L’Intifada en Los Estados Unidos

“Their parents’ generation was invited to France as laborers who were expected to return home but didn’t.” — “France Beefs Up Response to Riots,” Washington Post, November 8, 2005

“This program expects temporary workers to return permanently to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired.” — President George W. Bush outlining his worker-importation plan, January 7, 2004

As Muslim insurgents burn France’s suburban Occupied Territories, Americans can be forgiven for thinking “Thank God we have Mexicans and not Arabs.” Mexicans are Christian and politically passive, and large numbers of them and their children have assimilated thoroughly into the American people. Niall Ferguson made just this point in the Los Angeles Times.

But American supporters of mass immigration might want to postpone the self-congratulation. While it’s true that in this area, as in so many others, America’s problems are less acute than other nations’, the proposals before Congress to massively increase the importation of foreign workers could create two, three, many Clichys-sous-Bois in our future.

There are two reasons for this, one about Mexicans and one not. Regarding Mexicans: If you think we have a lot now, just wait until the president’s plan gets passed. The Mexican-immigrant population has been soaring, and all of the “temporary” worker proposals before Congress would supercharge that growth, both through their legal entry mechanisms as well as through the additional illegal immigration they will inevitably stimulate. The total number of Mexicans in the U.S. has grown from less than 800,000 in 1970, to 2.2 million in 1980, 4.3 million in 1990, 7.9 million in 2000, and 10.8 million this year (that’s 37-percent growth just in the past five years). Despite ludicrous claims by administration operatives that Mexican immigration will disappear on its own, Mexico’s own census agency forecasts between 3.5 and 5 million new immigrants to the U.S. per decade over the next generation, under current U.S. policy. Passage of the president’s plan or the McCain/Kennedy proposal — or even the less-egregious Kyl-Cornyn bill — would result in even more rapid increases in Mexican immigration, perhaps doubling yet again within a decade.

This is important because numbers matter; a Mexican immigrant population of 20 or 25 million is qualitatively different from today’s already-huge 11 million. It would create more of a constituency for the Aztlan irredentism that is already a normal part of political debate on the Left in California; more immediately, it would facilitate the Mexican government’s anti-assimilation initiatives (described in detail here by Heather Mac Donald) designed to create a regime of shared Mexican-U.S. sovereignty over much of our population, with Mexico City serving, in effect, as a second federal government that local and state officials would be answerable to. And when we rouse ourselves to reassert our exclusive sovereignty, as the French state tried to do in the no-go zones of its immigrant suburbs, the pushback might well be as intense.

But, of course, the word “Mexico” never appears in any of the worker-importation plans before Congress. The old Bracero Program (that ran for 20 years until the 1960s and sparked the illegal-immigration wave in the first place) was limited to Mexicans — Mexican men, in fact — but today’s anti-discrimination ethos makes such restrictions impossible. So what happens when American employers eventually realize there are workers abroad willing to accept wages even lower than Mexicans will accept? After all, Mexico is an upper-middle-income country by global standards, with a per-capita GDP in purchasing-power-parity terms of $9,600 — if you want huge amounts of really cheap labor, go to Indonesia (242 million people, 88 percent Muslim, per capita GDP $3,500) or Pakistan (162 million, 97 percent Muslim, GDP $2,200) or Bangladesh (144 million, 83 percent Muslim, GDP $2,000) or Egypt (77 million, 94 percent Muslim, GDP $4,200). We have been fortunate in that our Muslim population is comparatively small (1 percent of our population, compared with 10 percent in France), well-educated, prosperous, ethnically diverse, and geographically dispersed — all factors making radicalism and alienation less likely. But a new foreign-worker scheme could undo these benefits, by importing large numbers of poor, uneducated, ghettoized Muslim peasants, who will be expected to go back, but won’t.

Instead of risking our security with huge, unmanageable foreign-worker programs, the Senate and president would be wise to adopt the House Republicans’ approach of promoting attrition of the illegal population through consistent, across-the-board law enforcement, something we’ve never tried before. This would facilitate the assimilation of legal immigrants already here, enable the immigration bureaucracy to catch its breath, encourage low-wage industries to modernize, and shrink the sea within which foreign radicals — of all kinds — are able to swim.

Neither George Bush nor John McCain — nor even Ted Kennedy — want immigrant uprisings in America’s cities. But their immigration proposals would move us in that direction. We need to choose a different path.

— NRO contributor Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

The drain on our economy can be blamed in liberals who foster an enable the entitlement mentality that exists.

It gets foisted on native born Americans as well.

