The sounds heard from the fourth floor of the Capitol last week weren't those of a bench grinder sharpening steel; they were of gubernatorial teeth-gnashing: The young man who saved an abducted 6-year-old girl, and being honored for it by the mayor of Albuquerque, was here (aargh!) illegally. And, as if to compound Gov. Susana Martínez's dental woes, the Obammunists in Washington had just taken immigration reform into their own hands, saying they would continue to prosecute dangerous ilegales — but let others stay here and apply for work permits.

Presto, change-o! The mass-deporting Obama administration suddenly has decided to look at the so-called immigration "problem" on a case-by-case basis. There are 300,000 such cases on the docket, clogging the process beyond repair; many of the exemptions could come wholesale.

The president says the "worst of the worst" of the illegals still will be shipped to where they came from. That should be of great comfort to ex-prosecutor Martínez, who's convinced that mojados are a large source of crime in our state, and to her Arizona counterpart, Jan Brewer, who has this notion that there are great numbers of foreign decapitators running around the southern part of her state, leaving vast numbers of detached skulls in their wake.

Far from felonious thoughts, however, were those of Antonio Díaz Chacón, married to a norteamericana and living in the U.S. for the past four years. Gaining legal-resident status was more of a financial and bureaucratic burden than he's been ready to bear.

Earlier this month, he saw a little girl being forced into a car. He gave chase. The bad guy panicked and drove into a light pole. He ran off, but was soon arrested.

So Friday in Duke City, it was Antonio Díaz Chacón Day, with a plaque — in Spanish — recognizing his heroism.

The 23-year-old acknowledged that he was one of many of a class so dreaded by Gov. Martínez: an undocumented alien — which, as The New Mexican's Sandra Baltazar Martínez reported recently, at least two of the governor's grandparents also were.

Nor were those abuelos alone; for the better part of a century, folks from south of our border have migrated to the U.S. with little but willingness to perform backbreaking labor in fields, packing plants and other places our citizens tend to be less than willing to work.

Today, many corporate farmers are finding too few such people; an improving Mexican economy appears to be keeping more workers there, thus making a still-cruel joke of our country's xenophobic barricading of the border.

For that reason and many others — not the least of the cultural contributions of the immigrant communities — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona, joined Attorney General Eric Holder in announcing a new policy: exempting certain illegal immigrants from deportation.

Waitaminute, comes the bellowing from the right; this amounts to amnesty for people breaking our laws and invading our borders.

Well, yes; they're doing that, and contributing lots of work for little pay — to the delight of the business people exploiting them, and with few complaints, maybe too few, from those doing that work.

This may be a burr under the saddle of Govs. Martínez and Brewer, but our guv ought to see it as the blessing it is. Her big kick has been that driver's licenses for illegals confers a legitimacy that people here don't deserve; they're (gasp!) breaking the law.

But now, a huge percentage of 80,000-odd licensed foreigners in New Mexico won't be breaking the law. So the governor can get on with the many more important issues facing her and our state.

The usual suspects are questioning the constitutionality of the Obama administration decree; after all, Congress hasn't acted on immigration ...

Or hardly anything else; New Mexico's Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who's been there since 1983, calls the 112th the least productive Congress in which he's had the pleasure (?) to serve.

The White House is showing courage with this move. It's too soon to see how it might affect Antonio Díaz Chacón — but in an offhand way, it's a vote of confidence in him.