Posted on 09/05/2003 4:10:14 PM PDT by TheMole
Federico de Jesus owes Victor David Hanson an apology. De Jesus, a staffer for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, falsely accused Hanson, the distinguished author of the just-published book "Mexifornia," of racism and xenophobia at a recent Capitol Hill briefing.
During his introduction, Hanson, a scholar of ancient Rome and Greece, was aptly described as "a classicist." De Jesus somehow interpreted that to mean that the author had a white "classist" bias against immigrants.
Pelosi's aide, who somehow earned a diploma without being able to make a distinction between a classicist and a classist, got ugly with Hanson and stormed out of the briefing in protest.
His hysterics reveal what kind of not-so-beautiful minds the House's top Democrat has shaping her views on issues.
That troubles because there hardly is a more urgent issue facing America than immigration, particularly illegal immigration from Mexico. And Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat, ought to know that better than most of her colleagues on the Hill. That's because California is the state of choice for an estimated 40 percent of the nation's legal and illegal immigrants, a disproportionate number of whom hail from south of the border.
The nation's most populous state has reached the tipping point with Mexican immigration. Every year, it adds not only 100,000 legal Mexican immigrants to its population, but also, it is estimated, just as many illegal Mexican immigrants.
Meanwhile, the quality of life further diminishes for the once-Golden State's native-born population.
"Massive illegal immigration from Mexico to California, coupled with a loss of confidence in the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans, is changing the very nature of the state," Hanson writes, in "Mexifornia."
Indeed, while Mexican immigrants come to America no more or less poor, no more or less uneducated than previous waves of immigrants, they are far more resistant to assimilating American culture.
Hanson notes that, of the millions of Mexican immigrants legally admitted to this country since 1982, only 20 percent had bothered to become citizens by 1997.
That resistance to fully assimilating into American society, the de-emphasis of "American" in Mexican-American, has impeded the Mexican immigrant population's upward mobility in California.
And that is borne out by data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies, the Washington-based public policy group headed by immigration expert Mark Krikorian.
Some 65 percent of Mexican immigrants in California are high school dropouts, according to the center, compared to only 7 percent of the native-born population. Some 41 percent of Mexican immigrant households are on the public welfare rolls, compared to 14 percent of natives.
And the socio-economic status of Mexican immigrants barely improves over time.
In fact, nearly 55 percent of Mexican immigrants are living in or near poverty after residing here in this country more than 20 years. Some 45 percent are without health care after 20 years and 37 percent are still relying on welfare.
The reality is that second and third generation Mexican-Americans are barely better off than their forebears who immigrated to this country.
So why does America continue to allow the yearly influx of hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants, not just legal, but also illegal? Because there are interests on both the right and left that favor this nation's de facto open borders policy.
Conservative corporations, contractors and agribusiness demand cheap labor from Mexico, according to Hanson, no matter the social consequences. Meanwhile, so-called "progressive" academics, journalists, government bureaucrats and La Raza advocates see illegal immigrants as a vast new political constituency for those peddling the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement.
The American public sees things different from both ideological camps.
Two-thirds believe the United States should set the goal of completely halting illegal immigration, according a Roper-ASW poll this past March. And nearly half say legal immigration levels should be decreased, according to a Gallup poll last month.
It's not that two-thirds of Americans are racists, or that half are xenophobic. It's just that they recognize that this nation, which admits more immigrants each year than any other, can no longer afford to be so overly magnanimous.
Perkins can be reached via e-mail at joseph.perkins@uniontrib.com.
And that's exactly the way the RATs want to keep them - slavery in perpetuity - thus, the irrational resistance to ending bilingual education. The RATs know that this vast welfare pool will vote for them in order to keep the money flowing. The War on Poverty and its spawn, welfare (or free money stolen from those who actually produce), simply breeds more poverty. The RATs know this and want to keep it going forever.
It's not only the RATS. How about the Republicans who are encouraging illegal immigration, including our dear President? They're all to blame, and they don't give a crap what we think, they will follow their open borders agenda even if America's back is broken.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.