My husband has asked me not to take the livery cab from the Staten Island ferry if I miss the bus. Last Wednesday, one of the drivers, Kwame Appeigyei, was shot in the back of his head – allegedly by a transient in a robbery attempt. Appeigyei was a Ghanaian immigrant who came here with his family from London to pursue the American dream. He was a decent man, a deacon in his church. His daughter is in my daughter’s sixth-grade class and is one of the hardest working students.

There are many African immigrants in Staten Island. They come from countries such as Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. Many drive livery cabs and dollar vans, picking up shoppers at the supermarket. They work very long hours and live in the most dangerous neighborhoods until they can buy houses in safe ones. Many, like Appeigyei, make tremendous sacrifices to send their children to parochial schools, even though they are not Catholic.

Nearly every grocery and discount store in my neighborhood is owned and operated by immigrants from all over the world. I look around the Staten Island ferry on my trip to Manhattan and most days can count individuals from a dozen countries. I wonder if there will come a day when immigration authorities will file through the boat asking to see our “papers.” Judging from the level of anger against illegal immigrants, such a Third Reich-like environment is not so far-fetched.

When I write an opinion about immigration, I inevitably get hostile e-mails from conservatives who have become as vitriolic as the pro-choice critics pounding me about an abortion column. My favorite Internet forum is Lucianne.com. I read it faithfully every day. However, the recent negative and downright nasty comments I read there – bashing President Bush for saying that “massive deportation of the people here is not going to work” – were rather unsettling.

Many conservatives reject Mr. Bush’s contention that these immigrants take jobs that Americans won’t. The truth is that these illegals work for substandard wages and without benefits – and many Americans refuse to do the same. Consider, then, the possibility that many businesses cannot afford to pay higher wages and benefits, leaving the option of going out of business or passing the costs on to the consumer. Are we ready to pay $10 for that 99-cent burger? How about $5 an orange? If every business conformed to the mandates of our immigration laws, the cost of everything from hotel rooms to groceries would soar so high that $3 gas would seem like a bargain.

Consider also the fact that, under federal law, crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor. If we’re going to harp on the “illegal” aspect, then let’s stop pretending we’re all so law-abiding. Just about everybody cheats a bit on his or her taxes. That’s criminal as well – it landed Al Capone in the slammer. We also all know somebody who works off the books, right? That’s illegal, too.

Here’s another thing no one’s mentioned: Social Security has been collecting taxes from the $520 billion in wages paid to individuals with fake numbers. These individuals can’t collect, so isn’t this a huge freebie for the government? Incidentally, I’d like to know how we’ve figured out how many illegal immigrants are here if they’re undocumented. Is it 12 million or 20 million?

The word “amnesty” seems to provoke the most ire, but we sure are grateful if the government offers it for back taxes, as does the library for lost books. How about amnesty for draft dodgers during the Vietnam War? Our president did not invent this crisis, but at least he’s trying to do something about a problem that’s been festering for decades. President Carter accepted Cuba’s criminal element in the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and never got as much heat as Mr. Bush has received.

This is where I stand on immigration: America is a great country, but it’s not a cafeteria. If we don’t want people snacking off it, then we need to set firm guidelines and enforce them. Trespassers sneaking across the border should not be entitled to any benefits.

I can certainly understand why some Americans are upset with Hispanics flooding the Southwestern and Western states and straining their social services, but the states must accept the blame for allowing this to happen. They need to abandon their infatuation with multiculturalism and political correctness and insist on an immigration process that demands assimilation.

We live in the only country in the world that people are literally dying to get into.

Above all, let us stop for a moment and count our blessings.