Giuliani and the Know Nothings (Immigration Barf Alert!)

The New York Sun ^ | August 17, 2007 | Ryan Sager

[kabar]

People don't want to be labelled racists when they are not! Period!

I agree. And I don't think it is racist to discuss the ethnic compostion of the illegal alien problem. Some people get on their moral high-horse and immediately brand any such discussion as racist. That was my point.

While all sorts of factors may come into a domestic policy on LEGAL immigration, the ILLEGAL immigration problem is about individuals not following the law and our own government failing to enforce those laws. Period. That is all I was trying to say.

Part [a large part] of the ILLEGAL immigration problem has to do with Mexico, its government, and its policies. It also has to do with our porous Southern border. The government of Mexico is promoting illegal immigration to the US. More than $20 billion a year are being sent back to Mexico from workers in the US. The only way we are going to stop illegal immigration is to address the causes and sources. It is more than just a problem with "individuals."

I also don't believe that we must employ the same kind of resources and priorities to protect our Northern border, as politically incorrect as that might sound to some.

I believe that the illegal immigration problem from Mexico presents a different kind of problem than from elsewhere, both in terms of magnitude and substance. Huntington does a good job of laying out the reasons why, including the following:

"“No other immigrant group in U.S. history has asserted or could assert a historical claim to U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americans can and do make that claim. Almost all of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah was part of Mexico until Mexico lost them as a result of the Texan War of Independence in 1835-1836 and the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Mexico is the only country that the United States has invaded, occupied its capital—placing the Marines in the “halls of Montezuma”—and then annexed half its territory. Mexicans do not forget these events. Quite understandably, they feel that they have special rights in these territories. “Unlike other immigrants,” Boston College political scientist Peter Skerry notes, “Mexicans arrive here from a neighboring nation that has suffered military defeat at the hands of the United States; and they settle predominantly in a region that was once part of their homeland…. Mexican Americans enjoy a sense of being on their own turf that is not shared by other immigrants.”