Note: my weekend op-ed.

“¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!”
(Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)
-Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico 1876-1911

The issue of what to do about America’s huge population of illegal residents is again a hot-button issue.

Arizona has just passed a law requiring local authorities enforce existing federal law concerning illegal aliens.

Enforce the law, what a concept!

As a consequence, the people of Arizona are being called Nazis, Nativists, and worse.

The first thing I’d like to ask is, does anybody else see how seriously weird it is we’re even having this conversation?

Every country in the world, except ours evidently, regards their right to control their own borders as a given. It’s pretty much what “country” means, an area defined by a border. Our law on our side, your law on yours.

That said, I have to confess to some ambiguous feelings about the issue. We have friends who though legal, have an illegal granny who takes care of their kids. (Requests for details will be politely ignored.)

What’s the harm in that?

And in my long-term residence abroad… I wasn’t entirely scrupulous about work permits myself.

But we’re talking about an estimated 9 to 12 million people here illegally, with an estimated inflow of a half-million a year. That’s not immigration, that’s an invasion!

Yet several dozen communities have declared themselves “sanctuary cities,” forbidding their own police to enforce federal laws, or even inquire of people they arrest whether they are in violation of them.

The federal government then discovered a new-found respect for federalism. Rather than declare them in a state of rebellion and sending federal marshals to arrest the mayors and councilmen, it preferred to ignore the issue in hopes it’ll go away.

Again, in what other country would that happen?

I am married to a legal permanent resident, who by law must carry her residence permit with her at all times. We were separated for four months after I came back to the U.S., while our embassy in Warsaw made up their minds to let my wife and son in. And they weren’t always polite to her either. (You’d think a three-year-old child would have clued them the Fraudulent Marriages Act wasn’t an issue here.)

So what does that say about how you’re treated when you follow the rules?

But of course we’re mostly talking about Mexicans, so you must be a racist if you suggest we shouldn’t welcome the ongoing reconquista of the southwest quarter of the U.S. – formerly known as the northern half of Mexico.

I love Mexico and it’s people. The time I spent there was delightful, as most everybody who goes there without a gringo attitude finds.

But is it a favor to allow its corrupt (and by the way, overwhelmingly white) oligarchy to export its potential troublemakers so they can remain in power?

That Right-wing think tank Freedom House, founded by that Right-wing ideologue Eleanor Roosevelt (sarcasm alert,) noticed that of the countries they categorize as “free” or “partly free,” almost all have one ethnic group that constitutes at least a two-thirds majority.

We might be the exception. We’ve already assimilated lots of people from all over the world – though never that many from a single origin. And never from next door.

But if we want to try that experiment we’d might want to consider that once done, it probably can’t be undone.

So what do I think?

I think we’re going to be neighbors with Mexico for a long time. And since I began with an apropos quote, another occurs to me.

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

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“Nobody hates America like native Americans. America needs immigrants to love and cherish it.”

-Eric Hoffer

In my post ‘Can you think?’ http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/10/can-you-think.html I posed the question,

“How often have you changed or abandoned a deeply held belief because of either:

a. Personal experience?

b. A persuasive argument backed by compelling evidence?”

I’ve mentioned some convictions I’ve changed before, here’s another – immigration.

I used to be an ‘open borders’ guy. Now I think we ought to be a great deal more selective about who we let in, and yes I do think we should be considering the logistics of mass deportations.

I can see this coming, so please allow me to get it out of the way, “YOU’RE A RACIST! NYAH NYAH RACIST, RACIST, RACIST, DIRTY RACIST!”

Now that we have that bull$#&! out of the way, can we talk seriously?

Oh but first, the obligatory groveling caveats to prove I’m not a racist, or “nativist” as the newspeak goes.

- My wife is not a citizen, but a green card holder. If she were not married to me, I doubt she’d have gotten in, as her job credentials were as an English teacher to small children. As it is, we were separated for four months after I returned to the US while we waited for her visa approval.

- My children have dual citizenship in Poland and the US – soon to become dual US/EU citizens. My sister is already a dual citizen of the US and EU having held US and UK passports for some time now.

- My children’s playmates and best friends are from Kenya and Mexico. We devoutly hope that our Kenyan friends can get permanent status because their kids are a wonderful influence on our hellion-child (the kind of influence that is sadly lacking among American kids).

