Brutality In Mexico [sarcastic title. interesting take on immigration, US/Mexican laws]

Bobbling about on the web, like flotsam in some drear tidal pool, is a piece purporting to show that Mexico mistreats immigrants in all manner of ways offensive to the North American soul. Most curious. I am one of those immigrants, and still waiting to be mistreated.

“In brief, the Mexican Constitution states that: Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse. Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights. Immigrants are denied equal employment rights. Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens. Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service. Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy. Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities. Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process."

Most of this is true. Much of it is trying too hard. If it is intended to suggest that Mexico behaves badly toward legal immigrants, it is silly. Many hundreds of thousands of American citizens live here and like it. After all, if they didn’t, they could leave. Further, I think the law entirely reasonable—provided that you realize that the Mexican government exists for the benefit of Mexicans, not gringos.

Bear in mind that the United States is far more powerful than Mexico, and far richer, and that America and Americans are by nature meddlesome. At the national level the US tries to impose democracy, change “regimes,” and dictate social policy in all sorts of countries. At the level of the individual, Americans, certainly those in Mexico, try to pass leash laws, make horses wear diapers, regulate smoking, and set closing hours for bars. Neither the US nor most of its people grasp that some things are simply not their business.

Politics? No, you may not engage in politics. I am not sure why Americans think they should be permitted to, but I know why Mexicans think that they should not. In the Yankee enclaves, they would take over and run things as they wanted, not as Mexicans want. They would want rules, regulations, correct attitudes, laws, laws, laws. They would want to instruct Mexico. There would be encampments of activists demonstrating in Chiapas. (When the US has solved its own ethnic problems, then perhaps it might make polite suggestions to others. Day after tomorrow, you think?) And a naturalized American is just an American with a different piece of paper in his pocket: Same attitudes, culture, and lack of respect for other countries.

The Mexican approach is, “You are free to live here, but we will make our own laws, thank you.” Which makes perfect sense to me. I came here in large part to escape the micromanagement of everything by the damned government up north.

“Basic property rights”? These are what a particular country says they are, not what the United States thinks they ought to be. Things are a tad complex here for historical reasons—the ejidos, land reform for the indigenes and so on. The practical fact is that if they could, Americans and American corporations would buy up, for example, all the best beachfront land. They don’t, because Mexico won’t let them, which is exactly the right policy. (There are complex trusts that let foreigners pretty much own land near the beaches, and many do this.) The fact is that countless gringos own homes in Mexico with no problem. I do, for example.

From the website of Adriana Perez Flores,* my attorney in Mexico: “Until recently, foreigners could not buy land in Mexico unless the title was placed in a Trust (Fideicomiso). Now a foreigner can purchase a home or vacant lot in his own name, except for property located within 50 kilometers of the coast, or national border. A home in Puerto Vallarta or Nuevo Laredo would still need to be purchased in the name of a trust.”

Employment “rights”? Why do Americans think they have a right to work in Mexico? As in most countries you need to get a work permit, and here they tend not to be issued if you are going to take work away from a Mexican. Perversely, Mexico does not believe that it exists to employ gringos. Gosh.

If you want to live here, it’s easy. You get a tourist visa for 90 days when you land (try that in the US), and with no hassle you can then get FM-3 residence status (try that in the US), provided you can demonstrate in income of $1000 a month. (You are welcome, but Mexico isn’t going to support you. Why should it?) Driver’s licenses are easy. You can bring your car and belongings, and no, the police aren’t going to give you a hard time. The government hassles you far here less than does the government up north. But also no, you are not going into politics and, if you do something adequately undesirable, you will be chucked unceremoniously out. And why not?

“Due process”? You aren't a citizen. (Read the Patriot Act, by the way.) Behave or go away. Mexico is much less a police state, much less watched, tapped, bugged, cross-referenced, data-based, regulated, intimidated, regimented and politically corrected than the US, which is a major reason why people come here.

Now, Americans will say, “But Fred, all these Mexicans come into the US and get welfare, school for their kids, driver’s licenses and medical care, and don’t pay taxes, and who knows what all. It isn’t fair.”

To which I respond: “All true. But why is it Mexico’s fault? You practically invite them. Mexico has no obligation to keep its citizens in, though the United States has the right to keep them out. If you folks up north choose to let in poor Mexicans, don’t be surprised when you have poor Mexicans.”

Note that the immigration problem is entirely of America’s making. Laws, decisions in the courts, amnesties, interpretation of the Constitution, and policy all encourage illegal immigration. What the US does is to say to impoverished and desperate people, “See this river? Don’t cross it. If you do, we’ll give you all sorts of privileges, and jobs, and a chance to advance in life and give your kids a good future. Now, don’t cross it, you hear?”

Keeping immigrants out would once have been easy, but you didn’t do it. You could have fined employers a thousand dollars a day for hiring illegals, half of it to go to whoever turned the employer in; denied them all services, and deported them instantly. Today, taking things away from people who have lives in the States and kids in the schools would be brutal. (You are going to forcibly deport millions of people? That will be pretty.) And of course they soon come to have the votes to make deportation impossible. But it wouldn’t have been in the beginning. Don’t blame Mexico for having an immigration policy more sensible than yours.

Here's more of Fred's politically incorrect views on illegal immigration.

Multiculturalism And Alligators

Better Than NASCAR

May 12, 2006

It is possible to derive an ashen satisfaction from watching really stupid people dancing on a tight rope over a den of alligators. At each resounding dental snap one yells “Yeeeeeeeee-ha! Told you so!” and reaches for another beer.

