As a proud, card-carrying member of at least three ethnic groups about whom this was said (and let's face it, more or less accurately), I certainly claim a unique persepective on illegal immigration.
The difference between then and now is definitely the old "Chinese vs. European" argument. The country more or less successfully handled 6 million Italians over a 75-100 yar period. Not to mention the Irish, the Germans, and Eastern Europeans of various sorts. Maybe a total of 50 Million people over a 150-year period. Could we have handled 200 Million Chinamen arriving over 50 years? I doubt it.
The reason all of these immigrant oddments were more or less successfully turned into Americans was that no one group had overwhelming numbers, except in their neighborhood. So once they travelled half-a-mile, it was English-speaking territory (unless you lived in a mill town and inadvertantly wandered into Hungarian territory, Little Italy, or that part of town where all the churches have an onion on top). And there was no NO social safety net. Unless you became a citizen and could demonstrate that you could read and write English, you couldn't vote. (Except maybe in Chicago, where many Poles who arrived here legally were taught it was normal to awake before dawn on Election Day to vote 5 times in different precincts, before voting where you lived. Of course this quaint custom has been updated for illegal Mexicans, and not only in Chicago. And thanks to mod-tech, they needn't show up to be counted. BTW,it is probable more Mexicans showed up illegally last month than all the Poles who ever came to the US in 100 years.)
Yet, despite these obvious remarks, everyone opposed to real immigration reform insists upon equating earlier waves of immigration with the Latino-ization of the US. Really dumb. Illegal Mexicans already outnumber the African-Americans. Combine them with their legal American Citizen offspring, and they already outnumber anything else in the US that could reasonably be called an "ethnic group," including all three or four of mine combined and doubled!
If the Tanc and Dunc were to build their fence tonight and locked down the border, or at least ran it as a border, this will still be a majority Latin-American country within 150 years. ¿Comprendes?
So there is a part of the problem that Tanc and Dunc are not addressing: I agree that part (1) is stopping the flow. I haven't a clue about what to do about part (2), i.e. How do we American-ize what has become America's largest identifiable population block?
Does anyone else? That ends my remarks on this topic for today.
“Yet, despite these obvious remarks, everyone opposed to real immigration reform insists upon equating earlier waves of immigration with the Latino-ization of the US. Really dumb. Illegal Mexicans already outnumber the African-Americans. Combine them with their legal American Citizen offspring, and they already outnumber anything else in the US that could reasonably be called an “ethnic group,” including all three or four of mine combined and doubled!
If the Tanc and Dunc were to build their fence tonight and locked down the border, or at least ran it as a border, this will still be a majority Latin-American country within 150 years. ¿Comprendes?”
Very well said!