Gringos here in Mexico talk endlessly about how they love and admire the Mexican people, how friendly the natives are, how wonderful the culture is and, by strong implication, how wonderful the gringos are for appreciating Mexico. Actually they don’t. They live in gated communities in the hills, can’t speak three words of Spanish, and have surprisingly little contact with the country. They have invented a Mexico that doesn’t exist, and have fallen in love with it.
Thus many of their ideas about Mexicans are wrong, compounded equally of ideology and wishful thinking. The same happens in America. This will one day give birth to surprising children.
The truth is that Mexicans are about like people the world over, which means that regarding them with syrupy condescension as fuzzy heartwarming Pedros and Marias is a mistake. They don’t much like Americans, regarding them as arrogant and rich. The distaste is no more than distaste: they do not dream of lynching Yanquis. Nonetheless, regarding Mexico as a nation of smiling maids and obedient gardeners overlooks a somewhat darker picture. They would not be quite so smiling and obedient if they had a better economic choice.
An interesting observation: In five years I have encountered no hostility from Mexicans who have always lived in Mexico. The five or six men who were aggressively hostile all spoke barrio English. They had spent time in the US. Think about it.
The US would be well advised to take certain realities into account when it ponders today’s unrestricted immigration. Those who favor immigration tend to hold an idealized view of the newcomers. They are so-o-o-o hardworking! Yes, in the first generation. They just want a better life! So they do. They are just like Italian and Polish immigrants of the last century. No, they are not. They are Mexicans.
Mexico is a third-world country—yes, an upper third-world Latin American country, functioning reasonably well, and not Haiti or Bangladesh. It’s a nice place to live, which is why a half million North Americans are here. Yet Mexico is very, very different from America. If America and England are a few inches apart, Americans and France a few more, Mexico is several feet off in the distance.
While gringos and Mexicans live next to each other here in amity, they do not mix. They can’t. A retired executive from Boeing has nothing in common with a man with a fourth-grade education who will never read a book in his life. Pepe is smiling and amiable while working in the garden. He is also a grown man, not a teddy bear. If the retired engineer met Pepe in Pepe’s favorite bar, the engineer might come to a very different understanding of Pepe.
It is one thing to have Mexicans in America while they still fearful of being deported. They are polite and brown and eager to work. This encourages the tendency to which Americans are prone, to patronize them as just the nicest babysitters and garbage men. Why, they are almost like real people.
It will be a different thing when they are legal and have a voting majority in the Southwest. They understand perfectly that their day is coming. A couple of years back I listened on the radio to a Mexican-American politician from Texas. He pointed out that when the Mexican children now in school reach the age of eighteen, they will control the government of the state. He was not hostile, did not say as Barack Obama’s minister did, “God damn America.” Yet he saw what was coming, and was well pleased. From the Mexican point of view, they are getting back states which rightly belong to them.
They assuredly are. Shortly the US will have a southern tier of states under Mexican-American control.
The hopeful idea is that they will meld as did the Irish and Italians and Vietnamese. The flaw in this happy ointment is that they do very poorly in school—better than blacks, but well below whites and Asians. This is not a problem of the first generation only, in which case it might eventually cure itself, but of later generations also. It looks innate, or at least as if it will continue. Then what?
Then they will have no choice but to be waiters and garbage collectors. The first generation will tolerate it, happy to be making what seems to them good money. A few will succeed and move up. Most won’t. The second generation, relegated forever to jobs of low pay and less esteem, will become resentful. Inevitably they will see the relegation as indicating discrimination, not incapacity. The young, unable to compete, will gravitate toward others who can’t and we will have another permanent underclass. If you don’t believe me, watch.
The United States advertises itself as a land of opportunity, and in fact is, but only for the bright. A poor kid who pops 1500 on his SATs can get into a good university and come out as anything he chooses. Universities look for such students. A kid who barely reads has no chance. For him, there are no opportunities.
Why is it unlikely that the immigrants will improve scholastically? For reasons a fair few understand but nobody talks about. Intelligence. Mexico consists of three layers, or maybe two layers with a spectrum between. The governing class is white, and at about the European level on IQ tests, not surprising because they are European. You have the mestizos, who do conspicuously less well, and the pure Indians, lower yet. The white upper class is not swimming the river.
IQ is a forbidden topic, but it tracks reality depressingly well. No country below Laredo has ever produced anything important in the sciences. And while in any group there are exceptions, it is the majority who determine social results. This bears thinking about. Reality does not respect politics. Holding one’s breath and turning blue will change nothing. Insisting that something can’t be so or shouldn’t be so doesn’t change whether it is so.
Inequality can be seen in the streets here. In Guadalajara, una ciudad muy guera, a very white city, you have highly sophisticated people who talk of the arts on the radio as intelligently as any in America. They go to the opera, buy in good bookstores, and serve competently as doctors and technicians. In the villages you find people with far more Indian blood and almost no academic achievement or interest. Out in the hills there is, dead serious, a lot of witchcraft.