It makes a better Saturday night than a six pack and a bug zapper.

From the Washington Post: “Nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census
report released today.”

Now in newspaper parlance, “minorities” means “permanently underperforming and inassimilable minorities,” which is to say blacks, Latinos and, when anybody remembers, American Indians. It very seldom means successful minorities, such as Chinese, Greeks, white men, Jews, or Anglo-Saxons.

As we look forward to a massive slewing away from the dominance of European whites in America, what may we expect? What will these huge minority populations do? It is instructive to look at what they have done so far.

Some thirteen percent of the country is now black, and thirteen percent Latino: over a quarter in all. Blacks remain intractably far below the white population academically. An astounding proportion can’t read, and of those who can, few do. The gap hasn’t closed, despite Head Start, integrated schools, segregated schools, more funding, welfare, black teachers, black school boards, black mayors, remedial instruction, or anything else.

The gap appears on every known test of mental capacity or scholarly achievement—SATs, GREs, ACT, LSATs, MedCats, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, Raven’s matrices. Nothing makes a difference. Everything has been tried. Because of this, we got affirmative action or, as kids once said, make believe.

Further, blacks are not assimilating. Despite pushing, shoving, laws, legislation, regulation, and relentless indoctrination, the races are not melding at a rate that will produce results any time soon. The huge black necrotic regions of the cities, that whites never see, are so big and isolated as to be impervious to outside influence. If you have not spent time in police cars in such places, you cannot imagine the hopelessness and hatred that brood there. If you think that “hatred” is too hard a word, go look. I have. Whether the hatred is justified doesn’t matter. It exists.

Yes, I will be called a racist for saying these things. I hope so. Today, “racist” means “one who says what everybody else knows.” It is a badge of intellectual honor. Nonetheless, it remains that if I could change any of these conditions, I would. I don't enjoy seeing people in lousy circumstance. I just don’t know what to do about it. Neither does anyone else.

Now, Latinos. Americans seem to think that the word denotes one kind of people, namely Mexicans, conceived as sitting torpidly under cactuses while wearing sombreros. Actually the variety of Latinos is great, from Argentines who amount to Europeans to Bolivians who are Indians. The Latinos coming into America are heavily Indian and uneducated. Mexican ophthalmologists do not swim the river. Mexicans who can make a decent living do not want to live in the United States. Thus the US gets the losers, the second-grade educations, people who on average have neither the intellect nor the urge to study. Yes, there are exceptions. But they are exceptions.

Everyone says, “But the Hispanics work hard.” They do indeed, in the first generation. Many people in fields such as construction have told me that the Latinos are the backbone of their operations, that blacks don’t want to work, have attitudes, show up if they feel like it and quit without warning. The Latinos work, now. Their children do terribly in school, however, drop out, and lose the desire to work. Then they join gangs.

Nice white people don’t know about gangs. Maybe they think of West Side Story. I used to ride in Chicago, with the PD and with the South Side Gang Initiative, a federally funded program in the rotting satellite cities, Markham, Robbins, and Fort Ord. I saw the gangs. There were the Black Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords, the Latin Kings, the Latin Cobras, the P Stones, the El Ruykins who came out of the old Blackstone Rangers and, earlier, Blackstone Raiders. They aren’t the Jets, people. They’re killers. And they loathe white America.

I once interviewed a ranking Vice Lord in the Cook Country Jail. Why, I asked, did blacks kill each other so much? “They’d rather kill whites,” he answered, “but they know they’d lose.” There's a lot of that. When I left Washington four years ago, Mara Salvatrucha (look on the web) was appearing in Arlington, Virginia, and now their graffiti are show up in Springfield, Virginia.

Law enforcement in America relies on having a white population that is mostly law-abiding. It has no good way of responding to large numbers of violent criminals, especially when they are backed by politically potent voting blocs. The crucial question, or a crucial question, is what proportion of the new minorities will fall into the permanent underclass? How much permanent underclass can the nation stand?

Another crucial question is this: If half the children today are of minorities, then in no more than eighteen years half the kids of college age will be. Unless they show a sudden scholarly afflatus which has not heretofore been in evidence, this means that soon the US will have to compete with China with the brains of only half the nation. This is not to mention secondary effects, such as enstupidating all schools to hide the failures of the minorities. Do you suppose that the Chinese are doing that?

Now, from the same story in the Washington Post, this: “William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, predicted that the United States will have 'a multicultural population that will probably be more tolerant, accommodating to other races and more able to succeed in a global economy.'"

How heart-warming. I suggest that William H. Frey is a thoroughgoing fool, but this is common among academics.The whole touchy-feely multy-culty idea that forcing people together will make them love one another, kum bah yah, is simply wrong. Right now, there is a tremendous repressed hostility between blacks and whites, the lid being held on by federal power, tight control of the press, and rigorous political correctness. Whites, huge numbers of them, detest Latino immigrants and would love to expel them from the country. Serious friction grows between blacks and Latinos as Latinos push blacks out of regions they once controlled. We’re not moving toward accommodation. We’re moving toward trouble.

What will happen as the economy declines and the minorities continue growing in number? As they continue demanding through political power what they cannot obtain on their merits? As standards of living drop, and the pie isn’t creamy enough to give everyone juicy freebies?

It will be nothing if not entertaining. Bring it on. Love them alligators.

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