Do we really want Mexifornia?

I'm pretty sure this will offend somebody, and I'm happy about that. After all, enraging somebody at least forces them to think about their assumptions, and that's almost always a good thing.

Most articles these days on immigration, specifically on illegal immigration, can be placed solidly into one camp or another. Either they are insane Dobbs-style paranoid rants about how the Mexicans want to uproot our culture and take all of our good jobs, or they are equally insane rants about how we are all scum for not wanting to be more like Mexico, a country that they conveniently forget is destitute and corrupt.

As with most things the truth lies between the two extremes. Mexican immigrants certainly don't want to eliminate American culture, and the reason they are leaving Mexico for America is because Mexico mostly sucks and America is mostly a nice place to live. For the first time ever I have found and read an eloquent, logical article about the Immigration Situation. It is entitled "Do we want Mexifornia?" and it is by Victor Davis Hanson. He does not rave about the dangers of immigration or bash our culture. Instead, he makes an interesting point: immigration itself isn't a bad thing, and our culture itself isn't a bad thing. But the issue arises with the way in which we utterly fail to assimilate the new arrivals to our nation. Here are a couple of excerpts, emphasis mine:

Our schools, through multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and a therapeutic curriculum, often promote the very tribalism, statism, and group rather than individual interests that our new immigrants are fleeing from. If taken to heart, such ideas lead our new arrivals to abject failure in California. Moreover, if we were to entertain attitudes toward women that exist in Mexico, emulate its approach to religious diversity, copy the Mexican constitution, court system, schools, universities, tax code, bureaucracy, energy industry, or power grid, then millions of Mexicans quite simply would stay put where they are. Indeed, even the most pro-Mexico Mexican native in America never chooses to forgo the Western emergency room for the herbalist and exorcist in times of acute sickness or gunshot trauma. He does not complain that the American middle class is too large, the water too clean, the gasoline not adulterated, the food too abundant and noninfectious. Nor does he lament the absence of uniformed machine-gun-carrying soldiers on his block. Illegal aliens clamor for reduced tuition for their offspring at supposedly biased UC campuses, not native fellowships for them to enroll in Mexican universities. I often suggest to teachers who tell aliens that our culture is racist, exploitative, and sexist that they should live in Mexico themselves to fathom why millions are dying to obtain what they so casually dismiss.

....

Some sociologists and journalists assure us that retaining this cultural umbilical cord is not injurious. Instead, we are creating a unique regional culture that is neither Mexican nor American, but an amorphous, fluid society that is the dividend on our multicultural investment. This Calexico or Mexifornia will not be a bad thing at all but something, if not advantageous, at least inevitable. So we allow illegal aliens to obtain California driver’s licenses—the foundation of all other means of legal identification—and to pay reduced in-state tuition at the University of California, thereby providing several thousand dollars in discounts not available to American citizens from out of state. Whether you break the law to reach California or immigrate legally, it makes little difference in how you drive, send your kids to college, or draw on the public services of the state.

These pundits hope privately, of course—though they do not say so publicly—that this new regional civilization will resemble San Diego more than Tijuana. And in truth, no immigrant, despite his grandiose boasts, wants to return to Mexico or anything like it, to be a Mexican in Mexico rather than in California.

It's a fascinating article and I suggest that you all go ahead and give it a read. It certainly gave me pause and made me think, and whether or not you agree with what this guy says being made to question your own assumptions and beliefs is rarely a bad thing.

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