Hanson's Latest

NRO ^ | 7/9/2003 | David Frum, Victor Davis Hanson

[Utah Girl]

Fellow NR contributor Victor Davis Hanson has written an extremely interesting book … no wait, stop, what other kind of book does he write? …. OK, another extremely interesting book – this time on the subject of immigration and what it is doing to his beloved California, where the Hansons have farmed for five generations.

Much of what it is doing is harmful: It has put on the road drivers who cannot handle their machines and do not carry insurance – with deadly effect on California’s streets. It has brought new kinds of crime and once-extinguished diseases to California’s small towns. It animates the academic and political grievance industry, and destroys the cultural accord and educational standards that Hanson remembers from his youth.

Yet Hanson does not belong to the immigration-is-inherently-a-catastrophe school. He is not a ranter nor a blamer. He admires Mexicans and is fascinated by Mexico. His book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming is, rather, an attack on schools that do not educate, a civic culture too ashamed of itself to assimilate, and a national government that will not enforce the immigration laws that already exist.

But he does make the point that combining weak-willed institutions with a mass immigration from a single foreign nation is a recipe for catastrophe.

“Let us be honest about the nature of human traffic. It is not climate, natural resources or race that entices or repels immigrants to new shores. Rather the answer lies with the capacity of Western culture to create capital, provide security, offer freedom and emphasize the individual rather than the tribe. Wealthy Westerners, who prefer low birthrates so as to satisfy their appetites for leisure, freedom and wealth, invite in the poor from Africa, Asia and South America to join them, on the condition that they are willing to work immediately at menial jobs in exchange for some future chance to partake in a free and affluent society. But what starts out as a mutually beneficial relationship soon deteriorates into one of mutual recrimination and theater: the host hectors the immigrant that he is lucky to have escaped his nightmarish home; the new arrival barks back that he now wants near-instant parity with his employer and the right to romanticize his once hated homeland as a savle for his wounded pride.”

Mexifornia is beautifully written, as of course one would expect. It is also one of the most enlightening books yet written on one of our most difficult subjects. Highly recommended.

[daviddennis]

I've been looking for a balanced book on this subject for a long time; I shall buy this straight away.

I have posted on many immigration threads. I don't like the attitude of the anti-immigration folks, because I think they unfairly demonize people who simply want to make a few bucks.

At the same time, i think that behind their often mean-spirited bluster, there are a few good points. It surely doesn't make sense to give welfare benefits, medical services or education to people who have not gone through the painful process of citizenship.

I would prefer simply denying them these benefits to trying to seal up our borders at enormous trouble and expense.

I welcome a fresh perspective on this issue, and I look forward to reading the book.

D

[Support Free Republic]

Aww man! Enough of the fundraiser posts!!!

Only YOU can make fundraiser posts go away. Please contribute!

[Cacique]

Hanson does not belong to the immigration-is-inherently-a-catastrophe school

Not having read the book I cannot comment at large. But it appears to me there is a school of people out there who cannot tell the difference between legal and illegal immigration. The wall street journal school of globalisation and open borders which is willing to sacrifice everything to the God of capitalism is as dangerous a utopia as the marxist degenerate vision is.

[Cacique]

see 4 above

Nobody is agains immigration, legal that is. But a nation that cannot control the nature of it's development has no sovereingty and a doubtfull future.

[Clemenza]

VD Hanson and I share the same attitude towards immigration (and Mexicans, for that matter), but I still think the "assimilationist" model is dead. The most we can hope for is peaceful coexistence.

Then again, I do see many second and third generation Nuyoricans and Dominicanyorks assimilating...into ghetto culture that is.

[Brian Allen]

<< .... the anti-immigration folks, ... "I think" ... unfairly demonize [Invading criminal aliens] who "simply want to make a few bucks." >>

Like Al Capone, perhaps, who, after all, also "simply want[ed] to make a few bucks?" And whose approach to making a few bucks was no different from that of anyone whose first American activity is to contemptuously and feloniously spit on our nation's sovereign border?