It’s a different world. And coming to a mall near you.
Showing posts with label Citizenship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Citizenship. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Gringos and Pepe
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Commissioner Joe Swann
Based on information from a reliable source, the tax burden imposed on Hamblen citizens by the huge population of illegal aliens far exceeds any costs that would come from hiring and training local law enforcement to assist federal agents.
I believe its a fair assumption to make that Mr. Swann, who makes his living as an accountant, knows this and is engaged in a smoke screen operation with his claim that his opposition to the resolution was based on his fear that its ratification would result in a tax increase.
I know that he is a member of Thom Robinson's chamber of commerce and this alone is probably enough to explain his long winded explanation at the commission meeting. Still It would be interesting to see a list of clients who get their accounting done at Mr. Swann's firm. Just a thought.
I believe its a fair assumption to make that Mr. Swann, who makes his living as an accountant, knows this and is engaged in a smoke screen operation with his claim that his opposition to the resolution was based on his fear that its ratification would result in a tax increase.
I know that he is a member of Thom Robinson's chamber of commerce and this alone is probably enough to explain his long winded explanation at the commission meeting. Still It would be interesting to see a list of clients who get their accounting done at Mr. Swann's firm. Just a thought.
Pro-Illegal Groups Don't Like the Law
The State of Arizona recently passed a tough new law requiring greater hiring verifications to insure that employees are legal residents and/or American citizens.
The illegal aliens don't like it one bit.
The illegal aliens don't like it one bit.
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Resolutions Pass
The Morristown City Council has finally decided that illegal immigration is enough of a problem in Morristown and Hamblen County to call on our State and federal Governments to take action to relieve the community.
Is it just us here at T-FIRE, or are these resolutions-which were courageously brought forward by Councilman Mel Tucker-long overdue?
Is it just us here at T-FIRE, or are these resolutions-which were courageously brought forward by Councilman Mel Tucker-long overdue?
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
What We are Really Looking For
Investors' Business Daily's Michael Barone hits the nail on the head as to what the real impetus is for those of us who are concerned about the threat of illegal immigration into this country-and it isn't race:
You don't have to be a racist to be bothered by such things. You just have to be a citizen who thinks that massive failure to enforce the law is corrosive to society. That was apparent to me as I listened to a focus group of Republican voters in suburban Richmond, Va., conducted by Peter Hart for the Annenberg School of Communications.
One voter after another complained that the immigration laws were not being enforced. None of them made any derogatory remarks about Latino immigrants — two said they admired how hard immigrants work. They don't want to see Latinos banished from this country. They want the immigrants here to be legally here.
Here at T-FIRE, this is our collective sentiment-word for word.
You don't have to be a racist to be bothered by such things. You just have to be a citizen who thinks that massive failure to enforce the law is corrosive to society. That was apparent to me as I listened to a focus group of Republican voters in suburban Richmond, Va., conducted by Peter Hart for the Annenberg School of Communications.
One voter after another complained that the immigration laws were not being enforced. None of them made any derogatory remarks about Latino immigrants — two said they admired how hard immigrants work. They don't want to see Latinos banished from this country. They want the immigrants here to be legally here.
Here at T-FIRE, this is our collective sentiment-word for word.
Monday, November 5, 2007
And They Tell Us it is No Problem
The Morristown-Hamblen Chamber of Commerce thinks that there is no problem with illegal immigration in Hamblen County.
Here at T-FIRE we are certain of one thing, and it is that the percentage of school populations in Hamblen County Schools that are considered "Hispanic" was not nearly as high as late as five years ago as the Citizen-Tribune (a paper that all but favors illegal immigration) is reporting that they are this year:
Fairview- Marguerite, 33.7 percent Hispanic; Hillcrest, 26.6 percent; Lincoln Heights Elementary, 32.3 percent; and West Elementary, 25.7 percent.
Either there has been a massive influx of new legal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America who have followed the law, a large portion of the population of Puerto Rico have relocated en masse to East Tennessee, or there has been a massive increase in the number of illegal aliens in East Tennessee in the last decade, some of whom have had children while here so that they can milk the system.
What hypothesis do you think most likely?
Here at T-FIRE we are certain of one thing, and it is that the percentage of school populations in Hamblen County Schools that are considered "Hispanic" was not nearly as high as late as five years ago as the Citizen-Tribune (a paper that all but favors illegal immigration) is reporting that they are this year:
Fairview- Marguerite, 33.7 percent Hispanic; Hillcrest, 26.6 percent; Lincoln Heights Elementary, 32.3 percent; and West Elementary, 25.7 percent.
