It seems someone always is trying to tell you that you can't do something. And boy can they give you a lot of reasons.

Legality is a popular one. Fortunately, history is replete with people who refused to submit to conventional "wisdom" and, mostly, we are the better for it.

At the start of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, someone told Rosa Parks she couldn't sit in the front of the bus. Forever, it seems, women were told they couldn't get abortions and homosexuals now are told they can't marry.

All these and more were, or are, wrapped in the sacred cloak of law, but the unrelenting crush of the peoples' will proved to be the undoing of many of the injustices inflicted upon our citizenry.

At this moment, the popular bit of foul-tasting fiction we're being asked to swallow is that we can't do anything about illegal immigration. It's a federal issue and Big Brother's rules and regulations deny us even the means to determine who is here illegally.

Every movement starts somewhere. And although Escondido's ban on renting to illegal immigrants isn't the first local law aimed at the problem, it probably is the biggest city to move in that direction.

The linchpin of the argument against such laws seems to be that the 1974 federal privacy act only allows local governments to use the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to verify citizenship status when federal entitlements are in question.

Just because illegal immigrants overburden hospitals, schools and the prison system, that's no reason to determine if the people using them are entitled --ñ guess there's not a nickel of federal money flowing there.

The supposition appears to be that since local governments can't get access to information regarding immigration status so as to investigate the validity of a complaint there is no way to determine whether the complaint is valid and that leads to a question of constitutionality.

There's a circular "logic" there that sounds like something written in Washington.

Constitutional questions no doubt will be raised and, truthfully, this notion of limiting access by local governments to certain information readily available from the federal government needs to be challenged. Sure, there are some things best held from the public eye. Immigration status is not one of them.

Another idea waved in front of the great unwashed is that opponents of illegal immigrants want mass roundups and deportations. That is a red herring. Most sensible folks know it would be almost impossible to round up and deport all the illegal immigrants. It would be an expensive, logistical nightmare.

The key is denying those things that bring them here. First among these are jobs. And since the federal government is so good at identifying those not eligible for federal entitlements, such as food stamps and public housing, this will lead to self-deportation.

The point here is that no one said it will be easy. But as long as this is a government that works at the behest of its people, it's doable. And that's why it's so important for the Escondidos and Hazletons of this country to force the issue by continuing to take these actions.

If the citizens of this country demand it, we can do it.

Ask Rosa Parks.

- Phil Strickland is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: philipestrickland@yahoo.com.