Posted on 05/17/2010 4:20:27 AM PDT by Scanian
It's easy for New York politicians to pronounce against Arizona's new illegal-alien law. They're 2,000 miles away from the socially corrosive consequences of a failed economy -- and a raging, narcotics-fueled border war that has already claimed some 23,000 lives.
But just imagine how sanguine they'd be if a half-million poverty-wracked economic refugees flooded the city from Canada -- or, maybe more to the point, from New Jersey.
And if the federal government refused to enforce existing immigration laws.
Not very, we imagine.
So they blithely call for anti-Arizona boycotts and divestment. And ugly allusions to South African apartheid roll from their lips.
City Council members, for starters, introduced a resolution urging New Yorkers to shun Arizona and its businesses.
City Comptroller John Liu is exploring ways to cut the city's financial ties to the beleaguered state.
Sen. Chuck Schumer has asked Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to delay the law until a federal cure-all bill, like one he's introduced, is passed. (Fat chance.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Even if the feds would enforce their own laws, they would still need the local police departments to arrest the illegal aliens first.
From an old email my friend sent me (8-12-09)
“Victoria, Texas is a town about 80 miles West of Houston. Local Hispanic leaders there, in opposition to pending Immigration Legislation, boycotted all Caucasian owned business last month as a demonstration of their economic impact on the community.
The boycott was declared a success by the Hispanic community, noting revenue in Caucasian owned business was down by 19%.
Business owners declared the boycott a success as well, pointing out that shoplifting was reduced by 77%, money orders sent out of the country were down by 97%, and the cost of daily clean-up and trash collection was down by 84%.
Shoppers reported that they could actually hear English being spoken throughout the community for the first time in recent memory and customer paid for purchases with real money, not government debit cards or food stamps.”
my uber-lib friend in San Diego called me after the huge amnesty rallies (the ones where they were carrying Mexican and other nation’s flags). I think it was in May of 2006. They had a boycott, also.
That same left-wing Jewish friend was in heaven. He could hardly contain himself. He said “It was awesome! I wasn’t stuck behind 1977 cars belching smoke. I whizzed through the drive-thru at lighting speed, since the people spoke English. I had to pick up some electrical tape and I went into Home Depot. No day laborers and English speaking help! Totally awesome. I saved ten bucks in gas with less traffic on the freeway!”
And no, to this day he still cannot reconcile his liberal amnesty brain with his first hand experiences of that day. It’s hopeless. Just as all liberals are.
I’m in S. Utah. And we have amigos out the wazoo here. And trust me, they are living on our benevolent dime.
I suspect that IF and WHEN the Guatemalans claim one end of Long Island as territory of Guatemala, all while waving EBT cards and Italians or Irish claim the other side, owed to the Motherland, waving EBT cards, the attitude of New Yorkers might change.
That’s what we face in the southwest every day. If they don’t like the expression on your face, they INFORM you that you are on their territory. Not the other way around. And they spitefully wave their EBT (welfare) cards in our face, making sure you know they they know you are a fool and being screwed over.
Anyone who wants to understand this issue, should be sentenced to a couple of weeks in the southwest.
Arizona should simply retaliate.
INSTEAD of deportation—they should send some busloads of Illegals to NYC. To be REALLY nasty—include help from social workers in getting food stamps, housing, ‘legal’ assistance, etc.....
Obviously New Yorker “leaders” are racist. They apparently support illegals coming to America to be exploited as tools of capitalism.
Did they cop an attitude, recoil in some kind of stupid and spiteful rancor!!!????? N O T -My grandmother told me she literally kisssed the ground when she arrived.
The considered themselves as even more fortunate to be allowed citizenship and to be given the golden opportunities which abounded here. They expected, asked for and received NOTHING else. The opportunities were all they wanted and that was sufficient. No handouts, no special treatment no preference, NOTHING..... and THAT was fine.