And, with respect, what you do about those who "unfairly demonize" anti-American criminals is not to think about either them or the criminal actions and activities they abhor.

Rather, what you do is to feel about yourself and to project those [In your case, Good] feelings onto those whose illegal activities and criminal actions are so passionately opposed by those American-Law respecting Americans you so casually blanket as the "anti-immigration folks!" [Who, it may surprise you, no doubt have just about as many different opinions and motivations as are their numbers!]

[daviddennis]

This is exactly why I don't understand you folks.

You're equating someone who crosses borders to fix our cars or clean our offices with Al Capone!

What exactly are they stealing by cleaning our toilets? Who are they murdering?

I know you can pull together some articles saying that the occasional rogue illegal kills someone, but for 999 out of 1000, they're not killers and they're visiting our country to work, not to steal or otherwise harm us.

I'm sorry, I can't count that sort of thing as the kind of serious crime you folks seem to feel it is.

Sneaking across our borders is not murder, robbery or rape! I'm not at all convinced that it harms us as a nation. The type of extreme reaction you have to it harms your case, in my view, because your demonization of these folks is too absurd to take seriously.

And as for the evil ones ... well, there are plenty of evil killers in this country. The vast majority of them are legally here. The best way to deal with evil is to confront it directly by going after true evildoers, instead of demonizing a class of people, 99.9% of whom are harmless. If we divert our resources into policing the border, we'll arrest fewer evildoers, not more.

D

[firebrand]

We should all stop using the oxymoronic phrase "illegal immigration." If it's illegal, it's not immigration, and if it's immigration, it's not illegal (unless some laws were broken in the immigration process, which is not what people usually mean when they say "illegal immigration").

Acceptable phrases are "illegal alien," "illegal entry," "people who crossed our borders illegally," "illegal migration," etc.

This is part of not letting the left determine the vocabulary.

[Teacher317]

What exactly are they stealing by cleaning our toilets? Who are they murdering?

They are stealing our tax money via numerous government programs. The rate of violent crimes (and expensive incarceration) among illegals is far higher than that of American citizens.

[Cacique]

immigration can be either legal (in observance of the laws of a sovereign nation with regards to such matters) or illegal (in violation of such laws). The transition from one nation to another for the purp[oses of settling there is immigration.

Migration on the other hand usually does not connote any desire to settle. Migratory birds for example do not remain in any geographical area permamently and are seasonal. Another example are migrant workers who move in accordance to where their labor is needed.

Thus illegal immigration is the attempt to settle in a given country in violation of it's immigration laws.

[M. Peach]

Very good - thanks for the English lesson!

[firebrand]

Well, as a word expert, I disagree. The phrase "illegal immigrant" not only makes illegal entrants sound better, it helps to make legal immigrants sound worse by lumping them together with illegals as both being immigrants.

Murdock gave us a bunch of these the other night at the Young Americans for Freedom leadership seminar. Actually, this was not among them but from another helpful source. Murdock mentioned always saying "government schools" rather than "public schools," always saying "death taxes" instead of "estate taxes," and not using the word "liberal" in any positive context, even though the historic meaning of the word was not what it is now. There were some others . . .

[daviddennis]

If the government freely gives something to an illegal, it's not theft.

It could be fraud, if the illegal is pretending to be a citizen.

But it's not "pull a gun on someone and grab all their money" theft.

If the government is willingly providing the money, and the illegal is not deceiving the government, it's neither theft nor fraud.

Under many circumstances, you could convince me that the government should not be doing this for non-citizens. In that case, I would join you in trying to get the rules changed.

You undermine your own case by using loaded words like "thief". I need more than a few isolated incidents to be convinced that this problem is truly serious, or that illegals are anything more than what I think they are: People looking for work here because they can't find it in their own country.