Either there has been a massive influx of new legal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America who have followed the law, a large portion of the population of Puerto Rico have relocated en masse to East Tennessee, or there has been a massive increase in the number of illegal aliens in East Tennessee in the last decade, some of whom have had children while here so that they can milk the system.
What hypothesis do you think most likely?
Alien Sits on Local Jury
Now here is a question to be asked...
According to this Citizen-Tribune report, the woman in question claims to have a Green Card, which if true means that she is legally entitled to live and work in the United States of America, but is NOT a citizen of said United States, or of the State of Tennessee. As a non-citizen, this woman should not be voting.
Perhaps she isn't voting...but as a non-citizen, if she is not on the voter roles of Hamblen County, she should not have been summoned for jury duty.
How did she get a jury summons? It stands to reason that she is on the roles somewhere in the County, and we have no way to know if she is voting or not.
If she is, how many other non-citizens are illegally casting ballots and influencing the process of election that is reserved for sovereign citizens alone? How many illegal aliens are voting? Is it any wonder that members of a certain political party in Nashville oppose mandatory identification for voters, lest a part of their voter-base be suddenly ruled illegal?
___________________________________________________________
By Robert Moore, TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
The inadvertent inclusion of a non-U.S. citizen on a Hamblen County grand jury Thursday required an extraordinary legal solution Friday afternoon that averted a complete do-over, officials say.
What was at stake was the integrity of 124 cases against 56 defendants, not counting the secret indictments, which are called presentments.
Criminal Court Judge John F. Dugger resolved the matter and found that all of the indictments and all but one of the presentments the grand jury returned Thursday were valid.
Dugger says state law requires that only 12 votes are required to indict an individual for a crime. The 12-member grand jury also had a voting foreman, June Zeigler, who was sitting in for regular foreman Sam Moore.
After questioning Ziegler under oath, Dugger learned from the grand jury foreman that the votes on all the indictments were unanimous.
That means that even without the non-U.S. citizen’s vote, the district attorney’s office has the necessary 12 votes to proceed with the cases.
A grand jury will consider the presentment that didn’t get 12 votes at a later date.
At one point Thursday morning before an attorney located the 12-vote state law, court personnel feared that the entire day’s work would be lost.
The non-U.S, citizen, a woman with a Hispanic surname, reported that she has a "green card" and has been working legally in the United States for seven years, according to Kathy Mullins, Hamblen County Circuit Court clerk.
Mullins says the woman speaks English well, but apparently didn’t understand that by taking the oath to serve on the grand jury the woman was affirming that she is a citizen and a resident of Tennessee.
Potential grand jurors are randomly chosen from a list of licensed Tennessee drivers supplied by the state Department of Safety, not from voter-registration information.
The court clerk says there was no intentional deception, and the woman will face no charges. Mullins says this is the first and last time that a mix-up of this nature will occur while she remains in office.
"It won’t happen again because we will be more specific in the future," Mullins said. "It caused a great deal of pain because she didn’t say anything (Wednesday)."
What’s not clear, Mullins says, is how the woman learned that her residency status could impact grand jury results. The woman phoned the clerk’s office Friday morning and volunteered the information that she is not a U.S. citizen.
According to this Citizen-Tribune report, the woman in question claims to have a Green Card, which if true means that she is legally entitled to live and work in the United States of America, but is NOT a citizen of said United States, or of the State of Tennessee. As a non-citizen, this woman should not be voting.
Perhaps she isn't voting...but as a non-citizen, if she is not on the voter roles of Hamblen County, she should not have been summoned for jury duty.
How did she get a jury summons? It stands to reason that she is on the roles somewhere in the County, and we have no way to know if she is voting or not.
If she is, how many other non-citizens are illegally casting ballots and influencing the process of election that is reserved for sovereign citizens alone? How many illegal aliens are voting? Is it any wonder that members of a certain political party in Nashville oppose mandatory identification for voters, lest a part of their voter-base be suddenly ruled illegal?
___________________________________________________________
By Robert Moore, TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
The inadvertent inclusion of a non-U.S. citizen on a Hamblen County grand jury Thursday required an extraordinary legal solution Friday afternoon that averted a complete do-over, officials say.
What was at stake was the integrity of 124 cases against 56 defendants, not counting the secret indictments, which are called presentments.
Criminal Court Judge John F. Dugger resolved the matter and found that all of the indictments and all but one of the presentments the grand jury returned Thursday were valid.
Dugger says state law requires that only 12 votes are required to indict an individual for a crime. The 12-member grand jury also had a voting foreman, June Zeigler, who was sitting in for regular foreman Sam Moore.
After questioning Ziegler under oath, Dugger learned from the grand jury foreman that the votes on all the indictments were unanimous.
That means that even without the non-U.S. citizen’s vote, the district attorney’s office has the necessary 12 votes to proceed with the cases.
A grand jury will consider the presentment that didn’t get 12 votes at a later date.
