Let’s not automatically assume that Hispanics who are already here are happy about the new flood of illegals
I’ve been wondering why everyone seems to assume that all the Hispanics who are already here—legally or illegally—would be jumping with joy at the current flood of illegal arrivals.
It seems to me that maybe, just maybe, some not utterly insignificant number of them might relish neither the competition for jobs and/or welfare, nor the bad optics the unprecedented flood of the newly-arrived present—a prospect that could rile people up against Hispanic immigrants in general. There weren’t many things that could have turned even a small number of Hispanics away from support of Obama and Democrats (and perhaps even towards a Republican or two?). But Obama’s behavior so far during this crisis just might be able to accomplish that almost-impossible feat.
You think I’m crazy for saying it or even thinking it? Well, get a load of this from Michael Barone:
A Washington Post new [sic] story quotes Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke as favoring “greater emphasis on the interests of these children who are refugees from extreme violence” instead of “an acceleration of the deportation process at the expense of these children.” But the Post reporters note that “O’Rourke added that he has been surprised by the anger he has heard toward the immigrants of many of his El Paso constituents, who ‘feel like we can’t take care of everyone, and these children and their families are gaming the system.’ ” O’Rourke’s district, which includes most of El Paso County, is 79 percent Hispanic.
I don’t know much about intra-Hispanic rivalries, but could there perhaps also be no love lost between the older arrivals from Mexico and the newer ones from Central American countries?
A contractor friend once hired an ex-con from Puerto Rico. As my friend, who was Irish, was getting to know this guy he asked if he knew his cousin, a Dominican brother who ministered on Ricker’s Island, NYC’s prison. “No,” said the con, “I don’t like Dominicans, and I don’t like Cubans either.” And it goes deeper than that.
The Mexicans and other migrant workers in the US are being treated like slave cattle. WHen blacks think good of Republicans, that black is savaged and hung as an Uncle Tom. Thus the Mexicans think good things of this, because that’s what the Left tells them to think, or else.
Has anyone mentioned in the MSM that the “extreme violence” South of the Border was caused by no other than Holder’s Fast and Furious gun running?
We tend to lump all Spanish speaking people together as if they are all from the same place. There are many different cultures south of the border and their language is the only similarity. Sometimes not even that. Mexican Spanish is quite different from Colombian Spanish, for example. As for my Colombian wife, she’s pretty p***ed off about what’s happening down in Texas.
If what my mother has often told me about the young man from Guatemala who does (and has done) the heavy yard work at hers and my father’s house for the last decade is true — there is considerable animosity between the Guatemalans and the Mexicans. A lot of it has to do, apparently, with the absolutely brutal way that the Mexicans enforce the security of their own southern border. I suspect that there is very little solidarity among Hispanics in this respect. I also suspect that the existing Mexican-American community, who have been here a long time (as in generations even before the US acquired the Southwest) will not be happy about all this. It will be their jobs that the new illegals will be competing for. It will be their neighborhoods, schools and churches who will bear the brunt of things like epidemics of TB, scabies, when children without vaccinations for anything at all are imported in the numbers that are reported.
in order to equalize spanish immigration with the immigration limits from other countries, a 20 year moritorium on letting any through would perhaps not be enough…
First off, I denounce myself.
Secondly, I’ve heard that there’s no love lost between different Central American countries, or their citizens.
Thirdly, the self-interest argument goes all the way back to Caesar Chavez (as has been mentioned before). Perhaps he was using that argument because it resonated with the Hispanics already here? In which case, maybe we could learn something and adopt his arguments.
The next election will tell.
I find it disheartening that advocates, activists, and illegal aliens demonstrate little concern for the displacement and disruption caused in local communities, and little interest to expose the causes for mass emigration (i.e. exodus) from their homelands.
Someone is lying. Someone, domestic and foreign, is benefiting from protecting the lie. At the expense of American and foreign populations.
Given the support for Obama and the democrats among Americans of Hispanic ethnicity, I’m not holding my breath that they will be that unhappy about the new flood of illegals. They couldn’t support the democrats to the extent they do, if they truly understood and embraced conservative principles. The cultural ideal of standing upon one’s own two feet and personal responsibility for your life is not a characteristic of Hispanic cultures. I suspect that is why so few embrace conservatism. It’s literally an ‘alien’ concept.
As for animosity between Mexicans and central Americans, I think it likely. Many years ago I knew a young lady from Columbia, she would get furious when people made the mistake of thinking her Mexican. She took it as an insult to her ‘status’.
I dated a guy who’s father lived in Mexico part of the year. His mother was up here. His whole family was legal/citizens (he was an attn) and they all hated that people were coming in illegally. Many were mil vets and some were professionals. Not sure how many voted R but this might make the D’s sit home in anger.
Neo… you hit the bullseye at the end.