Did they get the ‘treatment’ from WASP America. You bet!!! Still do. But guess what, that's fine because they knew that though none of that will ever change, they also knew that none of that could ever stand in their way...not here in AMERICA!!!! Where they came from in Europe, they were exploited, oppressed and worse, JUST because they were the minority..... Anything short of that was fine with them!!!
Did they disrespect the laws and people of their new home????? N O T!!! They immediately thought of themselves as AMERICANS and began assimilating as fast as they could.
I don't get how any people can come here and enjoy everything America has to offer (gratis, in the case of many immigrants now days) then bash America or otherwise do anything but be thankful. We don't need them to hump our leg, but a little G*& d*&^ recognition of basic reality would be nice
My grandfather couldn’t even get here via Lady Liberty, in fact. He had to emigrate to Canada and cool his heels. Despite being Italian, my relative came here using a slot for a Canadian. They had already taken their “allotment” of Italians. That said, he didn’t bust down the doors and demand his “rights” to be here. He waited his turn, albeit creatively.
There was NEVER an Italian flag on the outside of my grandfather’s home. There was a tiny one inside, on top of the TV in the same vase as the American flag. He stood up at the start of every ballgame when the anthem was played, and you had better stand up with him, lest you wanted to be tossed out on your fanny. Despite being in Cleveland, he was also a fan of the dreaded Yankees, because they had DiMaggio and Berra. And it made him proud that two Italian “kids” could make it big here.
He worked until the day he died, age 86. Never took one cent from the U.S. gov’t. “Dressed” for work even though he worked in the steel mills, thinking that you had to dress better, since you were AMERICAN now. Can’t look like you “just got off the boat.” **
I’d pay serious money to watch my grandfather tangle with these people who feel entitled to be here. That would be an everlasting hoot.
He died six weeks after his first great-grandchild was born, my son.
** a funny here
I can’t imagine that my family is the only one to come up with this, there must be others.
That said, in my immediate and extended family and it goes on to this very day, two generations later. It involves one’s appearance. Back in the day, when family made the trip from the motherland, Italy, it was a long gruesome trip, via ship. People got off the boat quite logically disheveled, etc. Not looking their most elegant self. Hence the term “You look like you just got off the boat!” LOL
This is a kindly, familial insult. Only given to people close to you. But everyone knows what it means: you didn’t bother pulling yourself together. heh
So, despite the fact that I live a few miles from my sister, in S. Utah, far from Cleveland and far from Ascoli Piceno... if I show up at her place looking like hell, I can expect this:
“geez, sis, what the hell? Did you just get off the boat???”
LOL
If the US had enforced it’s immigration laws, the WTC would probably be standing today.
“Don't act like you just got off the boat”
That was a real insult, because it basically meant that you were not assimilated. Wow... what could be worse! (Mind you, they were never ashamed of their ethnicity but they DID comprehend the expression: ‘When in Rome.....do as the Romans do’.)
Now, people come here and the VERY LAST thing they want to do is to assimilate. What's up with that????
If you want so much to be like your home country, if you like your home country so much more .... why not stay there???
Also, until my maternal grandfather was in his early 70’s he walked about 5 miles to work every day. No cab, no bus, etc. Would not spend the money... he was very frugal even when he could finally afford to spend a little more. He put on a suit and tie to go to work at the steel mill and in bad weather sometimes the local cops on cruiser duty would stop and give him a lift!! They all knew Pa Pou!!
Unlike NYC where they're SOP.
I just knew it wasn’t my crazy-ass family!
LOL !!!
What a load of rubbish!
There are plenty of federal laws and bills that have been passed long ago to secure the borders, including one bill that was passed during the Bush administration, that was supposed to finance a strong border wall. What happened to all that then?
All 0bozo and Schumer are interested in, is the free votes they are going to get from the illegal voting of illegal alien Mexicans. They want as many of these people in this country before the 2012 elections as possible. That's all they care about.
