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Hispanic immigrants demonstrated by the thousands about what they claim is their right to become citizens of the land of the gringo.

While we welcome the effort of everyone who wishes to become a citizen of our free and frazzled nation, we did note that there appeared to be no distinction made between immigrants who reside here in placid legality and those who do so with anxious illegality.

We looked into the matter and discovered that the word 'illegal' is not in the Spanish dictionary. We entered the English version of the controversial term in an online Spanish-English dictionary, which returned the following result: 'Spanish Matches: Sorry, no Spanish matches found.'

This seemed too easy an explanation of the nationwide regard for the subject as 'mum's the word,' so we decided we had inadequately pursued the matter and went at it again. We then learned that there is indeed a Spanish word for 'illegal,' but, expectedly enough, it's spelled slightly differently than it is in Ingles, as 'ilegal.'

We were also able to determine that the entire illusive concept in the lingua of the demonstrators is 'inmigrante ilegal'

Why, we wondered, hadn't the distinction received at least a tip of the sombrero?

Of course, we immediately realized that many of the illegal immigrants have been in America for so long they forgot the Spanish term for themselves.

Once we understood the nature of their nascent plight, we immediately felt irrepressible sympathy for them. Imagine only feeling right at home in a country where, rather than being welcomed as a full-fledged citizen, you're still considered just another inmigrante ilegal.

Is there an intelligent way to resolve the border dispute? And, by the way, we take 'intelligent' to include mutually considerate. We even take it to mean considering the welfare of the bottom-line-bent companies that have grown accustomed to paying the low wages these indisputably noble wannabes will toil away for?

Here is our charitably inclusive resolution. We agree to legalize all the ones who got here just by hook or underground crook and would likely never make it back. T his step will delight them.

In return, the ones who were able to scrape together enough money to buy false papers agree to go back to their Hispanic homeland, which will make those who oppose their presence at least less vehement.

Finally, since we all know that the inmigrante ilegals who consent to leave will return as soon as they can swing the purchase of another set of workable papers, the American companies that depend on paying a wage that's an outrage, such as Tyson Foods and Whatever Farms, will rest content. Surely, they and the American economy as a whole can get along for the relatively brief period a handful of the deportees find themselves legally out of the country.

The only other intelligent approach we can think of is to interview the inmigrantes one by one and begin citizenship proceedings for all the ones who seem to be upright, hard-working folks and deport all the ones who appear to be downright hard-working criminals.