At one point Thursday morning before an attorney located the 12-vote state law, court personnel feared that the entire day’s work would be lost.
The non-U.S, citizen, a woman with a Hispanic surname, reported that she has a "green card" and has been working legally in the United States for seven years, according to Kathy Mullins, Hamblen County Circuit Court clerk.
Mullins says the woman speaks English well, but apparently didn’t understand that by taking the oath to serve on the grand jury the woman was affirming that she is a citizen and a resident of Tennessee.
Potential grand jurors are randomly chosen from a list of licensed Tennessee drivers supplied by the state Department of Safety, not from voter-registration information.
The court clerk says there was no intentional deception, and the woman will face no charges. Mullins says this is the first and last time that a mix-up of this nature will occur while she remains in office.
"It won’t happen again because we will be more specific in the future," Mullins said. "It caused a great deal of pain because she didn’t say anything (Wednesday)."
What’s not clear, Mullins says, is how the woman learned that her residency status could impact grand jury results. The woman phoned the clerk’s office Friday morning and volunteered the information that she is not a U.S. citizen.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
A Bad Dream
ALIPAC ALERT
Senator Harry Reid has brought the Bad Dream Act Amnesty back and is using procedures designed to vote it into law before the nation can react.
While we have defeated the Bad Dream Act Amnesty four times already, Reid has invoked "Rule 14", which allows him to move quickly on the bill and without much debate. He and the AMNESTY supporters have filled the act as a bill this time, instead of trying to amend it onto other legislation.
At the time of this e-mail, our DC sources tell us they plan to vote on the Bad Dream Act Amnesty as early as tomorrow or Wed so you must call today for your voice to be heard! There may be some time on Wed. for you to get your calls in, but do not count on that unless you must.
Please locate your US Senators on our directory at this link....
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict
Call your Senators and say, "This is ______ from (Your city and state) and I am appalled that Senator Reid is pushing the Bad Dream Act AMNESTY again today. This measure has already been defeated four times! I want Senator _______ to vote NO on CLOTURE and NO on S.2205 submitted by Senators Durbin, Hagel, and Lugar. Americans overwhelmingly oppose this legislation and are sick and tired of DC lawmakers pushing Amnesty. I will be watching the cloture votes closely and expect my Senator _____ to vote NO ON CLOTURE"
For those of you who are new, it requires 60 votes in the Senate for Cloture which allows the bill to proceed for a final vote. Our best chance to stop it is by defeating the cloture vote so proper wording is essential.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Reconquista?
(Note: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Tennesseans for Immigration Reform and Education-T-FIRE. However, this piece does present an alternative view-the notion that the Mexican Government has another reason for encouraging so many of its people to come across the U.S. border illegally. It is worth pondering...)
This is tough news for all peace-loving Americans. But after the illegal immigrant protests over the last year or two, any American who doesn’t now recognize that we are engaged in a war of sorts with Mexican Reconquistas is either practicing aggressive ignorance or has sided with the Reconquistas against the USA.
This state of war exists now just as a state of war existed between the United States and the terrorists before September 11, 2001. Most Americans were too naive to see we were at war before the World Trade Center attacks burned that message into the national consciousness. The terrorists had been making war on the United States for years before 9-11, but we were too comfortable in our illusions to recognize that fact. However, we are no longer so naive.
As Americans, we have relearned a hard lesson since those attacks. We have relearned that we do have enemies in this world.
FIGHTING A WAR IN THE WRONG PLACE?
Thousands of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. These volunteer heroes are fighting to bring the refreshing waters of Stability, Democracy and Freedom to peoples who before have only known the parched deserts of tyranny and despotism. But while our own current ‘Greatest Generation’ fights across the sea, a foreign occupation force, the Reconquistas, are busy invading the United States of America. War has come to our homeland through our backdoor. We need our heroes to come home to defend us now!
VIVA LA AZTLAN!
Reconquistas are ‘illegal immigrant’ invaders from Mexico who, with their government’s support, are swarming northward, posing as itinerant, slave-wage workers.
The Reconquistas believe that California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and other Southwestern states were ‘stolen’ from them in the First Mexican-American war of 1846. Using history as their excuse, the Reconquistas believe that they can grab undefended American territory for Mexico through policies of ‘illegal immigration,’ invasion, infiltration, intimidation and eventual re-conquest (thus the name ‘Reconquistas).
The Reconquistas already have a name for their future captured American lands… AZTLAN.
This is tough news for all peace-loving Americans. But after the illegal immigrant protests over the last year or two, any American who doesn’t now recognize that we are engaged in a war of sorts with Mexican Reconquistas is either practicing aggressive ignorance or has sided with the Reconquistas against the USA.
This state of war exists now just as a state of war existed between the United States and the terrorists before September 11, 2001. Most Americans were too naive to see we were at war before the World Trade Center attacks burned that message into the national consciousness. The terrorists had been making war on the United States for years before 9-11, but we were too comfortable in our illusions to recognize that fact. However, we are no longer so naive.