Love your solution! It would be money well-spent even if they had to open a flophouse in NYC on the state dime to ensure their amigos got off the bus there and had a place to stay while they signed up for benefits.
NYC needs us worse than we need (or want) NYC.
Liberals are fleeing Arizona.
Illegals are fleeing Arizona.
Dopers and dealers are fleeing Arizona.
Hippies are fleeing Arizona.
Union thugs are fleeing Arizona.
Arizona is returning to an America we thought had vanished during the 1960’s.
It’s wonderful. FReepers should come and join us.
Illegal immigration, Liberal Elites, and Obama
Millions of Hispanics, mostly poor and uneducated, have immigrated to America illegally since the early 1990s. Most are Mexicans and most of them are high school dropouts. Compared to what they might have had in a slum or impoverished rural area of Mexico or Central America, these immigrants have done well here.
It has been different story for their neighbors — middle-class Americans. For them, illegal immigration has often meant a deterioration of their neighborhoods, public schools, and their quality of life — especially across America’s Southwest.
Some have watched their culture erode: It’s not uncommon to see Mexican flags flying in Spanish-speaking enclaves in towns and cities from Texas to California. This includes “sanctuary cities” like Austin, the Texas state capital, where until recently I’d lived for the past few years.
Most middle-class Americans are fed up with illegal immigration. They get no sympathy from liberal elites, however, including the open-borders elites at that lofty bastion of American journalism, the agenda-setting New York Times.
There is some amusing liberal hypocrisy going on here when you consider where top editorial staffers and executives at the Times and many of their affluent readers live. It’s in trendy parts of New York City: places like gentrified Brooklyn and SoHo and Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side. You definitely won’t find any Mexicans crowding into low-rent apartments in those areas, creating Spanish-speaking enclaves resembling shabby parts of Mexico.
Some Times readers and top staffers don’t live in the city but in the suburbs — in pleasant “bedroom communities” boasting first-rate public schools, safe neighborhoods, and a high quality of life. In exclusive towns like Westport, Connecticut (pop. 27,000), a place I’m familiar with. It’s composed almost entirely of very expensive single-family houses. Oh, and something else about Westport: It’s overwhelmingly white.
Stroll down Westport’s boutique-lined Main Street, and you’ll see mostly well-to-do white folks and maybe a few Asians. There are plenty of Mercedes and BMWs on Main Street. But you won’t see any pick-ups racing about with an illegal alien at the wheel, driving without a license and liability insurance — a common problem in Texas. In Westport, homes have not become flop houses for large numbers of illegal immigrants. There are no menacing Hispanic gangs. In Austin, which prides itself on being inclusive, multicultural and diverse, gang activity is surging, say police. However, Austin’s politically correct media tiptoes around the Hispanic character of gang violence.
It’s not as if Connecticut has no illegal immigrants; it does. The working-class city of Danbury just north of Westport — a 40-minute drive away — is home to thousands of illegal immigrants from Ecuador and Brazil. They comprise an estimated 20 percent of the 80,000 population.
Angry residents blame the invasion for straining the city’s schools and social services and lowering its quality of life. Above all, homeowners are outraged at seeing their property values decline. “They’re blue-collar workers and their whole life savings is tied up in their house and they’re seeing their neighborhood being destroyed,” homeowner Peter Gadiel told Fox News.
Zoning Wall of Exclusion
So why has nothing like this happened in Westport? It’s thanks to draconian zoning rules. In Westport, apartments are all but prohibited; there are only a handful of them. Overwhelmingly, Westport consists of very expensive single-family houses; the medium sale price is $1.2 million. Accordingly, housing is too expensive for middle-class Americans to buy or rent and it’s too expensive for unskilled immigrants, too. This prevents them from gaining a foothold in Westport. Instead, they go to working-class and inclusive places like Danbury or to “sanctuary cities” like New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University.
