Sunday, August 16, 2009

Thank God They're Mexicans

By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

I’ve never been a serious hawk on the immigration issue. However, I side with the right on two important aspects: We need to control our borders in order to maintain our national identity. And, the immigrants who come here through proper channels need to become Americans… not remain as foreigners in enclaves.

My mother told the story of her mother who had no English. Her sister, Aunt Sadie, told her to go into the store and point at what she wanted. When she was finished she was to say “Dod’l do.” I knew grandma as someone who spoke English… but with an accent. All of my grandparents were immigrants. Thomas Sowell, in Ethnic America, said that silent movies were ideal for the America of the 1890s to 1920s. The audiences often had limited English and were better entertained by the histrionic gesticulation typical of the genre. The Warner Brothers got their start running a nickelodeon and their Mamma played the piano for the sound track.

A major fallacy is that America was built on the backs of cheap labor. Our economic juggernaut was built, instead, on capital. Machines are continually being developed to reduce the cost and improve the quality of productive tasks. The United Farm Workers once staged a major protest at UC Davis because they were developing technologies to reduce the human drudgery involved in farming. I’m not big on drudgery. The less of it the better. Migrant workers come to our agricultural areas because they work so cheaply that technology is not a suitable replacement. In some cases it’s borderline. Should some cockamamie union try to push up the labor cost… the steam hammer will replace John Henry.

What Americans don’t appreciate about the infiltration of our nation by people from the South… is that Europe has an even bigger problem with Arabs and Turks. Personally, I’d much rather have Mexicans.

The Arabs and Turks swarming over Europe are the products of an economic diaspora, just like the Mexicans and Central Americans coming into the United States. The difference between the two situations is that Mexicans are much, much more like the rest of Americans than are the Moslems who are radically changing the demographics of Europe.

A critique I could lodge against the political aspect of Mexican migration into the U.S. concerns the irredentist scheme to reclaim California and perhaps other border states as being rightly Mexican property. This is typified by the La Raza organization to which our latest Supreme Court nominee is alleged to belong. Most Mexicans don’t give a rat’s patootie for this notion… just the leftist, college indoctrinated “community activists.” But, perhaps a thumbnail historical recital can help put the contemporary situation into perspective:

Mexico was the administrative center for all of Spanish America. California was very difficult for the Spanish to administer because of its remoteness. To reach California by sea… from Spain or Vera Cruz was extremely difficult. By land… well, the same. It was easier to reach China. As a result, there were never more than a few Spanish/Mexican inhabitants of California (Harper‘s Monthly in 1876, put the number at about 3,000).
Meanwhile, Spanish strategists were alarmed at the possibility of Russian encroachment heading south from Alaska. A Spanish general named Galvez (for whom Galveston, Texas is named) enlisted an ambitious Franciscan named Junipero Serra to build a string of missions along the Pacific coast to serve as outposts of Spanish empire… and to block any Russian expansion into Spanish territory. The Ruskies got as far down the coast as Fort Ross in Sonoma County. Beyond which was “mission country.”

In more modern times, immigration from Mexico into the U.S. started anew during the Mexican Civil War, ca. 1910. Along with chips and salsa they brought marijuana… without which there may never have been a “Jazz Age.”

That was sort of towards the tail end of the great immigration period in American history. At various times Tsarist Russia and Australia were competing with us for fugitive Europeans. After a while we were no longer “under populated.” Immigration quotas were put in place… but all along, with a nod and a wink, we’ve kept Mexico from boiling over by absorbing their wealth creation shortfall. They’re better at creating people than they are at creating wealth. It doesn’t have to be. Mexico is oil rich and it’s bicoastal… like us. These are terrific commercial and strategic qualities.

But Mexico is deteriorating. It’s always been corrupt… but now chiefs of police are being assassinated routinely. Off-duty police are doing kidnappings for ransom. Revolutionaries from old movies are seizing towns like Chiapas. The middle class is hunkering down into guarded enclaves. I’d leave.

America has always had a vested interest in a stable Mexico. But sacrificing our national identity is too high a price to pay. Allowing unfettered “off the books” immigration is not a long term solution… it reinforces the corruption and chaos that is pushing the people across the border.

3 comments:

  1. and as you point out without Mexicans to work in agriculture maybe we would have robots working in fields ir possibly citizens of the US making higher wages. Isn't that what the capitalist system is based on, supply and demand? So cheap labor attracts uneducated workers who ultimately drain money from the economy by utilizing social services to a very high degree, not to mention how many billions are spent keeping the criminal element of the illegal population in prisons at a cost of $50,000 per prisoner. Add that cost to the medical and education money that is spent on maintainimg illegals and California might have been able to balance the budget because of another residual effect of so many illegals, i.e. the growing government agencies that deal with them. They are basically people who are breaking into your house and stealing away social services or SS money that could be used for US citizens. Yes I would rather have Mexicans than Moslems because they are more like us but wouldn't it be better in the end if millions of Mexicans sneaking into the USA does serve to release the pressure building up in Mexico because of the insidious corruption. Maybe if they were blocked at the border they would have a revolution and create a country that could take care of its own citizens and that might be even better for us as a trading partner. BTW I love Mexico and the people there and even the ones that live here. It is just a political quandry for me as I seem millions and millions of more Democrats in the future and that is when the real harm from illegal immigration will be felt. Luckily I will either be dead or living in Brazil, which by the way has very strict immigration laws and enforces them, especially vs norte americanos. Though they have a very loose immigration policy for Japan and one of the largest Japanese populations in the world is in Sao Paulo. FYI, further south, Argentina has a tight immigration policy when it comes to Moslems, especially since they blew up a Jewish Temple......uhh I forget when that was but it has been nearly a few decades ago. I am just too lazy to look it up now. Gotto go. I will give you a B+.... Dr. F

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  2. Mr. Ross,

    The question is, Why do they come north? Yes there are jobs here at better wages than at home but there is also, better housing, medical care, day care, food and a portion of that is at US taxpayers expense. As we know past waves of immigrants took care of themselves. Now you and I pay toward the health and well-being of children of illegal immigrants in the form of subsidized day care with two meals a day. Let's talk about the real problem. Today taxpayers are funding immigration. Rather than pay out more money for a wall let's just stop paying incredible benefits for crossing the border. If someone wants to come here to work the least they can do is pay for the food they eat and the doctor visits they make. Remember, health care is not a right. I can barely afford it for myself. Certainly no one is entitled to it at my expense and without my express consent. So Mr. Ross the issue isn't immigration it's the benefits package that comes with it that taxpayers didn't authorize. Signed, Mac

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  3. Send every illegal home, one by one, if you catch them twice, six months in prison, no more automatic citizenship for anchor babies. I'm tired of illegals driving down wages, & would like to see real prosecution of the dicks that hire them. Blacks suffer the most from illegals, as no one will hire an unskilled black, if there is a mojado available for the same price or less.

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