As Americans, we have relearned a hard lesson since those attacks. We have relearned that we do have enemies in this world.
FIGHTING A WAR IN THE WRONG PLACE?
Thousands of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. These volunteer heroes are fighting to bring the refreshing waters of Stability, Democracy and Freedom to peoples who before have only known the parched deserts of tyranny and despotism. But while our own current ‘Greatest Generation’ fights across the sea, a foreign occupation force, the Reconquistas, are busy invading the United States of America. War has come to our homeland through our backdoor. We need our heroes to come home to defend us now!
VIVA LA AZTLAN!
Reconquistas are ‘illegal immigrant’ invaders from Mexico who, with their government’s support, are swarming northward, posing as itinerant, slave-wage workers.
The Reconquistas believe that California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and other Southwestern states were ‘stolen’ from them in the First Mexican-American war of 1846. Using history as their excuse, the Reconquistas believe that they can grab undefended American territory for Mexico through policies of ‘illegal immigration,’ invasion, infiltration, intimidation and eventual re-conquest (thus the name ‘Reconquistas).
The Reconquistas already have a name for their future captured American lands… AZTLAN.
Monday, September 17, 2007
No to the DREAM
Tell Your Senators to vote NO on the Durbin Amnesty Amendment!!
Summer is over and the grassroots victory on immigration seems like a distant memory to some Senators. The open borders crowd failed to push through their grand amnesty and now they are trying to do it piecemeal.
Illinois Senator Richard Durbin (D) will offer an amendment (S. Amdt. 2237) to the Defense Authorization bill ( H.R. 1585) next week that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens who came here before age 16 and have lived here at least five years. Though supporters claim this bill is "for the children," adults are eligible as well. Aliens aged 30, 40, or 65 are eligible as long as they meet the amnesty requirements and their "initial" illegal entry was before they were 16.
The bill sets "no numerical limit" on the number of illegal aliens who can apply for the amnesty. Conservative estimates, including those published by the Migration Policy Institute, put the number of those granted amnesty to at least 1 million people.
The bill will also grant in-state college tuition to illegal aliens. In addition to reduced tuition fees, which millions of U.S. citizens are not afforded, this bill also allows federal aid in the form of loans and work-study to help subsidize tuition for illegal aliens.
Congress and the Administration should continue focusing on enforcement. Adding in any kind of amnesty will immediately shift the focus of Homeland Security to processing the amnesty, instead of beefing up enforcement.
Senators are expecting they can push this amnesty through without you noticing. Prove them wrong! Just because your senator voted correctly on the grand amnesty, doesn't mean they will vote correctly this time. Be sure to call and get your friends and family to call as well.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
The New Slave Traffic
Back in 2003, Professor Victor Davis Hanson of Cal State Fresno wrote a book called Mexifornia that caused a sensation. It was the issue that, as Hanson put it, is "the 800-pound gorilla that nobody wants to touch." The cultural Mexicanization of the Southwest:
I got interested in the issue because I’m a fifth-generation farmer and I’ve watched changes in my community. The local school that I used to go to, which was about 60 percent Mexican or Mexican-American, [featured] assimilation, no ideology of “the border crossed us, we didn’t cross the borders”; no bilingual education, Chicano history, just simple assimilation. Those products of that school are quite successful; they run our hometown now. However, just before I came I looked at the rates of schools that are meeting California achievement levels, and in that same school – it’s a mile and a half – it’s 100 percent Mexican, and 9 percent met the minimum level of reading competency, and about 7 percent in mathematics, so something radical has happened.
But the key to it all in history is that the people who join this society must do it in numbers or in a fashion that allows them to be fully integrated and assimilated. Helots in Sparta didn’t work. Metics in Athens didn’t work. Resident aliens in Rome didn’t work, but people in the Empire who were given citizenship did work, and when they were assimilated with Italian culture, it worked.
Hanson is right, of course. Many people like to say "the border crossed us, we did not cross the border." The great difference between the days of the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, and our day today is that the Tejanos and the Californios of that time were thrilled to be free of Mexican rule, they were very proud of their new country, and they wanted to be Americans. Today, many Hispanic children aren't being taught in the English language in American class, and are being taught as if they are Mexicans or Latinos before they are Americans. In some cases they are told that they aren't Americans at all. Part of this is because of the environment and the labor that migrants and their children are subjected to as much as it is the education system.