Back in the mid-1980s, before illegal immigration was a problem, critics of Westport’s zoning policies accused the town of creating a “zoning wall of exclusion.” As a consequence, middle-class people working in one of Westport’s many office complexes couldn’t afford to live in town; they had to commute from less affluent towns and cities in the region. Westport’s homes also were too expensive for policemen and firemen, school teachers, and social workers.
Yet that’s exactly what Westporters wanted: exclusivity. Accordingly, they created a Planning & Zoning Commission, hired a town planner, and elected fellow Westporters to that body to enforce their will: maintain the town’s character, property values, and resist calls to allow “affordable” apartments and even condominiums.
In other affluent bedroom communities in the northeast’s blue states, that’s how they do things. “Nobody has the right to live anywhere. They have a right to earn the right to live anywhere,” an influential member of Westport’s powerful Planning & Zoning Commission, a Democrat, told me in June, 1985.
I was a young journalist at the time, writing a freelance piece about Westport’s lack of “affordable” housing for the Connecticut section of the Sunday New York Times. I was a Democrat back then, and affordable housing seemed like a darn good idea to me, one everybody would surely rally behind.
Yet at spirited town meetings, I was shocked to see red-faced Westporters shout and hiss at proposals to allow affordable housing and even rent-controlled condos. Now, I think I understand: People change a lot when they get married, buy houses, and put down stakes in their communities. Some Democrats even become Republicans. I’ve known at least two Times staffers who lived in Westport.
In the suburbs outside New York City, there are lots of towns like Westport, situated within an hour’s train ride from the heart of New York City. They’re popular abodes for well-to-do liberals, people who earn six figure salaries in business and finance, and even in big-time journalism. This is not to say that there are not some open-borders Republican elites living in these places, too.
Memories of Westport and its affluent and civic-minded residents drifted back to me while reading an article in the New York Times: “Texas Mayor Caught in Deportation Furor.” The article was part of the Times’ ongoing “Remade in America” series on immigration, and it focused on efforts in Irving, a Dallas suburb, to crack down on illegal immigration.
Spinning its story around an open-borders agenda, the Times portrays Irving’s residents (its white residents) as narrow-minded hicks. Yet even the Times cannot ignore some of the changes that have happened in Irving due to illegal immigration, primarily from Mexico. Residents of Danbury should pay close attention.
Back in 1970, Irving had a population of 100,000; 95 percent of its residents were white. Now, whites are a minority, as they are in Texas. Hispanics comprise 45 percent or more of the population of 200,000 - and according to city officials, 20 percent of them may be illegal immigrants, noted the Times.
Hispanic birthrates have been explosive in Irving and across the nation. Many of these children are the offspring from millions of illegal immigrants whom Congress allowed to stay under an amnesty in the 1990s. Today, Irving’s future may be found in its public schools: 70 percent of kids enrolled in kindergarten through fifth grade are Hispanic, notes the Times. More than a few experts on immigration have expressed concern that the sons and daughters of these immigrants tend to do poorly in school, and dropout up until the fourth generation. Indeed, compared to other immigrant groups, the children of Hispanic immigrant groups have the highest dropout rates, say experts.
All of which underscores that culture is a powerful thing: It does not change easily, especially in sanctuary cities where “diversity” and “multiculturalism” are presumed to be virtues. “The people who come here illegally across the border are not educated people. They don’t have any culture or any respect for ours,” Sue Richardson, vice president of the Greater Irving Republican Club, tells the Times.
America is experiencing massive levels of immigration that are unprecedented in scale and fact that many of the newcomers are from the Third World, not Europe as in the past. The impact of this flood of immigrants is the subject of the Times series “Remade in America.” Its underlying theme is that America is remaking the immigrants. But that’s certainly not the case in Irving, parts of which now have the shabby look of Mexico.
Residents Fight Back
Two years ago, Irving’s residents decided enough was enough; they demanded that America’s immigration laws be upheld. Naturally, the Times is outraged.
