Posted on 06/21/2002 9:24:18 AM PDT by One_American
It is this reporter's opinion that we will eventually face the decision to either close our porous borders with Canada and Mexico and sort out our illegal alien situation or throw up our hands and become another Third World nation.
Strong words, I know! But thousands arrive illegally each year and, as an example, the state of California has become home to fully 40 percent of America's immigrants – legal and illegal. They come in such overwhelming numbers because a tacit alliance of Right and Left has created an open borders policy aimed at keeping wage labor cheap and social problems fresh.
Recently I interviewed Victor Davis Hanson, Professor of Classics, California State University,* who asked the question, "Do we want 'Mexifornia'?" He refers to unlawful immigration as the third rail of California politics.
Hanson knows the problem firsthand. He is a college professor who lives in the sleepy town of Selma, Calif., which has grown from a community of 7,000 to 20,000 in only two decades – as a result of mostly illegal immigration from Mexico.
Selma is 60 percent to 90 percent Hispanic. No one knows how many of these people are citizens. Hanson rarely hears English spoken and almost every car displays a Mexican flag or decal.
Professor Hanson points out that he loves the Mexican people, but that tensions abound even within families when the subject of our sovereignty and citizenship is discussed. One of his siblings is married to a Mexican-American; another has two stepchildren whose father was an illegal from Mexico; he has a prospective son-in-law whose parents crossed the border, yet they all disagree at different times whether open borders are California's hope or its vane.
And why not? California cannot even obtain accurate numbers as to how many of the state's more than 10-12 million Hispanic residents have arrived from Mexico unlawfully.
Our Hispanic population – 70 percent of which are from Mexico – grew 53 percent during the 1980s and rose another 27 percent, to a total of 30 million between 1990 and 1996; and at present rates of births and immigration, by 2050 there will be 97 million Hispanics in the U.S. – one quarter of our American population!
Hanson points to the fact that the liberals swear that these newcomers bring in $25 billion net revenue annually; but realistic statisticians conclude that they cost the United States over $40 billion a year and that in California, each illegal immigrant will take $50,000 in services from the state beyond what he will contribute in taxes during his entire lifetime. One study suggests that the average California household must contribute at least $1,200 each year to subsidize the deficit between what these immigrants cost in services and what they pay in taxes.
Here are statistics just released:
The uninvited who have flooded into California have all but filled our newly built prisons; nearly one quarter of the inmates are from Mexico.
Nearly a third of all drug trafficking arrests involve illegal aliens.
The Labor Department attributes 50 percent of real wage declines to the influx of cheap immigrant labor.
The going wage is $8.00 per hour in California, $8.00 a week in Mexico. But that's only the beginning. These "guests" use their counterfeit documentation to get workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and state assistance, meanwhile romanticizing Mother Mexico while chastising Lady Bountiful America.
Surprise! The second generation has learned how to live, spend and consume as Americans – but not, like their fathers, to work and save as Mexicans. If rising crime rates, gang activity and illegitimacy are any indication, they resent rather than sacrifice to escape poverty.
Tragically, 37 percent of all births to Hispanic immigrants are illegitimate. The illegitimacy rate among American-born Mexican mothers is now 48 percent. Census data show median household income for the nation's Hispanics dropped 5.1 percent, yet recent immigrants from Mexico and their U.S.-born children under 18 make up only 4.2 percent of America's population and represent 10.2 percent of our poor. Hispanics account for 24 percent of America's impoverished – that's up 8 percentage points since 1985.
... and yet they keep coming, refusing to be assimilated, with romanticized Mexico ever close to their hearts, many dying in California never having sought to become U.S. citizens.
Professor Hanson points to the heart of our immigration problem: While it has always been easier for people who emigrate to keep their own culture rather than join the majority, for the first time in our state and nation's history, we have made it easier for them to do it.
Unfortunately, the future is dismal. Out of every 100 Hispanics who enter California high schools, 40 drop out and of the remaining 60, fewer than four will go on to college. Only 7 percent of all Mexican-Americans currently hold a BA. This is a national tragedy!
I praise professor Hanson. If he did not really like his Mexican-American students, who make up the majority of his classics classes, if he wanted them to fail, he would not continue to try to teach them Latin, much less Greek, English Composition or Western History and Culture – nor would he insist on essays free of grammatical error, or demand oral reports that employ classical, rhetorical tropes.
No ... if he did not like them or did not wish to live among thousands of illegal as well as legal immigrants and wish them married into his own family, he would keep them distant, teaching them therapy, letting them speak poor English or no English at all and insisting on the superiority of the "Mexican culture" – that they or their parents had fled.
Instead, the professor struggles on at what sometimes seems to be a losing battle. But he leaves for us the choice. Will we continue down this endless path facing the great question: Will California remain multi-racial or become America's first truly multi-cultural state? Will there be assimilation or will we stay with the deceitful multiculturalist present that is failing? For unchecked illegal immigration and multiculturalism are a lethal mix. California, if it is to stay as California, might cope with one or even the other – but surely not both at once.
Professor Victor David Hanson, our heroes are found not only on violent battlefields. We salute you!
******* * Victor Davis Hanson, a professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno, received his B.A. at the University of California at Santa Cruz and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He was given the Award for Teaching Excellence by the American Philological Association – an annual citation given to the top undergraduate teachers of Classics.
He is the author or editor of several books on military and ancient history. He has also written about traditional agrarian and rural life and contemporary culture wars. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Times, American Heritage, The Weekly Standard and The Wilson Quarterly, and has been featured on NPR and the Jim Lehrer News Hour. He currently writes a biweekly column on the war against terrorism for National Review Online.
