Posted on 04/19/2006 4:08:53 PM PDT by HEMICRASHBOX
Native Utahn David Timmins makes it clear up front that he has no personal issue with Mexico or the Mexican people. During a well-traveled career as a U.S. foreign service officer, he lived for a time in Mexico and says he enjoyed his posting there immensely.
But in light of the current consternation over immigration, the Harvard-educated diplomat thinks it's applicable to the debate to bring up something he learned while he lived south of the border.
"Mexicans see the Western U.S. as part of Mexico that was stolen from them 150 years ago," he says. "They believe this with all their heart."
It's his view that the thousands flooding across the border every month don't see themselves illegally immigrating into a foreign land.
They see themselves coming home.
And we're the illegals.
"I lived in Mexico 20 years ago," says Timmins, referring to his days as an embassy worker in Hermosillo in the late 1980s, "and during that time I reported without much attention being paid in Washington on the evolving Mexican government policy of passively promoting illegal immigration as part of a deliberate and long-range strategy to regain control of the border and mountain states it lost during the Mexican War of 1847-48."
Timmins points to a specific incident he remembers that pounded home to him the reality of what he is saying:
"I was visiting the Museum of National History in Mexico City where I observed a class of perhaps 40 10-year-old school kids sitting on the ground in front of a huge mosaic map that was labeled 'Mexico Integral,' or 'Greater Mexico.' Their teacher expounded on how the Norteamericanos stole half of Mexico in 1847. The map showed Mexico to include Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, most of Idaho, and Oregon and Washington up to the Alaska panhandle."
Timmins explains that, in addition to what the United States gained in 1847, Mexico also believes part of the territory sold to America by France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 actually belonged to Spain, which by extension means Mexico.
"They (Mexicans) think we bought a disputed title," he says. "But luckily for us, (Thomas) Jefferson moved fast."
Add up all this history, Timmins says, and it explains "why every Mexican president, up to and including Vicente Fox, thinks his citizens are simply navigating to land that is historically their entitlement."
Further, he sees an objective to this passive navigation.
"They have an undeclared policy to retake by infiltration what they lost by infiltration," he says, comparing the large numbers of Mexicans currently streaming into U.S. territory to the large numbers of Americans who once poured into then Mexican-held strongholds in Texas, California and elsewhere; Americans who eventually turned their collective might into majority rule.
In other words, they're doing to us what we did to them.
Part of this "infiltration" is remaining fiercely loyal to their Latino culture — including such basics as music, food and, especially, language — while steering clear of becoming "Americanized" to any significant extent.
Timmins notes that unlike European immigrants who largely shake off their roots and their accents within a generation, Mexican immigrants — illegal and legal — tend to stay true to where they came from.
"Their object is to not shift the border on the maps but shift the border in people's minds," says Timmins.
At issue, he points out, is "Who will own the American Southwest a generation from now?"
The retired embassy worker isn't at all sure it's going to be the current home team. In his view, unless "serious reform" is put into place, including much stronger immigration rules that deny all benefits to illegals, including the ability to send money home, and impose serious penalties on American employers who hire illegals, the cultural slide will only increase.
"It is only going to corrupt our system if we don't get control of our borders and control of our assimilation process," he says. "The notion that all that is needed is enforcement of existing law plus a guest worker program is simplistic beyond description."
The U.S. PAID $18.25 MILLION for that land! That’s the equivalent of $425.225 Million in 2004 Dollars. Nobody took it from them. We should have, but didn’t.
Later, in the Gadsden Purchase, we bought more land, in what is today southern Arizona and New Mexico, for another $10 Million, or the equivalent of $233 Million in 2004 Dollars.
Saying we stole the land is like saying we stole the land we got in The Louisiana Purchase. It’s a damn lie!
I would have no problem with giving San Francisco, part of New orleans and a few other choice places to the mexicans. In a few months they would probably run back to the border. He who has the fastest horse and biggest gun should always win.
It may be their land, but it's our country!
I can't imagine that Mexican immigrants, legal or illegal, would support any effort by the Aztlan ding-a-lings to turn the southwestern US into another Mexico!
Duh! That's what they are running away from!
It looks like they're taking you up on that.
I agree.
bump
Many, perhaps most, Mexicans, and South Americans generally, are of indian heritage (Aztec, Mayan, other) who bred with the Spanish. The original Spanish invaders were of European stock, some with Moorish influence no doubt, but not presenting physical characteristics consistent with what we see in Mexicans today.
I think it is safe to say that their "homeland", to the extent it can be traced going back, say, 500 years or more, is Central and South America. Not north of the Rio Grande.
Are you prepared for what's coming?
It goes without saying that Bush on this issue is hopelessly stupid or hopelessly treasonous.
But of course bush runs with elites for whom the USA is a passing idea. The poor refugees are merely mirror images of the transnational elites with their passports jets and foreign bank accounts. These folk meet annually at places like davos.
It goes without saying that Bush on this issue is hopelessly stupid or hopelessly treasonous.
But of course bush runs with elites for whom the USA is a passing idea. The poor refugees are merely mirror images of the transnational elites with their passports jets and foreign bank accounts. These folk meet annually at places like davos.
Remember Lorenzo de Zavala, Secy of Treas, Mexico 1828, fled to the US and became Texas first Vice President. He had a lot of good things to say. But the point you make is good. I've asked many Indians here in Mexico if they would have preferred the Reservation treatment and Casino outcome, sure beats the poverty most of them experience in Guerrero and Oaxaca.
Ping...
As best I can, yes. I don't know if it will be enough.
Improvisational skills are all that's left beyond that, and I've certainly faked my way through a lot of tunes.
Course, usually nobody shoots you if you screw it up.
This could be a lot tougher crowd then I'm used to dealing with, so say a prayer for me that I might be able to pull it off. I'll need it, cause I am pretty damn rusty on my Rancho Grande.
Doesn't it feel great to know these people consider us trespassers on their land.
The more pressure we keep on Mexico, immigration-wise, the more reformers
inside of Mexico can be emboldened and empowered to scale back monopolists'
abuses down there which keep our own country flooded with economic refugees.
Here's an interesting new thread on new legal reform progress that finally
emerged in Mexico I think as a result of immigration reform's failure:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611677/posts
We can make a difference for our sake, and their's as well. Isn't it the
neighborly thing to do?
Yes and no. Are you saying these peaceful muslim er... Mexican border hoppers are going to do any more than do the jobs that we won't? How would it look to my friends in the Hamptons if I hired a white boy to clean my pool?
La Raza. The race. Racists... supported/sponsored by the left.
Nope, sorry honkey, as my mexican sidekick used to call me, it's just like the NAACP... you just go try to start a club to promote whitie... you'll get yer butt burned.
And so it is. Keep yer mouth shut and take it.
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