Is there anybody alive out there?

A great prophet has posed this question of his rock 'n roll audiences and, taking his lead, I've sought to carry the water to my loyal Sunday flock.

And I was starting to get worried.

Either my Sunday column, entering its fifth year, was losing its punch or the readers were no longer taken aback by anything enough to respond through our many venues - the "Your 2 Cents" line, my work e-mail or snail-mailing a letter to the editor.

So, before we go any further into this, I'd like extend a heartfelt thanks to a reader - we'll call her MKE - of West Norriton. She was so outraged by my Feb. 24 column "Stop, in the name of values" that she wrote a letter to the editor that the editor wasted no time approving for printing in the Feb. 27 edition under the headline "Glantz's take on illegal immigration 'just plain stupid.'"

I couldn't have been more thrilled.

Somebody is alive out there.

Too bad that the reader appears to be somewhat misguided.

I say "somewhat" because Ms. E said she agreed with a lot of the points I made in the column, so she is ripe for salvation and redemption.

She misunderstood what I wrote about school prayer, but that was my fault for not being more concise. I never said I was against a kid praying before, during or after school. They should, I suggested, keep their prayers to themselves.

That aside, the real gist of her concern was what seems to be the gargantuan issue on our area - that being illegal immigration.

She joined the growing chorus of third- and fourth-generation immigrants in the Greater Norristown area by taking offense to my assertion that the illegals from Mexico and other Central American countries are seeking the same American dream of our forefathers.

I said that our forefathers didn't have a trademark on that pursuit and she responded that I was being "stupid."

I think, no offense, that being stupid is better than being dumb because being dumb means you are ignorant and the first cousin to ignorance is arrogance and it is arrogance, nothing else, stirring this drink of hate.

I'm not directing this at Ms. E, who has some valid concerns about strains illegal immigration places on the health care system, as much as I am at many readers who have deeper issues that amount to little more than history ironically repeating itself.

Not counting slaves and Native Americans, most of the rest of our ancestors traveled by sea to get here and were met at places like Ellis Island before being allowed to pass. And unless they were carrying a disease, few questions were asked. These white-skinned immigrants, many of whom never bothered to learn English or really had the proper paperwork, were needed to toil in the coal mines and steel mills born of the industrial revolution so that the WASPs didn't have to get dirt under their fingernails.

And still, despite their whiteness, it took generations - and willingness to fight and die in a few world wars - to be accepted.

The same venom spewed today was spewed at our forefathers, too.

It's kind of like when the kid who was bullied in elementary school becomes the bully when he grows bigger and stronger in middle school.

In the context of my column, I asked many of what Charles Barkley recently termed as "fake Christians" to ask themselves what their Jesus would do with the illegal immigrants.

While I'm not a Christian, it's a fair question.

If we give a little - from our hearts and souls - we just might get more than a little in return.

It happened before in this country, and it can happen again.

A little work ethic from a new breed of American wouldn't hurt anyone.

So what if they have brown skin? Studies have shown that the sons of daughters of these immigrants are speaking English first and Spanish second faster than the sons and daughters of turn-of-the-century immigrants.

Ms. E also wandered down the familiar path of associating the word "illegal immigrant" with "illegal," in the criminal/Charles Manson sense.

OK, good.

Thanks again, MKE.

I just so happen to have in my hands a study released on Feb. 26, two days after my column ran and one day before your letter appeared, revealing that immigrants - legal and "undocumented" - commit far less crime in California (the nation's most populated state) than those who were born in the U.S.A.

In California, according to the study conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, 35 percent of the residents are born outside of the United States (a figure Norristown may be looking at soon) but only account for 17 percent of the adult prison population.

The study, which flat-out states that "fears of immigration being a threat to public safety are unjustified," reveals an astounding finding: men born in the U.S.A. are incarcerated at a rate 2 1/2 times greater than those who many of you want to label criminals for the sport of it.

The numbers are even more staggering for men between the ages of 18 and 40 (the group in which men from Mexico are likely to have sneaked into the land of the free and home of the afraid). In that age group, U.S.-born men are - get this, Marion Kay and friends - 10 times more likely to be sent to jail.

"From a public safety standpoint, there would be little reason to further limit immigration, to favor entry by high-skilled immigrants, or to increase penalties against criminal immigrants," the study said.

Hello?

Is there anybody alive out there?