Anybody who follows the immigration debate knows the tired old explanation as to why undocumented immigrants are really “illegals” or “aliens.” They committed a crime! They are here illegally! They deserve the label!

Well, as I am sure many of you have heard, director Roman Polanski is currently in the news because 30 years after committing the crime of raping a 13-year-old girl, he was arrested in Switzerland and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. He has continued his life since his arrest and admission of guilt in a pretty unadulterated way. He works. He lives in multiple houses. He won a prestigious award. He has friends and supporters. And he lives (and has lived) quite openly as a man who likes to fuck young girls.

In short, if the U.S. really wanted him, the U.S. could’ve gotten him. And yet…it didn’t. And as I mentioned, after committing a crime, Polanski received no small level of support from others, up to and including “liberal” presses like NPR calling his crime “sex with a thirteen-year-old” rather than “rape.”

So, you have the case of families coming to the U.S. to get a job and help support families here and in other countries–and those people are no longer people. They are illegals. They are aliens. They deserve what they get.

You have the case of a man who *admits* to drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old child, and you have a “troubled genius” who, well, maybe isn’t that bad. I mean, not a rapist rapist. Just a regular rapist. A not bad rapist.

What is up with this difference? Why isn’t Glen Beck going after this scumbag? Why isn’t Lou Dobbs? Why isn’t the U.S. mobilizing an entire department to go after all the rapists? The illegal rapists? Why don’t we have an entire system of detention centers set up exclusively for all the rapists and their families to sit in until we can figure out what to do with them? If the rapists didn’t want their children locked up, they shouldn’t have raped, right?

I am not the only one who notices the differences in standards here. What I am wondering is will any of the “they are illegals” troupe be brave enough to account for the differences? And lest men think they are not the problem here, will any men be brave enough to account for why crimes against women and girls are so easy to forgive?