Posted on 09/12/2004 6:04:34 AM PDT by Archangelsk
Seeptember 10, 2004
When I write that I like Mexico, that it enjoys much that we have lost, that Latin societies are more livable if less prosperous than ours, dismissive letters arrive. They amount to the same letter: “If Mexico is so great, how come they all want to come to the United States?” The writers invariably believe that they have made a telling point.
Mexico is not so great, of course. It has plenty of problems. But why do Mexicans swim the river? Money. Period. If asked, an immigrant will usually say that he seeks “una vida mejor,” a better life. He means “Money.”
Mexicans and gringos have distinctly different views of the United States. An American explaining the attractiveness of his country will usually say, “I have a big house in the suburbs, three cars, a home theater, and 300 channels on the cable. I can drink the water, and in the mall I can buy anything, absolutely anything.” He may talk of freedom and democracy, often having only the vaguest idea of whether he actually has them or what conditions might be in other countries.
A Mexican is more likely to say, “They are such a cold people. They don’t know their neighbors. They don’t know their children. They have no fiestas. Rules and being on time are more important to them than other people. They have no religion.” (To a robust Catholic, bland agnostic Protestantism isn’t detectibly a religion.) Democracy means little to an illegal with a second-grade education; in any event, Mexico is probably as democratic as the United States. He knows the government left him alone in Mexico, which is his definition of freedom. And mine.
But money counts when you don't have any. It counts a lot. And so they come whether they like the country or not. Very often they do not. This is going to matter.
Now, do the “all Mexicans” of my mail want to emigrate, to attach themselves to the northern nanny’s promiscuous dugs? No. Few do. Who then are the emigrants?
For starters, they are not doctors, chemists, and airline pilots. Successful Mexicans do not want to go to the United States. Mexicans who are merely comfortable do not want to go to the United States. They like Mexico. This is very difficult to explain to most Americans, who know beyond doubt that Mexico has lesser malls. But it is a fact.
The Mexicans who go north are the losers, the failures, the barely if at all literate, those with little to offer. They go because the Mexican economy is wretched, because the jobs that left the United States for Mexico are now leaving Mexico for China. Money. The United States can run a first-world economy. Mexico cannot. Why is debatable. The fact isn't.
While Mexicans are good people, their dregs often are not. On average the immigrants are uncultivated, uneducated, and of low intelligence. One may not mention the matter of intelligence, but it is well known among people who pay attention to such things, and has implications for the future. America is getting those Mexicans least worth getting, the least assimilable, and getting them in circumstances that do not encourage assimilation. Unlikely to prosper, they show signs of becoming another unsalvageable underclass.
Being Latins, they are not comfortable in an impersonal, technological northern European culture that values performance, competition, efficiency and punctuality. It isn’t their way. Often they plan to make money and return to Mexico; many then develop ties and remain. Yet even then they stay among their own. Their numbers as they swarm across the border are such that they can do it. If they don’t want to assimilate, don’t have to assimilate, and don’t have the wherewithal to assimilate—don’t expect assimilation.
Further, Latin Americans resent the United States for its great wealth and for their own poverty, which they tend to blame on exploitation by American corporations. Whether this characterization is correct (it isn't) doesn’t matter. The resentment does.
Mexicans know that much of the American southwest was once part of Mexico, taken from them by force of arms. Americans, having been the victors and in any case being historically illiterate, know little of this. Mexicans do. Few know the dates or the politics, yet they have a sense of grievance, a sense that these states are really theirs. They are getting them back. They know it. They view the reconquista with the relish with which they watch a Mexican soccer team beat the US.
Their envy, their sense of inferiority and of failure, breeds hostility in the southwestern barrios. This is far less true of Mexicans in Mexico. In a couple of years in the interior, I have found people to be friendly and courteous. The only exceptions, apart from my experiences during a couple of unwise forays into seriously low bars, have involved males who clearly had spent time in the US.
Comparisons are made between Mexican immigrants and, say, Italians, a Latin people who melded well into American society. A word of caution here: Assimilation is proportional to contact. When a minority population is sufficiently large, and sufficiently concentrated, the consequence is not assimilation, but the establishment of a sort of country within a country. There are for example countless huge black regions of the cities where one can go for days without seeing a white face. Whites barely know that these places exist. The inmates are not assimilating. The same appears to be happening with the Mexicans.
Perhaps as important, past immigrants have cut their ties with their native countries, and have arrived with the conscious desire of becoming Americans. Mexicans, very often, do not want to be Americans, and the mother country is right across the border. The phrase “trans-border de facto semi-sovereignty” is not Milton. It merits thought.
Worse for America, much worse, is that far too many of them perform terribly in school. Dropout rates are very high, auguring ill for the future. Mexicans are not an academic people (as, increasingly, neither are Americans). In the barrios, their Spanish is barbarous. So is their English. Crime is high. The press will not talk much about crime, but the police know.