The people of our country used to admire people like that, who have the guts and gumption to start out life in a new place. Now, many of us just want to kick 'em out and slap 'em in the face.

I think that's a very sad commentary on the type of people we have become.

D

[Cacique]

By engaging in such tactics we merely abandon the language to our opponents and allow them to define the agenda.

That is the way lawyers are trained. They abandon the dictionary and manipulate language to suit their needs.

Illegal is still illegal no matter how you cut it and does not legitimize anything. We don't have migrant laws in this country nor do we have alien or entrant laws, we have immigration laws and that is what illegal immigrants violate.

By trying to change the meaning of words we engage in the same hyperbolic nonsense of the left. I would do one better and call them criminal immigrants since they are in fact engaged in the commission of a crime.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Hanson?

[firebrand]

I'm not changing the meaning of any words. People who use "immigration" to mean "walking over the border" are the ones changing the meaning of that word. The left has successfully done this while we were asleep.

[Rebelbase]

LOL! It must be a comeback album.

[Cacique]

There are several factors you are neglecting in your romanticized view of immigration. It has no relationship to any reality.

Yes many illegal aliens in this country are economic refugees. However, many are neither here to settle nor to integrate and assimilate into American society.

The world has changed considerably from the 19th century immigration waves from Europe. An immigrant who decided to make the journey at that time understood that it was a one way trip. More than likely he would ever see his relatives ever again. He was leaving into uncharted areas. In most cases he or she was single and was coming here to start a new life. Usually a family sacrificed what meager savings they had to pay for passage. It was a one way trip and there was no way of going back.

Today's modern immigrant is a cheap plane ticket from home. Modern communications and the smaller world it has become means he can come here and blend into any one of many ethnic enclaves and feel right at home watching hometown tv via satellite and never even having to speak english. In that insular world any anti-americanism he brought with him is reinforced by his peers. If things do not work out he knows that he can always afford the small amount of cash needed for a plane ticket back home.

Some granted are here to work and make a living, others are not, they are here to subvert the system. They have the mindset of a colonizer rather than an immigrant. This is particularly true of many from the Middle East and Mexico.

There is a difference between controlled immigration and what is turning into a wave of colonization.

Immigration laws exist for a purpose, it allows us to screen for persons with criminal records, persons with a complete lack of education or persons who carry transmittable diseases and others who would become a burden on our already taxed welfare resources. We should as a nation be able to determine who we allow to enter and remain and who we do not.

To do otherwise is to allow the Balkanization of the country and repeat the pattern that has made Europe a place to escape from.

Just as I am sure you do not have the door to your house wide open and do not mind if a rapist, murderer or thief came in just because he felt like it. I am sure you agree that controlled immigration is preferable to the anarchy we have now. It is our children who will have to grow up in the Balkanized country we are leaving for them.

[daviddennis]

Well said. I appreciate your taking the time to make a response that doesn't feel like a personal attack on illegals.

My impression, though, is that sealing our borders would take an incredible amount of money, and would not necessarily find all or even a decent fraction of the truly bad people who cross the border.

If we devoted those same resources to a general improvement in law enforcement, I would think we'd find and put away more bad people that way.

Likewise, there are plenty of people, citizens and non-citizens, who want to subvert the system. Wouldn't we be better off fixing the holes in the system so that all would benefit?

And finally, should we focus on illegal immigrants getting into our schools, or should we focus on making our schools decent places that actually have the ability to educate people?

We can only devote resources to so many problems. By all means, deport the illegal aliens we catch trying to game our system, and imprison those who commit serious crimes. But I'd rather see our resources devoted to something more useful than a giant fence and guard stations all over the border.

Finally, how can it be colonization if there is no governmental authority behind it? I thought colonization is the enforcement of rules by an outside country on another. We are still making and enforcing all the rules, including those behind elections.

Of course if we have been deliberately circumventing those rules in an effort to gain voters for the Democratic party, then I agree with you that this has to be stopped.

D