Posted on 04/17/2007 3:41:01 AM PDT by T.L.Sink
12 to 20 million illegal aliens constitute an invasion. It is far bigger than the German Army and it has been here longer than the Germans were in Poland. At least the Poles fought back. Today, we still have 500,000 to 1 million illegal aliens entering our country annually.
(1) Most Americans saw the Catholic Irish not as sharers of a common European culture, but as alien slaves of Popish superstition.
(2) Mexico, like America, is a European colony. Mexico, like America, is a Christian culture.
(3) Mexicans do see America as a land of opportunity.
They wanted to become assimilated and work hard to be productive and successful.
The Irish mainly wanted to eat. They never put out assimilation as an overarching goal: they built their own churches, their own schools, their own fraternal organizations, put together Fenian societies in the hope that prosperous American Irish would one day be able to launch an invasion of Ireland in order to break British rule, etc. "Assimilation" was not a articulatable goal for the Irish wave of immigrants. Eating regularly was.
It may have been language or various other cultural things. But they all wanted to adapt to American ways.
Incorrect. many had no desire to "adapt" to American ways, and refused to. To this day, Irish people in the US are obsessed with their Irishness to a bizarre degree. My mother's parents emigrated from the west of Ireland. I have cousins who support the IRA (even after 9/11!), who hate the English, who will only describe themselves as "Irish-Americans", not Americans, etc. St. Patrick's Day parades for them are tribal gatherings where they get drunk and extremely angry about perceived injustices to the Irish - even though they are all the sons and daughters of successful financial and legal professionals. When I tell them I'm not Irish, I'm an American, they get very upset.
They didn’t form a cultural underclass and expect our society to change for them.
They certainly formed an underclass and society did change for them - in good ways and in bad. The machine politics that cripple so many of our cities are in large part a legacy of the effect irish immigrants had on American culture and society.
Chinese and other Asians are good examples. Few immigrants faced greater difficulties than they. But they succeeded extremely well in becoming an asset to our nation.
And Mexicans will prove to be an incalculable shot in the arm as well.
Again you compare an actual military invasion with immigration.
You simply emphasize how unclear you are on the concept.”
You are a laugh. That is a distinction without a difference. Ask an Indian if thinks thats an important point.
I'm still waiting for a response from you. If you're going to make a statement such as the one above, you should at least be willing to defend it.
Numbers do not define invasions.
An invasion is a coordinated military action undertaken for the purpose of seizing and holding territory for a foreign power.
Describing the mass immigration of Mexicans into the US as an "invasion" is pure sensationalism that is meant to inflame passions, and not very nice ones at that.
The fact is that our immigration laws are broken and our border enforcement is broken.
Our immigration laws are predicated on stupid concepts like "family reunification" - not rationality.
The most rational thing for the US to do is to police its border effectively while welcoming millions of valuable Mexican immigrants.
The current "system" (for lack of a better word) is useless, and almost every propsed solution - from blanket amnesty to mass deportation - is emotionally-based futility.
If you do not realize that there is a difference between (1) a Mexican immigrant renting a room in a basement on your block and hanging out on your streetcorner looking for subcontracting work on the one hand, and (2) a Mexican soldier smashing down every door on your block, publicly executing some of your neighbors in front of your house and marching you and your neighbors off to labor camps on the other hand - then you lack the ability to draw any meaningful distinctions whatsoever.
As an aside, if you are so upset about the oh-so-horrible fate of "Native Americans", why don't you (1) Move back to your ancestors' native land if you are not a "Native American" or (2) Reconquer your land from the evil white man if you are?
I’m willing to argue that Irish immigration has not necessarily been an overall positive for the US. To this day, some Irish have a simmering resentment of Protestant Anglo-Saxons, the founding population of America. New York City was a self-governing and prospering city populated mostly by New England Yankees before the Irish landed in the 1840s and turned the city into a tribal fiefdom.
An American is, by definition, an optimist who is full of hope and a can-do attitude - not someone who writes off their own country as "probably already lost."
Defeatism is simply not part of an American's spiritual makeup.
All waves of immigration change the country in various ways. The net effect is always positive, but there are always negative externalities as well.
To this day, some Irish have a simmering resentment of Protestant Anglo-Saxons, the founding population of America.
Correct, and it is a very annoying trait possessed by far too many Americans of Irish descent.
New York City was a self-governing and prospering city populated mostly by New England Yankees before the Irish landed in the 1840s and turned the city into a tribal fiefdom.
Your statement implies that NYC ceased being prosperous in the wake of the Irish immigration, when it really it became even more wildly prosperous than it had ever been. And NYC was a very rough-and-tumble town before the Irish arrived as well - it wasn't all English and it had precious few "New England Yankees."
Sour, dour New Englanders were a stock figure of fun for boisterous New Yorkers before the Irish arrived. There were Dutch and Germans and Scots and Jews and plenty of warring political factions in the city.
The sheer numbers of the Irish created an unstoppable machine that rolled over all the smaller machines that existed before - and the new machine was cemented into place with police forces that were mostly Irish.
Defeatism is simply not part of an American's spiritual makeup.
Nice of you to label my opinion as "defeatism". So, my not-so-rosy opinion makes me somehow less American than an illegal alien?
I'll remember that on my next sortie over Iraq.
If the decline and fall of America (along with the rest of The West) continues at [what seems to be] its ever-accelerating rate, America may not even survive to exist as a unified nation by 2050.
