Posted on 09/07/2001 8:28:48 PM PDT by AM2000
LONDON -- Across the English Channel, young men are massing near the beaches of Dunkirk, desperately seeking boats and boatmen to carry them across to England before it is too late.
This is not 1940, when British boats large and small bravely crossed the choppy channel to rescue more than 300,000 of their own soldiers trapped by Hitler's army. This is now, and the brave young men are refugees, from Asia and Africa and the poorer parts of southern Europe, who want asylum and, more important, work in Britain.
And back home in the United States, along the borders of Texas and California, young men from Central America are doing the same thing. And this is not the 1840s, when the armies of Mexican Gen. Santa Anna and American Gen. Zachary Taylor faced off across the Rio Grande.
In Washington, the new president of Mexico, Vicente Fox (news - web sites), spoke to the U.S. Congress last Thursday, in both Spanish and English, urging the Americans to let his people come, give migrant workers, and illegal immigrants too, documents to make them legal residents of the United States. Afterward Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news - bio - voting record), D-Conn., came out and spoke a truth that seems harsh to many: "The bottom line is that the fences are going to go down between these two countries. And it is in the interest of both countries that we make it work."
I had no idea Sen. Lieberman was such a visionary. That vision may not be popular now -- perhaps it never will be -- but the truth is that Mexico is going to become part of the United States because the countries need each other -- or more precisely, and for obvious reasons, they cannot break away from each other. There they are, across 1,946 miles of river, desert and roads, and here we are.
Fox dreams of joining his country to the prosperity of the United States, as Santa Anna fought, unsuccessfully, to keep the potential of Texas and California when they were legally part of Mexico. That's obvious. But what's in it for us? Peace and more prosperity. We can't afford to have a poor and comparatively unstable country on our border. It is just too much trouble -- and there is more trouble latent in the countries south of Mexico. To Guatemala and then on to Honduras and Nicaragua, Mexico is not so much on the way to the United States as it is the biggest and richest country in their immediate part of the world. And we need those people, because they are younger than our aging population and because they are willing to do jobs Americans will no longer do.
That is what is happening all over the world. That is why young men from Pakistan and Nigeria are standing by the channel at Dunkirk. People are on the move everywhere, and it is economic movement, not political. The only way a developed country, the United States or Britain or France, can block those young men is by force and not by law.
"Experts agree," wrote The Daily Telegraph in London last week, "that if illegal immigrants -- and asylum seekers working illegally -- were somehow prevented from working in the United Kingdom, they would not come. Certainly, stopping or reducing welfare payments has had little impact. ... Moreover, the UK economy has a near insatiable demand for labor."
Those experts are right, and their expertise is universal. Law, culture and religion are secondary.
In the late 1970s, as Mexican-Americans became a majority of the population of San Antonio, Texas, the city's cultural center put out a booklet that explained to Mexicans what was different about the Anglos. Part of it read like this:
"FUNDAMENTAL INSTITUTIONS: Anglo -- The people are the government; Mexican -- The people against the government.
"FUNDAMENTAL VALUES: Anglo -- Control of oneself, of others, of nature; Mexican -- Harmony. Within oneself. With others. With nature.
"RESPONSE TO STRESS: Anglo -- Immediate and constant action, modify the environment to meet our needs; Mexican -- Passive endurance and resistance, modify ourselves to meet the environment."
But this is not about such things -- if it were, there would not be tens of millions of Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans. It is about work. We have it, they want it, so they will come -- unless we are willing to resist forcibly, and by that I mean militarily as a police state. That is how it has usually been, and how it will always be now with the development of available and affordable global transportation.
spoke a truth? lieberman? horse puckey. so, is this the new fix?
it is in the interest of both countries that the current taxpayers of
the current united states get used to paying for this happy socialist
scheme to destroy the sovereignty of this country.
... nothing to be alarmed about.
While it's not politically possible now, I would like to see a tighter integration in the future. Ultimately, it would be in our interest to have the dollar become the currency from the North Pole down to Panama.
This would be good for us, and good for the Mexicans and Central Americans. In the long run, tighter alignment with our neighbors will be imperative, since the Euros are doing it. Free Trade blocs will develop over time. Best that we recognize this reality, and get on with it.
There is a simple solution to this - eliminate the minimum wage so Americans can legally work for $2 an hour. THINK ABOUT IT: This will allow fast food chains, for example, to offer the choice $7 an hour cashier jobs to the best employees and the other dopes will have to settle for floor sweeper and aspire and scramble to perform better to earn what is todays min wage. IT'S CALLED FREE MARKET COMPETITION !!! My first job was for $1 an hour sweeping parking lots when I was 12. ELIMINATE THE COMMIE PINKO SOCIALIST MINIMUM WAGE !!!
And when the illegals get amnesty, welfare benefits, medical, and education, they will also no longer do those jobs. What then?
Cheap-and-easy-shot, Liz! Now think it through...
If you've gotta live with the 'Mexicans', AND WE DO, we might as well get the Real Estate that goes with them! They've got oil, fer crying-out-loud! Annex them!
And I'd rather have 10 million Mexicans looking for paying jobs, than have 10 million JesseJacksonAlSharptons burning things down and bitching about 'reparations'!
I want productive people in this Great Country, not the tit-suckers that we've got now!
And leave Canada out of it! Just buy their oil! We don't need any more Socialism....FRegards
Good post.Worth repeating.
This is surely due in part to the fact that our economy has been absolutely on fire for the better part of twenty years. "Why should I mow my own lawn or dust my own plants once a week when I can pay someone pennies to do it for me." What will be interesting, to say the least, is if/when there's an unmistakable economic slide in this country to the point that these whites suddenly have to decide between paying for labor or paying for another meal. Then we'll have an unemployeed underclass that also happens to be of a different cultural and ethnic background, that increasingly doesn't even pretend to speak English. I think major cities would become unbearable in this situation.
Give any of these countries our labor and enviromental laws and we would be competitive in price of product.
And I haven't even been drinking. Maybe that's the problem.
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