The disproportionate entitlement mentality, however, does not and has not resided with European immigrants

How could it? Entitlements weren't around in those days. You came to this country and it was sink or swim. About a third of the Europeans couldn't make it and went back.

Today's Europeans, however, do have an entitlement mentality. Their whole societies are built around a welfare state.

Here's what I said "The number of Muslims in the US is statistically miniscule, about equal to the number of Buddhists."

To which you replied "I'm sorry to say, but you either have reading comprehension problems or PC (read: fear) made you not say what you really wanted to say."

There are six million Muslims in the US. There are about 300 million people in the US. 6 divided by 300 is 2 percent.

Who is it that had the comprehension problem here?

Really, it is quite simple.

Mexicans and other Latinos pour into the United States because there are jobs for them that pay much better than anything they can do at home.

They are able to do it because the US does not enforce immigration policy or labor law.

The US doesn't do that for a variety of reasons.

On the Left, the Democrats understand that the Hispanics are their political salvation. All of their other core constituencies are dwindling demographically, but the Hispanic population is surging. The article suggests that there are 11 million Mexicans in America. This is low. There are probably 20 million illegals in America, and the number grows both through continued immigration and natural increase. Those born here are Americans. They are poor because their parents were marginal. Poor people overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

Now, religiously, most Mexicans and other Latinos are pro-life. But these higher social concerns take a backseat to economic matters, and always will. The Democrats will always get the majority of the Hispanic vote, for as long as Hispanics are poor. Immigrants will be poor.

Many illegals vote. Democrat political machine in Democrat controlled areas get the illegals out to vote. The thrust of amnesty, which Democrats support and will instate whenever they can, is to massively increase the Democratic voter base.

Republicans are doing nothing to STOP this.
Nor, apparently, do they even acknowledge the political threat. For some mysterious reason Republicans think that the laws of economics won't apply to Hispanics, and that poor Hispanics won't vote their pocketbooks, which is to say, vote for Democrat social programs.

The only rational Republican stance would be to close and police the border, and heavily police the interior, deporting all illegals.

But the Republicans don't see it that way.

Of course Mexicans living here, and naturalized here, retain their Mexican citizenship. This will cut one of two ways in the future.

I would not be using the word racist if he had simply listed problems associated with immigration instead of claiming that Mexican immigrants would soon be rioting, burning cars and apparently praising Allah.

Forgive me for disagreeing, but I believe you would cry “racist” regardless. I see you’ve been a member of this forum since 2001. What have you been reading?

Are you trying to tell us that you don’t see any problems among the recent millions of Mexican, mostly illegal or amnestied migrants? Any massive migration, especially illegal entry ALWAYS has serious problems. Show us one time in history it didn’t. Look at this nation in it’s beginning. Wasn’t too kind to the inhabitants was it? It does not MATTER what color their skin is. Only a fool judges people by the color of their skin. Good Mexican Americans don’t like this mess anymore than we “whities” do. Are they racist?

Go search some articles, if you care to know, which I doubt. There are plenty about the burning of American Flags, with pictures, by the way. There are numerous accounts and photos of the many vicious attacks on property and persons, some old ladies. Too many of these new “arrivals” wave only the Mexican Flag. They shout in Mexico at our sports teams, “OSAMA! OSAMA!”. They smuggle Arabs, Chinese, Koreans, ANY one that wants across that border. ANY one.

Read about the conversion of thousands of Hispanics to Islam. 13 mosques and schools in Mexico. More in the US. They march in our streets, demanding “their” rights. 95% of the outstanding murder warrants in LA are for Illegals. MS-13 is considered the MOST dangerous and largest membered gang in this country. US citizens property and safety is being destroyed daily by these entrants. Many of them here on this forum.

Many of these immigrants are innocents, being used by any one who would exploit them and make a profit off them, usually one of their own “color”. They are trapped in the “culture” of organized crime that exists within the Mexican Immigrant community.

And if you don’t know about these things, please educate yourself before you call a good man like Krikorian a racist.

I grew up in a community full of Italian and Slav legal immigrants, proud people who didn't want a cent from the government, and who became productive members of this community. They ALL learned to speak our language too, without any bilingual instruction.

I married into a family of such immigrants that lived in LA. They all learned English. But here’s the irony. About 1980, before the last failed amnesty, the Mexican “immigrants” started arriving in mass. My inlaws owned some clothing stores and had to not only perfect their English, but now their Spanish. Those immigrants, who came here properly, now have to learn English and Spanish! It’s nuts. And damned unfair.

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