Read "Civil War II" by T. Chittum.
What does the "browning out" of America - particularly southwest America - portend, insofar as a de facto cultural "re-unification" with Mexico? "Atzlan" is coming to be, by demographical default.
As the nation browns out, where will the ethnic Euro-Americans go, to survive as a unified cultural group?
Thankfully, I won't be here to see it.
- John
Like most analogies, they break down. We are witnessing a slow motion "invasion" of our soil. Call it an illegal "migration" if it makes you feel better. It doesn't change the numbers.
Describing the mass immigration of Mexicans into the US as an "invasion" is pure sensationalism that is meant to inflame passions, and not very nice ones at that.
I find the numbers 12 to 20 million illegal aliens as far more sensationalistic than the word invasion. They are not guests nor are they coming here legally. They are entering our space or home. On definition of invasion is "An intrusion or encroachment." We should be upset.n Our borders are not secure. It is not only Mexicans that are entering illegally.
The fact is that our immigration laws are broken and our border enforcement is broken.
Many of our immigration laws are "broken" because they have not been enforced. The 2006 Senate Comprehensive Immigration reform bill contained much of the same language as Simpson-Mazolli. The border remains unsecure, almost 6 years after 9/11. Where does the buck stop? Who is responsible? Are we a nation of laws or not? Whom do we hold accountable?
Our immigration laws are predicated on stupid concepts like "family reunification" - not rationality.
Agreed, but who is advocating changing them except for Tancredo? Chain migration has increased the number of legal immigrants and reduced diversity. Today, 43% of legal immigrants come from Mexico. We can't continue to take in the poor and undeducated of Latin America. We need people who are going to help us be competitive in the global ecnomomy.
The most rational thing for the US to do is to police its border effectively while welcoming millions of valuable Mexican immigrants.
No, we need to review our entire immigration policies including such things as anchor babies and chain migration. According to the 2000 Census there were about 9.2 million Mexican-born residents of the US compared to 4.2 million in 1990, i.e., we have added at least 5 million Mexican-born residents in the 1990s. They are part of the 7 million increase in numbers of new residents from Latin American during that period.
From a public policy standpoint, the question is what is the optimum number of immigrants we can take in each year and assimilate them. Since 2000, we have increased our population by 20 million or the equivalent of our seven largest cities. We have added 100 million people since 1970, with 3/4 of the increase attribvuted to immigration, legal and illegal. Do we want to be a nation of 364 million by 2030 [just 23 years from now] and over 400 million by 2050? How does this impact on our infrastructure, schools, social welfare systems, hospitals, prison system, energy consumption, etc.?
The current "system" (for lack of a better word) is useless, and almost every propsed solution - from blanket amnesty to mass deportation - is emotionally-based futility.
False choices/strawmen. If you have a water pipe break in the basement, the first thing you do is shut off the water. Until we can shut off the supply of 500,000 to 1 million people entering our country every year, we will never solve the problem. The current system doesn't work because we are not enforcing the laws on the books. We need to approach the problem logically. The Dems and the comprehensive immigration reform types are the ones demagoging the issue and using emotion. They have changed the lexicon. Illegal aliens are "undocumented workers." Amnesty is "getting to the back of the line in a path to citizenhship." Anyone who speaks out about the need to curb illegal immigration is called a "nativist" or a "racist."
In the end, it really doesn't matter what people say. The reality on the ground will be obvious to everyone. The illegal alien problem is metastasizing around the country. In 1990, 18 states had Mexican-born residents as its largest foreign born resident population. In 2000, that number increased to 30 states. Like the proverbial frog slowly being boiled alive, we may find out how pervasive and widespread the problem is too late to really do anything about it. The world's lifeboat [the US] will be swamped making Man's future on this planet a little bleaker and with less hope. We will fade beneath the waves like so many great civilizations before us.
You wrote off your own country as a lost cause, a land "probably" past "the point of no return."
What else can you call such a view, other than defeatism?
So, my not-so-rosy opinion makes me somehow less American than an illegal alien? I'll remember that on my next sortie over Iraq.
There are illegal immigrants from Mexico to the US who have their boots on the ground in Iraq, fighting and dying alongside born Americans. And they view their adopted land with hope, not pessimism.
How many? I serioiusly doubt that they are illegal. They would have a hard time getting a security clearance. They must also supply a SS number. So who is the one introducing emotionalism into this? How many "illegal immigrants from Mexico" are in our prisons?
I have to ask. Are you the official spokesperson for illegal aliens?
Francisco Martinez Flores, a Mexican citizen who entered the US illegally at the age of 3, was a Marine with the 1st Tank Battalion who died in Iraq.
He had applied for and received a green card before he was allowed to sign up for the US military - the US military ensures that all foreign citizens that apply for admission to the armed forces first get all their paperwork completed for a residency application before they are inducted.
So who is the one introducing emotionalism into this?
My point was to defuse emotionalism: to point out there are people who come here illegally who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for this country. They are not all drug dealers, or violent felons, or revanchist ideologues.
How many "illegal immigrants from Mexico" are in our prisons?
Quite a few. Yet proportionally a far smaller number than native-born African-Americans.
Not all negative cultural dynamics emanate from without our borders.
Is this intended to diminish my service as a military aviator?
Hardly. You're risking your life as sure as any "grunt" is.
My post was not intended as a shot at anyone in the armored cavalry either.
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