One way I wanted to write the book, then, is to say, how did this system perpetuate and will it continue and who benefits and who loses? So I looked at each different group. Ostensibly, a person who comes from Mexico and makes $10 an hour in cash feels that he’s reached a bonanza compared to $10 a week, let’s say, in Oaxaca, and it looks great. But I’ve noticed a tragic life cycle: that we and the Mexican government almost traffic in human capital. While it looks good in the beginning, somebody typically – and again, I’m generalizing, but I’ve seen empirically, over my lifetime – people will come from Mexico at 18, 20, usually single males predominantly, they’ll work very, very hard, they’ll be delighted that they’ve had more money in their life, they can send money back and become almost heroic in their village for doing so. But if you follow that work in concrete, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, agriculture, that’s not a rite-of-passage job for people who are here illegally and who don’t know English. It becomes a permanent position, and human nature being what it is, your body cannot withstand that type of work.
So ultimately, at the age of 40 or 50, that dream has sometimes turned into a nightmare because a person may have a bad back, a bad shoulder, and then the employer who either paid cash or low wages or didn’t have a health plan says, well, go to the neighborhood clinic, workman’s comp, Section 8 housing, and the entitlement industry then picks up that added cost. Meanwhile, the children of that immigrant, whose father or mother may not know English and may not be documented, then develops a very different idea. Often he has not, or she has not, been to Mexico. She doesn’t speak Spanish in the same fluency as her parents did, doesn’t read Spanish necessarily, doesn’t know English to the same degree that people that he or she will have to compete with, and has a very different view of America. Often rates of incarceration or gang activity are higher commensurately with the population. But more importantly is the reaction to the employer, and they will tell you, don’t bring anybody onto the cement crew who speaks English because the second generation will not work like the people from Oaxaca. This is the standard – and so then we just renew the cycle and traffic in human capital.
So employers who hire illegals are not interested in bringing new Americans here and melding them into our larger cultural mosaic of peoples from all over the world (as many on the Left say), but are more interested in trafficking in human beings in what has become a modern version of the slave trade.
How are we treating American citizens of Mexican heritage who are here legally and who have done everything right according to the law? In Dr. Hanson's example, pretty crappy:
And this whole illegal universe ripples in very strange places. For example, when I'm teaching a class in the humanities, a student will come to me, often Mexican, of Mexican heritage, who’s a citizen, or a person from any heritage, from Nevada, Arizona, and say, why do I have to pay $5,000 for tuition when somebody who’s here illegally from California pays two thousand? And I usually use the standard argument, well, perhaps their parents – well, no, no, he’s only been here five years, or he doesn’t pay California State income tax. And often they’ll say, well, should I go down to Mexico and come in illegally and then perhaps I’ll get a discount?
And Californians, says Hanson, have come to depend on the new slavery to maintain their wealthy way of life.
In between it’s the California suburban average citizen who likes the idea of cheap food, going to a restaurant pretty cheap, and has developed the lifestyle of the 19th century aristocrat in some ways. Whoever thought that a Californian who was middle class, perhaps with a combined income of $100,000, could have somebody from Mexico here illegally to cut his lawn, clean his home, watch his children? And then at the same time that’s happening, he’s upset that if he goes and he looks at certain statistics of poverty, incarceration, education, that some of these groups who come from Mexico are represented in proportions that are higher than their representation in the population. So there’s all of this strange political mix, and the result in California, which we’re always a therapeutic society, is simply not to talk about it.
We have it pretty good here in Tennessee. We have a low cost of living, pay no income tax, and in East Tennessee many-if not the majority of us, are landowners. With the thousands upon thousands of people who are now pouring into our towns and hamlets from south of the Border each year and who are performing backbreaking labor at a menial wage, are we endanger of becoming dependent on a "new slave traffic," just as Hanson says has happened in California?
I got interested in the issue because I’m a fifth-generation farmer and I’ve watched changes in my community. The local school that I used to go to, which was about 60 percent Mexican or Mexican-American, [featured] assimilation, no ideology of “the border crossed us, we didn’t cross the borders”; no bilingual education, Chicano history, just simple assimilation. Those products of that school are quite successful; they run our hometown now. However, just before I came I looked at the rates of schools that are meeting California achievement levels, and in that same school – it’s a mile and a half – it’s 100 percent Mexican, and 9 percent met the minimum level of reading competency, and about 7 percent in mathematics, so something radical has happened.
But the key to it all in history is that the people who join this society must do it in numbers or in a fashion that allows them to be fully integrated and assimilated. Helots in Sparta didn’t work. Metics in Athens didn’t work. Resident aliens in Rome didn’t work, but people in the Empire who were given citizenship did work, and when they were assimilated with Italian culture, it worked.
Hanson is right, of course. Many people like to say "the border crossed us, we did not cross the border." The great difference between the days of the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, and our day today is that the Tejanos and the Californios of that time were thrilled to be free of Mexican rule, they were very proud of their new country, and they wanted to be Americans. Today, many Hispanic children aren't being taught in the English language in American class, and are being taught as if they are Mexicans or Latinos before they are Americans. In some cases they are told that they aren't Americans at all. Part of this is because of the environment and the labor that migrants and their children are subjected to as much as it is the education system.