Fractious gang wars are only one generation away.
Mexicans HATE ‘southerners’ — as in fellow Latinos from points even further south.
You even have a split between Mexicans from northern Baja and southern Baja. This is usually expressed as vandalism and street violence/ strong arm work.
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Immigration was largely shut down by WWI.
The result was that American wages took off.
Employers lost their off-the-boat negotiating leverage.
Thus WWI triggered the American middle class — in a round about way.
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The same negotiating dynamic has been frustrating Chinese employees. ‘Fresh ones’ off the farm have been under cutting the negotiating power of urban workers.
The CCP has used this situation to vector wealth to itself and cronies. The CCP has not permitted a general rise in the wage rates within that society. Far from it.
That’s why today’s Red China looks and feels like Robber Barron America — circa 1908.
… To include its pollution.
Red Chinese soot is changing global weather patterns on an epic scale.
This reality has entirely escaped the keen of al-Gore and the Greens.
It’s why the Arctic ice cap keeps melting every Summer… and why the Arctic ice cap regrows something fantastic every Winter.
It’s also why California is now years into an epic drought… indeed the drought covers most of the Western USA.
(c.f. Lake Mead)
Some of those who followed the rules and paid the fees to become an American citizen are angry at the line-jumpers (this includes my SIL who came here legally from India).
I’d also imagine this will have the same effect as affirmative action (i.e. you don’t know whether the spot was earned or given to fulfill a quota) in that people will automatically suspect all Spanish-speaking immigrants they meet probably came here illegally. Especially galling if you’ve followed the rules and emigrated legally.
It’s like Democrats are a fifth column in the US, opening the gates to the barbarians. The Fall of Rome. The fall of America, sounds familiar more and more.
“Fifth Column”:
A clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal. The term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936—39). As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his “fifth column,” intent on undermining the loyalist government from within.
A cardinal technique of the fifth column is the infiltration of sympathizers into the entire fabric of the nation under attack and, particularly, into positions of policy decision and national defense. From such key posts, fifth-column activists exploit the fears of a people by spreading rumours and misinformation, as well as by employing the more standard techniques of espionage and sabotage.
–Encyclopaedia Britannica
Look at it this way:
You spend 10 years & thousands of dollars to come to the U.S. LEGALLY from, say, Colombia. You live in NJ, pay taxes for decades. You earn a good salary because of your diligent hard work, not because you inherited a cent from anyone.
Your child, also a naturalized citizen, applies to Rutgers upon graduating with honors from high school (a private school, so you had the double whammy of tuition & school taxes), & is admitted. Due to a career change, in the freshman year you most move to another state.
While the illegal aliens get in-state tuition rates, your kid now has to pay out-of-state.
How would you feel?
Also, Mexicans (i.e. from Mexico, not simply Americans of Mexican descent) do not like Chicanos. (A slang term for Americans of Mexican descent.) When my patients’ families need to deal with some company on the ‘phone, they press one for English and hand the ‘phone to me, because the Spanish speaking reps are rude, on the best of days. Also, there is a kind of pyramid of snobbery, with Argentina at the apex, and Mexico at the bottom, and nobody seems to have received the memo that expressions of ethnic disdain are declasse. It rather shocks me that everyone does not know this, but, then again, I work ‘in Mexico’ for over forty hours a week, in the homes of immigrants with chronically ill or disabled, American-born children. Naturally, in Texas, I have numerous Mexican-American colleagues, neighbors, etc, so the animosity is something I can only observe from outside, but I know it’s there because I see it. When a new Hispana nurse is assigned to a case I am working, if I were not such a Baptist, I’d be starting a pool about how long she’ll last. BTW, one of the places Hispanics of all documentary status are on level ground is in Baptist and Pentecostal churches. (Probably Catholic, too, but I just don’t have so much first-hand knowledge.) As I continue in recovery, (from being a Dimocrat) at eighteen years in, I still find corners and cupboards in my mind, where lurk some bits of Marxist crap, like the idea that any group of people thinks like a “Class”, as, according to the theory, they ought to do.
Adams, the rest of the world knows an age old truth. Equality is not only a myth, but it is useless and corrosive on society. People want to be in a hierarchy, a totem pole, where there are people on the top that they can get to. Which also means somebody must be lower and inferior to them, to make that work.
In America, this social status doesn’t take the form of manners or class, but of wealth, popularity, and political power. In fact, it may be one of the reasons why the evil and corrupt gravitate towards Hollywood and DC, the two Axis and Poles of evil in the US.
If the gang wars increase, at least people with H2H experience will have a greater demand for teaching and various other jobs. Often times, physical violence, other than the monopoly of the state, is considered useless in the modern Western civilization.
In point of fact, violence has never been useless or outdated. Weaklings in civilizations just like to think that, to avoid thinking about using violence or having violence used on them.