The legendary George Putnam is 87 years young and a veteran of 67 years as a reporter, broadcaster, and commentator ... and is still going strong. George is part of the all-star line-up of Southern California's KPLS Radio – Hot Talk AM 830.
The guys who are promoting the idea that Mexico still has a legitimate claim to the SW US, such as Armando Navarro, do not represent any serious point of view in either the US or Mexico. Therefor, at one level, to treat those guys as if they were worthy of attention is mistaken.
At the same time, as you notice, these guys are truly evil. If they were serious, then what? Violence? Insurgency? War?
This is one of the several things about the Left that is so evil. They promote ideas that are not serious; anyone who acts upon those ideas brings death and destruction upon themselves and to their victims. In fact, anyone who buys into the victimology winds up stewing in misery, and throwing their lives away for nothing.
As I mentioned earlier, Navarro is a US academic, a leftist professor. He gets paid taxpayer dollars to fill young minds with this bilge.
I know, I understand, it's just when I hear people talk like this massive invasion is limited or isolated to California or it's just a south west U.S. problem, I feel compelled to point out this this immigration "free for all" has gone nationwide in a big way.
"Hey Joe, where are you going to run to now?"
And damn good song too.
"Where you going with that gun in your hand"....
Don't ask.....
They voted for Bush because I knocked on their doors and talked to them in a freindly manner. They happen to be pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-2d amendment. And they don't like to pay taxes. (Who does?) But that is not why they voted for Bush. They voted for Bush because I was friendly to them....and Bush and Fox are friendly. Remember, in the Mexican's view Fox and PAN are pro-life, small business Republican. PRI is Democrat. PRD is Nader Green Socialist.
BTW, I do not profile. I knock on everybody's door: Democrat, white liberal, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim (Yes, in my area they also are conservative Republican but caught between two different factions of conservatives split over personalities, not issues.) I estimate 20% of Blacks voted for Bush in my lower middle class suburban area of union members and hamburger flippers. No doubt about it, in my area, the white liberals are the problem.
The Illinois Republican governor candidate has been hostile to Hispanics. I will not be able to deliver for him. Bush and Fox have given the Republicans a window of opportunity. Texas and Florida might make the most of it. That window of opportunity may never again occur.
Twenty years from now people will look back and ask, "How could those Republicans in Illinois, Colorado (Tancredo) and California be so stupid?" The Supreme court won't allow capital punishment for the stupid. But us stupid people sure can commit suicide.
Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, and George W. Bush all gave aid and comfort to the Illegals in 1994 by opposing #187.
They helped create the atmosphere of hand-wringing has haunted the GOP on Illegals since then, and thus emboldened the Democrats in their treachery.
Nothing to see here, just go on back to sleep.
True, at this point, this is nothing more than a few vocal rabble-rousers playing demogogue politics.
But to underestimate the appeal of their movement among Mexicans would be a mistake. When you combine that with changing demographics that will put Mexicans in a position of majority in Southwestern states in 20 to 30 years or sooner, this is not something we can afford to just dismiss.
No need to refer to the vague "sources" here. This Tennessean can tell you the last time I had my license renewed, I was appalled. The place looked like the Tiajuana unemployment office.
As I made an effort to look at whatever papers I could, I saw some Mexicans holding documents from Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and New York... all of them now getting a Tennessee driver's license.
What was that saying about the road to hell...?
And as much of a unabashed capitalist as I am, I think corporate America bears a lot of the blame. Looking out for your bottom line is one thing, but facilitating your country's suicide is another. It's almost on par with treason and sedition.
Tyson Foods is one primary culprit. They opened a chicken processing plant in Shelbyville, TN. The population of Shelbyville went from about 20,000 to 40,000 in the last 8 years. Almost all of the new residents were illegal Mexicans working for Tyson. The carpet factories in Dalton, GA are another big culprit.
I think a necessary step in fighting this invasion is naming those corporations that are hiring illegals and bring public scrutiny bearing down on them. Let them know we won't do business with companies that support and facilitate the invasion of our country.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
It could be that the left wants to start another very profitable ethnic conflict, and collect the pieces as they fly.
So they're the "useful idiots" of the Reconquistas. That doesn't change the fact that those who illegally enter our country are criminals right off the bat, and from there they're a drain on our resources. I don't care how bad someone's life is in Mexico, if they want into our nation, they'd doggone well better follow the rules we've laid down to do it. After all, I want to improve my life, but I'm not gonna break into peoples' homes and rip them off in order to do it.
Though I don't buy into the "we're a nation of immigrants" crap (heck, I was born here, as were my family for several generations back, my girlfriend's family for several generations back, etc.), I don't mind folks legally immigrating. If a Mexican family wants to come here legally, learn the language, be productive, pay taxes, assimilate into our culture, and become citizens of the United States of America, I'll welcome them with open arms.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Yes, they are the useful idiots, and when the Aztlan leaders decide it's time to mobilize, I'm afraid they'll be right on board.
That doesn't change the fact that those who illegally enter our country are criminals right off the bat
Check my posting history... you'll see you're preaching to the choir.
Though I don't buy into the "we're a nation of immigrants" crap
As the son of a legal immigrant (from Nazi Germany), I don't think that's crap! But like you said, if you come here, it should be legally and you should renounce any loyalty to your nation of birth and become an assimilated American citizen. My mother speaks better English, with no accent, than many millions who were born here.
Thanks for that. We have good friends and family from Georgia, to Washington, to Ohio. The same is happening everyhere. 10 years ago, this invasion was predominantly limited or isolated to the southwest United States. This is no longer the case. I can only hope, America will stir from it's very deep sleep.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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