Once again, the New York Times is expecting American taxpayers to care not only about the plight of illegal immigrants, but on the hardship imposed on their families back in Latin America because of the fitful U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration.

A front-page story on Thursday by Julia Preston blared "Fewer Latino Immigrants Send Money Home."

How did the paper find out? From a poll -- a poll from a Hillary Clinton strategist on Latino issues -- a fact Preston doesn't find fit to mention.

A story from Mexico-based reporter Elisabeth Malkin on Friday's front page trawls for sympathy for poor Mexicans who come to the United States illegally to find work. Malkin went to the town of El Rodeo to find that "Mexicans Miss Money From Workers Up North." (That would be the United States.)

At first glance this would seem to be a problem for Mexico. After all, who are we to interfere in another country's internal affairs, the Times editorial page might argue, as it has on myriad issues in the past.

"For years, millions of Mexican migrants working in the United States have sent money back home to villages like this one, money that allows families to pay medical bills and school fees, build houses and buy clothes or, if they save enough, maybe start a tiny business.

The New York Times' reliably pro-illegal immigrant reporter Julia Preston, fresh from using a survey compiled by a (unlabeled) Hillary presidential pollster to make a pro-illegal immigrant argument, returned to the beat Saturday with "Farmers Call Crackdown On Illegal Workers Unfair," which located another odd angle to defend amnesty for illegals -- it will hurt agribusiness.

"Facing the prospect of major layoffs of farmworkers during harvest season, growers and lawmakers from agricultural states spoke in dire terms yesterday about new measures by the Bush administration to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.

"'This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,' Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y., said in a telephone interview.

U.S. hostility to amnesty for illegal immigrants from Mexico is not only hurting illegals here, but crippling poor Mexicans in Mexico as well. So says the New York Times, taking its talking points from a survey performed by a pollster.

To be precise, a Democratic pollster who studies Hispanic voting trends for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- a tidbit that didn't get into reporter Julia Preston's sympathetic story on Mexican immigrants no longer sending cash home because of a hostile climate in the U.S.

Julia Preston's "Fewer Mexican Immigrants Are Sending Money Back Home, Bank Says" was based on a survey done by an unlabeled advocate for Latinos in the Democratic Party.