One way I wanted to write the book, then, is to say, how did this system perpetuate and will it continue and who benefits and who loses? So I looked at each different group. Ostensibly, a person who comes from Mexico and makes $10 an hour in cash feels that he’s reached a bonanza compared to $10 a week, let’s say, in Oaxaca, and it looks great. But I’ve noticed a tragic life cycle: that we and the Mexican government almost traffic in human capital. While it looks good in the beginning, somebody typically – and again, I’m generalizing, but I’ve seen empirically, over my lifetime – people will come from Mexico at 18, 20, usually single males predominantly, they’ll work very, very hard, they’ll be delighted that they’ve had more money in their life, they can send money back and become almost heroic in their village for doing so. But if you follow that work in concrete, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, agriculture, that’s not a rite-of-passage job for people who are here illegally and who don’t know English. It becomes a permanent position, and human nature being what it is, your body cannot withstand that type of work.
So ultimately, at the age of 40 or 50, that dream has sometimes turned into a nightmare because a person may have a bad back, a bad shoulder, and then the employer who either paid cash or low wages or didn’t have a health plan says, well, go to the neighborhood clinic, workman’s comp, Section 8 housing, and the entitlement industry then picks up that added cost. Meanwhile, the children of that immigrant, whose father or mother may not know English and may not be documented, then develops a very different idea. Often he has not, or she has not, been to Mexico. She doesn’t speak Spanish in the same fluency as her parents did, doesn’t read Spanish necessarily, doesn’t know English to the same degree that people that he or she will have to compete with, and has a very different view of America. Often rates of incarceration or gang activity are higher commensurately with the population. But more importantly is the reaction to the employer, and they will tell you, don’t bring anybody onto the cement crew who speaks English because the second generation will not work like the people from Oaxaca. This is the standard – and so then we just renew the cycle and traffic in human capital.
So employers who hire illegals are not interested in bringing new Americans here and melding them into our larger cultural mosaic of peoples from all over the world (as many on the Left say), but are more interested in trafficking in human beings in what has become a modern version of the slave trade.
How are we treating American citizens of Mexican heritage who are here legally and who have done everything right according to the law? In Dr. Hanson's example, pretty crappy:
And this whole illegal universe ripples in very strange places. For example, when I'm teaching a class in the humanities, a student will come to me, often Mexican, of Mexican heritage, who’s a citizen, or a person from any heritage, from Nevada, Arizona, and say, why do I have to pay $5,000 for tuition when somebody who’s here illegally from California pays two thousand? And I usually use the standard argument, well, perhaps their parents – well, no, no, he’s only been here five years, or he doesn’t pay California State income tax. And often they’ll say, well, should I go down to Mexico and come in illegally and then perhaps I’ll get a discount?
And Californians, says Hanson, have come to depend on the new slavery to maintain their wealthy way of life.
In between it’s the California suburban average citizen who likes the idea of cheap food, going to a restaurant pretty cheap, and has developed the lifestyle of the 19th century aristocrat in some ways. Whoever thought that a Californian who was middle class, perhaps with a combined income of $100,000, could have somebody from Mexico here illegally to cut his lawn, clean his home, watch his children? And then at the same time that’s happening, he’s upset that if he goes and he looks at certain statistics of poverty, incarceration, education, that some of these groups who come from Mexico are represented in proportions that are higher than their representation in the population. So there’s all of this strange political mix, and the result in California, which we’re always a therapeutic society, is simply not to talk about it.
We have it pretty good here in Tennessee. We have a low cost of living, pay no income tax, and in East Tennessee many-if not the majority of us, are landowners. With the thousands upon thousands of people who are now pouring into our towns and hamlets from south of the Border each year and who are performing backbreaking labor at a menial wage, are we endanger of becoming dependent on a "new slave traffic," just as Hanson says has happened in California?
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
My Part to Stop the Invasion
It has been almost a year since I started trying to fight the invasion of illegals into this community, and overall into this country. No one event sparked my interest in this issue, except that I'm an American Citizen, and my safety in this country is threatened by people who come to this country unbeknownest to the Government, and live here without any fear of being arrested. For almost a year, I have written, called, emailed, faxed, and basically done everything I can think of to be "the change" in the world that I wanted to see. I had become a one person resource of action in the movement against illegal invasion.
As I have researched this issue, I have found that most people agree with me. They want enforcement of current immigration policies, they want to see the borders secured, they want to see the Federal Government stop permitting people to come into this country without documentation; however, they don't want to be labeled a racist, an isolationist, or a nihilist. What they don't understand is that this issue has absolutely nothing to do with race. It has to do with preserving the United States of America.
What if our Founding Fathers had been fearful of name calling? They were labled radicals, rebels, merely adolescents "pitching a fit". If they had fallen victim to the political strategy of the opposition, we would not be worrying about this issue right now. We would not be concerned with the preservation of the USA, it would be non-existent.
