3 Part Study on Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration, Liberal Elites, and Obama

By David Paulin - Part III of III

Ah yes, "breaking up families:" It's a familiar complaint among open-borders liberals. Yet oddly, they never seem to decry anti-family polices in places like Castro's Cuba. It's a regime that's broken up countless families -- either by tossing family members in jail for political reasons, or by even killing them on occasion.

The Times belittles Irving's lower crime statistics, suggesting immigration checks and deportations are mostly rounding up illegals guilty of minor offenses such as identify theft. A closer look at those statistics reveals much about the Times biases and values. As the Times itself notes:

As of early March, of the 4,074 people whose arrest led to their being handed over to immigration officials, 129 had been charged with violent crimes or illegal possession of weapons, and 714 with other types of serious felonies. In addition, 579 had been charged with driving while intoxicated. The other 2,625 had been arrested for lesser offenses; the largest categories were public intoxication and not having a driver's license or insurance.

All in all, the immigration checks are producing some terrific results. Yet the Times portrays Mayor Gears as being a conflicted man for having imposed such a morally problematic policy as immigration checks. "I'm the hero of every redneck in America," the Times quotes him as saying, while noting he speaks only "scant Spanish." It's interesting that the Times used that "redneck" quote in what must have been a lengthy and wide-ranging interview, one filled with lots of good quotes.

You have to wonder how liberal elites at the Times would feel if such problems suddenly visited their neighborhoods -- drunken illegal aliens stumbling about in the street. Driving without a license and insurance. Or contemplating their next violent crime?

Interestingly, the Times notes that many of Irving's "Hispanics" don't vote. Well, so much for their civic engagement values, a hallmark of Americans whose self-reliant European ancestors immigrated to America, learned English and reinvented themselves as Americans. Today, these folks are not hyphenated Americans, as are the Hispanic-Americans to which the Times refers; they're just Americans.

Along similar lines, it's interesting that the Times does not interview one group of Texans in Irving -- Americans of Mexican ancestry whose roots go back for generations in Texas; people who are members of the solid middle-class and who do not reflexively think of themselves as hyphenated Americans. There are plenty of people like that in Texas.

Social Class -- not race

Why do liberal elites at the New York Times find it so much easier to identify with illegal immigrants than with middle-class Americans? Two things obsess them: race and ethnicity; so that's how they define the immigration debate. Accordingly, ordinary Americans upset over illegal Hispanic immigrants must be "racist" and "xenophobic." Indeed, that's how former Mexico president Vincente Fox, during a visit to this country, described Americans opposing illegal immigration from Mexico. Fox got away with that remark until he went head-to-head with Fox's Bill O'Reilly on the national airwaves.

What in fact upsets residents in Irving and other communities are issues revolving around social class, bad behavior, and quality-of-life considerations. Like most Americans, they expect the law to be obeyed. Illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America would be a non-issue if it consisted of an orderly flow of immigrants with middle-class backgrounds; people settling in the country legally and learning to speak English. Asian immigrants have this sort of background, and there is no backlash against them -- and no wonder. Their children do well in school. They Anglicize their names and learn English.

President Obama, for his part, seems determined to give 11 million illegal immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated Hispanics, a path to citizenship. No doubt, he believes this will again demonstrate America's "moral authority" to an audience whose opinions matter to him: anti-Americans elites in Mexico, Europe, and the Third World. And no matter if his immigration plan changes the nation's culture for the worse for ordinary Americans; or at least for ordinary Americans who don't holler and applaud at Sunday church services when their minister yells, "God damn America!"

On his recent visit to Mexico, President Obama spent much time hobnobbing with that country's elites. He also should talk with ordinary middle-class people in Latin America, outside of Mexico, to get their opinion on illegal immigration. Most have no sympathy for gate-crashing Mexicans and other illegal Hispanic immigrants.

The President will have no trouble finding these folks who are solidly middle-class. They form long lines starting early in the morning outside the gates of U.S. Embassies across Latin America. They're eyes are pensive as they clutch carefully prepared applications for visas and work permits. They wait patently in the hot sun. Most will be disappointed by the decision of the Embassy official behind the glass window. But those whom I've met vow to try their luck again some other day.

To them, America is about more than economic opportunities and social programs. They admire America's culture: believe it's a place with a rule of law that applies to everybody, whether you're Kenneth Lay or Martha Stewart. And they believe it's a place in which ordinary people obey little social courtesies, like going to the back of a line at a bank, rather than bribing a security guard to let them go to the front; that's how it's done in parts of Latin America I've visited.

In America, you stop your car at a red light, even when no cops are around; that's the sort of civic culture that foreigners admire who are from dysfunctional countries without a civic culture. Accordingly, gate-crashing Mexicans who are deported get little sympathy from them.

The impact of uncontrolled immigration, especially from Mexico, promoted the late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to pose a troubling question:

"Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish)."