, so he signed up for extra shifts and stacked overtime until he could afford to hire an immigration lawyer earlier this year. He paid $4,000 upfront only to learn that the pathways to citizenship were essentially closed under the Trump administration for someone with a history of D.U.I.s and deportations, even if he’d stopped drinking and kept his record clean for the past 15 years. “All I do is take care of my family and go to work,” he told his lawyer. “Is there no way to fix this?”

Sure: go back to Guatemala and try to immigrate legally. As Roy Hobbs says in “The Natural,” ” Some mistakes, I guess, we never stop paying for.” Yup! That’s life.

• “And then came a detail from a police report that Kluver couldn’t shake. In the summer of 2022, the other Dan Kluver had been driving to work in St. Joseph when the serpentine belt broke in his car, causing him to lose control at a red light and collide with a grandfather and his 9-year-old granddaughter as they rode on a motorized tricycle. The girl sustained minor injuries, but the 68-year-old man flew off the bike, broke his pelvis in two places, struck his head and died. The driver stayed on the scene, praying and cooperating with the police as he handed over a license and registration for Dan Kluver. He was cleared of any wrongdoing. The crash was ruled an accident. But the victim’s family had filed a wrongful-death lawsuit — with Kluver listed as the defendant.”

He was praying. See? He’s a decent, God-fearing man…who was driving illegally and killed somebody. For sometimes other people have to pay for our mistakes, even though they did nothing wrong.

Well, read the rest: there are plenty of other sections that should drive you crazy if you grasp the basic principles or responsibility, honesty, accountability, rationalizations and fairness. The New York Times wants to make certain that you don’t.

Near the end, the Good Illegal Immigrant expresses sympathy for the man whose identity he stole, whom the Times cleverly calls “a victim of a broken system.” You know, because the system stole his identity, or forced what’s-his- name to do it.

“He sounds like me — a good worker,” Perez-Bravo told his wife, one day last month. “I don’t want to mess things up for anyone. I just want to work. It makes me crazy with no job. How many hours can I sit and pray?” “You’re still here,” she told him. “That’s what matters.” “I’m here and I’m worthless,” he said. “This is not a life.”

It’s the life he chose. 

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