So what did all those rubes in Irving do that was so shocking? Did they give the KKK a permit to march through town or ban people who look Hispanic from sitting at lunch counters? Have the city’s rednecks and “white trash” been racing around in pick-ups? Shouting lewd insults at hapless Mexican women? Roughing up shabby-looking Mexicans? Or torching Mexican-American business?
No, it’s much worse.
Irving Mayor Herbert A. Gears — a well-known supporter of Hispanic groups and causes in the past — did something truly despicable in what the Times calls a “once welcoming” city. The formerly “immigrant friendly Democrat” ordered Irving’s police to start running “immigration checks” on everybody whom they arrested and tossed into Irving’s lockup. Suspects found to be in the country illegally were turned over to immigration authorities and deported.
What’s the upshot of all this? Last year, Irving’s crime last dropped to a record-low level. And illegal immigrants appear to be steering clear of Irving. Following the immigration checks, Mexico’s council in Dallas issued a warning advising its citizens to avoid Irving.
Yet to Irving’s “Hispanic leaders” and open-borders defenders with whom the Times sympathizes, the immigration checks are unconscionable. Irving has abrogated a federal responsibility, they complain. Even worse, the deportations are “breaking up families.” It’s an argument the Times highlights by focusing sympathetically on the plight of a hapless 35-year-old Mexican, Oscar Urbina.
Last summer, Urbina’s life as an allegedly model citizen unraveled when he ran into what the Times called “paperwork” problems when buying a Dodge Ram pickup. Urbina, it turns outs, had been using a false Social Security number since immigrating illegally to America in 1993. Until then, he’d been a “portrait of domestic stability” — a man “with a nice home, a thriving family and a steady contracting job,” the Times claims.
Now, he faces deportation.
Ah yes, “breaking up families:” It’s a familiar complaint among open-borders liberals. Yet oddly, they never seem to decry anti-family polices in places like Castro’s Cuba. It’s a regime that’s broken up countless families — either by tossing family members in jail for political reasons, or by even killing them on occasion.
The Times belittles Irving’s lower crime statistics, suggesting immigration checks and deportations are mostly rounding up illegals guilty of minor offenses such as identify theft. A closer look at those statistics reveals much about the Times biases and values. As the Times itself notes:
As of early March, of the 4,074 people whose arrest led to their being handed over to immigration officials, 129 had been charged with violent crimes or illegal possession of weapons, and 714 with other types of serious felonies. In addition, 579 had been charged with driving while intoxicated. The other 2,625 had been arrested for lesser offenses; the largest categories were public intoxication and not having a driver’s license or insurance.
All in all, the immigration checks are producing some terrific results. Yet the Times portrays Mayor Gears as being a conflicted man for having imposed such a morally problematic policy as immigration checks. “I’m the hero of every redneck in America,” the Times quotes him as saying, while noting he speaks only “scant Spanish.” It’s interesting that the Times used that “redneck” quote in what must have been a lengthy and wide-ranging interview, one filled with lots of good quotes.
You have to wonder how liberal elites at the Times would feel if such problems suddenly visited their neighborhoods — drunken illegal aliens stumbling about in the street. Driving without a license and insurance. Or contemplating their next violent crime?
Interestingly, the Times notes that many of Irving’s “Hispanics” don’t vote. Well, so much for their civic engagement values, a hallmark of Americans whose self-reliant European ancestors immigrated to America, learned English and reinvented themselves as Americans. Today, these folks are not hyphenated Americans, as are the Hispanic-Americans to which the Times refers; they’re just Americans.
Along similar lines, it’s interesting that the Times does not interview one group of Texans in Irving — Americans of Mexican ancestry whose roots go back for generations in Texas; people who are members of the solid middle-class and who do not reflexively think of themselves as hyphenated Americans. There are plenty of people like that in Texas.