What if our Founding Fathers had been fearful of name calling? They were labled radicals, rebels, merely adolescents "pitching a fit". If they had fallen victim to the political strategy of the opposition, we would not be worrying about this issue right now. We would not be concerned with the preservation of the USA, it would be non-existent.
It takes one person to bring about change. That person is the spark that ignites a movement. I have been fortunate in meeting the members of T-FIRE. I am now a part of a group of determined and dedicated people that believe that our Government needs to be called to task for letting we Citizens down on this issue. I hope that those of you who read this blog, and visit our site, find the spark within you to become apart of this movement. We look forward to your support and your participation.
Christa
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Cost of Citizenship
Some open-borders advocates have suggested that current fees associated with becoming a U.S. citizen are exorbitant and place too high a burden on applicants. However, when compared to typical daily expenses incurred by Americans, it becomes clear that the price of U.S. citizenship is quite low.
To file Declaration of Intent to apply for U.S. Citizenship
$235
Request hearing on decision on naturalization application
$605
Naturalization (to become a U.S. citizen) through service in the U.S. armed forces
No fee
Naturalization for all others, including filing and biotmetric fees
$675
Preserve residence for naturalization purposes
$305
Replace Naturalization/Citizenship Certificate
$380
Recognition of U.S. citizenship for biological child
$460
Recognition of U.S. citizenship for adopted child
$420
SOURCE: USCIS Fee Schedule; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services* Effective July 30, 2007
In contrast, what does it cost the average American household to live?
Typical Annual Expense Items
2004*
Number of households (in thousands)
116,282
Income before taxes
$54,453
Averages:
Age of referrence person
48.5
Average annual expenditures
$43,395
FOOD
$5,781
Food at home
$3,347
- Cereals and bakery products
$461
- Meats, poultry, fish and eggs
$880
- Dairy products
$371
- Fruits and vegetables
$561
- Other food at home
$1,075
Food away from home
$2,434
Alcoholic beverages
$459
HOUSING
$13,918
- Shelter
$7,998
- Utilities, fuels, and public services
$2,927
- Household operations
$753
- Housekeeping supplies
$594
- Household furnishings and equipment
$1,646
Apparel and services
$1,816
TRANSPORTATION
$7,801
- Vehicle purchases (net outlay)
$3,397
- Gasoline and motor oil
$1,598
- Other vehicle expenses
$2,365
- Public transportation
$441
Healthcare
$2,574
Entertainment
$2,218
Personal care products and services
$581
Reading
$130
Education
$905
Tobacco products and smoking supplies
$288
Miscellaneous
$690
Cash contributions
$1,408
PERSONAL INSURANCE AND PENSIONS
$4,823
- Life and other personal insurance
$390
- Pensions and Social Security
$4,433
*SOURCE: Consumer Expenditures in 2004; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2006
To file Declaration of Intent to apply for U.S. Citizenship
$235
Request hearing on decision on naturalization application
$605
Naturalization (to become a U.S. citizen) through service in the U.S. armed forces
No fee
Naturalization for all others, including filing and biotmetric fees
$675
Preserve residence for naturalization purposes
$305
Replace Naturalization/Citizenship Certificate
$380
Recognition of U.S. citizenship for biological child
$460
Recognition of U.S. citizenship for adopted child
$420
SOURCE: USCIS Fee Schedule; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services* Effective July 30, 2007
In contrast, what does it cost the average American household to live?
Typical Annual Expense Items
2004*
Number of households (in thousands)
116,282
Income before taxes
$54,453
Averages:
Age of referrence person
48.5
Average annual expenditures
$43,395
FOOD
$5,781
Food at home
$3,347
- Cereals and bakery products
$461
- Meats, poultry, fish and eggs
$880
- Dairy products
$371
- Fruits and vegetables
$561
- Other food at home
$1,075
Food away from home
$2,434
Alcoholic beverages
$459
HOUSING
$13,918
- Shelter
$7,998
- Utilities, fuels, and public services
$2,927
- Household operations
$753
- Housekeeping supplies
$594
- Household furnishings and equipment
$1,646
Apparel and services
$1,816
TRANSPORTATION
$7,801
- Vehicle purchases (net outlay)
$3,397
- Gasoline and motor oil
$1,598
- Other vehicle expenses
$2,365
- Public transportation
$441
Healthcare
$2,574
Entertainment
$2,218
Personal care products and services
$581
Reading
$130
Education
$905
Tobacco products and smoking supplies
$288
Miscellaneous
$690
Cash contributions
$1,408
PERSONAL INSURANCE AND PENSIONS
$4,823
- Life and other personal insurance
$390
- Pensions and Social Security
$4,433
*SOURCE: Consumer Expenditures in 2004; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2006
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