- My last immigrant ancestors were the children of an Irish woman who married an English (or Anglo-Scots) soldier. G-g-g-great granma Kitty was beaten up by her English in-laws while seven months pregnant and thrown out of their house. Her sons grew up fighting everybody in town and lit out for America as soon as they were grown. And the Europeans wonder why Americans have attitude?

- Yes, I know some illegals very well. And no, I’m not going to turn them in.

OK, now let’s get serious.

So does anybody see how seriously weird it is that we’re even having this discussion?

Every nation on earth, without exception, regards their right to control their borders as a given – except perhaps us. It’s pretty much what defines “nation”.

We now have huge demonstrations in our cities, by people who have no legal right to be here, waving the flag of a country which consistently expresses hostility to ours, demanding their right to invade our country en mass, break our laws when it suits them, and utilize public services at a rate which threatens to bankrupt them.

One of our countrywomen, the lovely Miss USA, Rachel Smith, was just publicly insulted in Mexico with no protest from her American colleagues. Now cast your mind back to what we know about macho cultures and ask yourself how those maricones* would react if the equally lovely Miss Mexico, Laura Elizondo** were treated as shabbily in the US?

Some Americans react by declaring their churches and towns to be “sanctuary sites” and condeming a citizen’s group which organizes something like a neighborhood watch group on the border as “racists”. Local law enforcement is forbidden to turn over illegals they arrest for other crimes to the INS.

Are we nuts?

If we saw a European country behaving this way, we’d probably think so. In the early 90s after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe ended, a great many Romanian Gypsies headed to Poland where the pickings were better and the people more generous to beggars. After putting up with them for more than a year (they were even allowed to set up semi-permanent housekeeping in the large waiting rooms of the inter-city train stations) the Polish government rounded them up and sent them back to Romania.

(Ever hear of this in the media? Thought not.)

No it didn’t work 100%, there are still Romanian gypsies on the streets of Warsaw – but their behaviour towards the citizens is far less obnoxious. (Is there a hint here?)

Again, I am not anti-immigration, please see the quote at the head of this post. I am not even against mass immigration. I think we should be considering the possibility that for humanitarian reasons we may have to plan for the evacuation of the White and Colored population of South Africa to our shores – and perhaps the Jewish population of Israel as well, since nobody else is likely to take them in.

Two observations:

1) Recent experience has shown that significant shifts in demographics between different ethnic/cultural groups in the same state have immediately preceded civil war (Yugoslavia) and the breakup of states (Russia). Historically we have been good at assimilation – when we were confident enough to take as a given that immigrants would assimilate. However a little caution when contemplating such a shift in our own population demographics does not seem unreasonable to me.

2) “In fifty years there will be no majority race in America.” – William Jefferson Clinton

That Right-wing think tank Freedom House, founded by that Right-wing ideologue Eleanor Roosevelt, has observed (and I mean “observed”, not “proclaimed”, “theorized” or “asserted”) that of the countries they classify as “free”, most have one ethnic/cultural group that constitutes at least a 2/3 majority.

(That one was actually a bit of a surprise to me. I had assumed that liberty came from the consensus reached by different contending groups, analogous to the contending Protestan sects in England that reached an accomodation of mutual tolerance.)

With this in mind, am I beling unreasonable to suggest that a little thought, and some real discussion, is in order before we take steps that will irrevocably alter the composition of our society?

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* No I’m not being homophobic – I’m being as insulting as I know how. (Thus showing my multicultural hipness.)

** I also wonder how our multicultural sensitive crowd would react if Miss Elizondo http://www.santabanta.com/contestants.asp?picid=1129 were to be publicly ridiculed for her answer to the question, “Name one person, other than your parents, who has had the most influence on your life. Why?”

“Putting aside the religious significance os Maria, Jesus mother, in history there was a woman called Maria whose son was crucified. She is certainly a person that has influenced my life in many ways. I have always admired her strength, devotion for his family, faith and courage. In difficult times, I try to imitate her by being strong and perseverant following her example. I hope I can someday become a mother and find the strength she possessed to enface life and family situations.”

Remember when George Bush was ridiculed for answering “Jesus” to a similar question? (Admitedly, I cringed inwardly too. Point is, good manners demand that we not ridicule each other for personal religious convictions as long as we keep them personal and not intrude them on the state.)

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