US President Barack Obama's victory on healthcare last week was a double defeat for Republicans who peddled the falsehood that illegal immigrants would be covered under a government takeover of the health insurance industry.

Republicans lost the vote, and they lost any sense of shame.

Moreover, the nasty emotions they incited across the country have dampened hopes for immigration reform this year, prolonging the plight of America's 11 million illegal immigrants who live in the shadow of fear.

Former Federal Civil Rights Commissioner Yvonne Lee estimates that about 1 million of those undocumented workers are from China, most of them low-paid laborers from Fujian Province.

Lee worries that Chinese communities in the US could be the next targets if anti-immigrant sentiments run any higher.

A number of conservative congressmen are waiting in the wings with anti-immigration bills in hand, itching to turn the immigration issue into a replay of the healthcare debate, one of the ugliest spectacles in American legislative history. 

Obama's healthcare victory will be remembered as a day when conservative activists spat on Democratic leaders and screamed: "You Communists! You socialists! You hate America!"

Any semblance of decorum in the stately House of Representatives was lost when Republicans cheered for drunken hecklers in the public gallery, shouting "Kill the bill!" Outside the Capitol rotunda, gay Congressman Barney Frank was jeered. Black leaders were spat upon and called the "n" word.

Then came denunciations from Republican seats inside the House. Somebody screamed "baby killer!" at an anti-abortion Democrat in the same chamber where a Republican had interrupted Obama's State of the Union speech by blurting out "You lie!"

Another elected leader warned that the health bill was a "fiscal Frankenstein."

No sooner were they defeated in a narrow vote on the House floor than Republicans could look down from a balcony of the US Capitol and see what some of them regard as another Frankenstein monster approaching.

Upward of a quarter-million immigrants were on the Capitol's front lawn rallying for immigration reform.

"Out of the shadows" was the theme of the march, with many undocumented Latinos daring to show their faces on national television. Wary of anti-immigrant sentiments, undocumented Chinese workers stayed away in droves.