Social Class — not race
Why do liberal elites at the New York Times find it so much easier to identify with illegal immigrants than with middle-class Americans? Two things obsess them: race and ethnicity; so that’s how they define the immigration debate. Accordingly, ordinary Americans upset over illegal Hispanic immigrants must be “racist” and “xenophobic.” Indeed, that’s how former Mexico president Vincente Fox, during a visit to this country, described Americans opposing illegal immigration from Mexico. Fox got away with that remark until he went head-to-head with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly on the national airwaves.
What in fact upsets residents in Irving and other communities are issues revolving around social class, bad behavior, and quality-of-life considerations. Like most Americans, they expect the law to be obeyed. Illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America would be a non-issue if it consisted of an orderly flow of immigrants with middle-class backgrounds; people settling in the country legally and learning to speak English. Asian immigrants have this sort of background, and there is no backlash against them — and no wonder. Their children do well in school. They Anglicize their names and learn English.
President Obama, for his part, seems determined to give 11 million illegal immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated Hispanics, a path to citizenship. No doubt, he believes this will again demonstrate America’s “moral authority” to an audience whose opinions matter to him: anti-Americans elites in Mexico, Europe, and the Third World. And no matter if his immigration plan changes the nation’s culture for the worse for ordinary Americans; or at least for ordinary Americans who don’t holler and applaud at Sunday church services when their minister yells, “*******n America!”
On his recent visit to Mexico, President Obama spent much time hobnobbing with that country’s elites. He also should talk with ordinary middle-class people in Latin America, outside of Mexico, to get their opinion on illegal immigration. Most have no sympathy for gate-crashing Mexicans and other illegal Hispanic immigrants.
The President will have no trouble finding these folks who are solidly middle-class. They form long lines starting early in the morning outside the gates of U.S. Embassies across Latin America. They’re eyes are pensive as they clutch carefully prepared applications for visas and work permits. They wait patently in the hot sun. Most will be disappointed by the decision of the Embassy official behind the glass window. But those whom I’ve met vow to try their luck again some other day.
To them, America is about more than economic opportunities and social programs. They admire America’s culture: believe it’s a place with a rule of law that applies to everybody, whether you’re Kenneth Lay or Martha Stewart. And they believe it’s a place in which ordinary people obey little social courtesies, like going to the back of a line at a bank, rather than bribing a security guard to let them go to the front; that’s how it’s done in parts of Latin America I’ve visited.
In America, you stop your car at a red light, even when no cops are around; that’s the sort of civic culture that foreigners admire who are from dysfunctional countries without a civic culture. Accordingly, gate-crashing Mexicans who are deported get little sympathy from them.
The impact of uncontrolled immigration, especially from Mexico, promoted the late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to pose a troubling question:
“Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish).”
by DBCooper
Because they hate us - they HATE middle class Americans.
The New York Times would happily identify with radical Muslims before they would identify with us. They would identify with floating pieces of sh-t in the Hudson river before they would identify with us.
And why?
Because a long time ago they had the intellectual and moral high ground on issues like civil rights. Then when the battle - the parts that were totally just and ethical were accomplished, they didn't want to relinquish the power and prestige that went with the power they had gathered to accomplish an important goal.
The New York Times became corrupted.
Martin Buber was asked once if power was evil. Buber felt power was necessary to accomplish good - and only became corrupted when those with the power wanted to keep it after the goal had been accomplished.
In short - power for it's own sake.
The New York Times wanted the "feel good stuff" to last beyond the point it had been earned. So they cast a wider net - searched for smaller and smaller grievances - encouraged oppression - but of different groups. Raines was the epitome of this type of grievance thinking. I doubt he was on the front lines in '63 and '64 - he likely missed the civil rights movement when great courage was required - as most newspapers missed the movement. But once the heavy lifting was done many jumped on and wanted to use captured high ground to beat up on new groups - particularly the middle class. They weren't fighting for justice, they were fighting to be the new oppressors - the new goons.
And that's why they hate us - they became the the narrow minded hateful "white citizens council" only rather than mindless hatred of blacks - they had mindless hatred of middle class Americans.
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