And—here I am on statistically shaky ground, as there are no statistics—the young too often seem to be assimilating to the black underclass rather than to the central white current. Mexican machismo and the ghetto strut of the black underclass have much in common. Rap is popular among low-class Mexican males. It is the music of defiant losers, of macho swagger and rejection of white America.
Black and Mexican won’t unite. They don’t like each other. Anger will come when the growing and better organized Mexicans take the southwestern cities from the blacks. One country, three nations, little compatibility, and no love lost.
Ping.
The liberals have done their damnedest to keep the immigrants in ESL classes and therefore down in the barrio, oh and voting Democrat, too.
A Mexican is more likely to say, 'They are such a cold people. They don’t know their neighbors. They don’t know their children. They have no fiestas. Rules and being on time are more important to them than other people. They have no religion.'And mine!"He knows the government left him alone in Mexico, which is his definition of freedom. And mine."
And did you say all you nice people were planning to vote Republican?
Hold it while I run get the welcome mat!
OK, fred makes a case against mexican immigrants. But should we shut mexicans out and let chinese in. Every complaint in this article is not true of chinese and indian immigrants. Further, a lot of people don't even want the H1-Bs coming here who share nothing with the mexican dregs.
Fred has written favorable on the east asian immigrants, so he is not inconsistent.
But a lot of people on the immigrant issue are not consistent. Some say keep the mexicans out as they are too low class and keep the h1b's out because they are too smart. Others say let the mexicans in because they vote democrat, and keep the asians and europeans out because they vote republican.
Right on target. We ignore the implications to our peril.
They don't even have anything like a Republican Party aor other Conservative party back home, although they have a lot of political parties, all are leftist and socialist or communist.
I don't see the inconsistency in believing we don't need massive immigration at any level. Importing cheap labor to keep wages low hurts college graduates if cheap Asian programmers are brought in, importing cheap labor to keep wages extremely low hurts those attempting to become middle class by working their way up.
The above people are who came to America in 1620 and 1776, they are the people called "Your huddled masses." Thank God we have set up a country to help LOSERS become WINNERS.
Doctors and airline pilots never fit the description of communists unless they live in a communist state. To the best of my knowledge, Mexico is still a democratic and capitalist society.
He's making a mistake here. The "dregs" make up the majority of the Mexican population. He's seeing the typical Mexican as well-off or comfortable, when 51% of the population lives in poverty and another 20% lives in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. You can't define a people based on 30% of its population.
They have democratic elections but with an over 70% unionization rate -- compared with ours of about 10%, and much government control, a very centralized government, they are not anything close to American conservatives.
I agree that's the mistake he's making too. The way Mexican culture and society is set up, no one works their way into any job or status --- it's very classist --- if you are born into the small upper class, your money and connections buy you a high paying job. What he's calling the dregs are those who were born poor -- the majority and are denied all opportunity and education -- in Mexico your birth determines your destiny. You can see that even here -- those from the upper class are often dumb-as-doorknobs but believe they are entitled to good jobs while those from the dregs are much more clever and quick -- but less educated because that's they way it works in Mexico.
Meanwhile, Mexico-based Mexicans try to get their kids into schools where they will learn English, knowing that it will help them get ahead, even if they stay in Mexico.
When the immigrant arrives in the United States and is surrounded by their liberal "support" structure (who they trust as being "in the know"), they become convinced that it is of primary importance that they not lose their Spanish skills.
the country may have been set up that way, but that is not how it is playing out. Now the country is just filling up with losers who never morph into winners.
With all the many government handout programs --- housing subsidies, TANF, WIC, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, SSDI, free college, etc we're attracting the welfare class from Mexico --- the true dregs -- maybe in higher numbers now than we're attracting the good working types.
That's true even with government jobs. A guy who used to work in the state government of the estado de Mexico once told me that the hires down there were based on how much bribe money the potential employee was willing to cough up for, say, a two-year assignment. This happens right after the elections and is valid until the end of the overseeing politician's term. This, I guess, is for those who don't have connections but do have money.
No you fool they did not think of themselves as "the huddled masses", matter of fact they knew themselves winners and then they went out and proved it. What you quote is part of bit of nonsense from some proto-commie kook, and in no sense represents the sentiments of my ancestors. Face it your bit of moralizing is feckless feel goodism more reminiscent of Clinton than republican virtue.
el bump
"Huddled masses" before the giant welfare system was set up are different than "huddled masses" when there is every kind of government handout possible. With previous immigration from Europe a third or more returned to Europe within a short time -- not all could make it here but the Great Society has changed all that. Now we're bringing in the real dregs. Not all are dregs but the dregs are definitely part of what we're seeing coming over. The previous huddled masses were interested in learning the common language of this country because it helped to know English for school and work --- but not any more.
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