Not so long ago I was at a junior school in Texas, not far from the Mexican border. The day began with the entire class singing a ditty that went: "I am proud to be an American, be an American, be an American/ I am proud to be an American, living in the USA - OK!" Deeply corny, no doubt. But these little kids sang it with real gusto. Every single one of them was of Mexican origin.
---
This works. I can vividly remember the day my cleaning lady in New York - a Bolivian by birth - passed her tests, swore that oath and became an American citizen. She was euphoric. "What are you going to do now?" I asked. "Enrol[sic] in Law School," she replied. And she did.
As that suggests, the problem in Europe is partly economic. In free market America, immigrants get jobs; they are not much more likely to be unemployed than workers born in the USA. But the second problem is that Europeans do not try hard enough to make immigrants integrate culturally.
On the contrary, in the name of "multi-culturalism", we positively encourage them to retain their languages and allegiances.
Fellow Englishman John Derbyshire takes a somewhat gloomier position, though (as expected):
An uncharacteristically dimwitted piece by Niall Ferguson in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph (London).
The gist of it is, that the French haven't tried hard enough to assimilate their North African Muslim immigrants, and that the U.S.A. does things so much better. The piece is filled with Tamar Jacoby-style happy talk about how, e.g., "The US has long excelled at integrating newcomers into American society."
The US did indeed excel at incorporating Germans (Christian, European), Irish (Christian, European), Italian (Christian, European), East European (Christian and Jewish, European),... into its foundationally Christian, European society.
Whether we shall have similar success with Central Americans (Christian, mainly Amerindian) and Muslim Middle Easterners (Muslim, Middle Eastern), is an issue not yet decided. We can, and should, hope; but many of the indicators are negative.
Heather MacDonald has an awesome article in the fall issue of City Journal. According to her article, Mexican consulates across teh country actively engage in getting IDs to illegals, supplying lawyers and support for illegals who are jailed to get them to stay in this country, providing textbooks for Mexian history adn culture and the Spanish lanugage to schools and libraries (even doing spot checks and testing in schools to make sure the kids are fluent in Spanish and using the materials), and encouraging bilingual education and services.
Mexico’s struggle to hold the hearts of its fleeing countrymen has worked. Mexican migrants have maintained a strong nationalism, exhibited through the “unfailing celebration of Mexican national, religious, and regional holidays, the conspicuous displays of patriotic symbols in Mexican neighborhoods and businesses, and in the low naturalization rate,” writes University of California professor Luis Eduardo Guarnizo. In the last decade, the rate of naturalization among legal Mexican immigrants did improve, in response to the 1996 welfare-reform law, which reduced welfare eligibility for non-citizen immigrants, and to Mexico’s authorization of dual nationality in 1998 (not exactly ideal motives for becoming citizens).
The comparison between the contributers and the leeches still holds true. MacDonald points out more: the guidebook on how to get into the US illegally and then how to keep from getting caught; a cabinet-level organization to promote "Mexicans Abroad"; law enforcement groups to protect illegals from criminals, corrupt Mexican officials, and Minutemen as they cross; even calling the billions of dollars a year that illegals send back to their families an invaluable economic source of domestic revenue. When illegals are arrested, it's a "human rights violation," an "act of bad faith" or "racism" or "bias." They object to illegals being arrested for any criminal activity, even unrelated to immigration violations. And in light of lists like this, that's a dangerous policy to listen to.
Quick to defend individual illegals, the [Mexican] consuls just as energetically fight legislative measures to reclaim the border. Voters nationwide have lost patience with the federal government’s indifference to illegal immigration, which imposes crippling costs on local schools, hospitals, and jails that must serve or incarcerate thousands of illegal students, patients, and gangbangers.
---
The Mexican government will push to control as much U.S. immigration policy as it can get away with. It’s up to American officials to stop such interference, but the Bush administration simply winks at foreign attacks on immigration laws that it itself refuses to enforce. President Bush should worry less about upsetting his friends at Los Pinos and more about listening to the American people: illegal immigration, they believe, is an affront to the rule of law and a threat to American security. It can and must be stopped.
0 comments:
Post a Comment