"Drop the N-Word Already"
Last Saturday I wrote about former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson charging that those who oppose the immigration bill are "nativists."
This argument has also been repeatedly charged by certain pundits such as Fred Barnes.
Heather MacDonald replies to Gerson's position at National Review Online: "It is not nativism, but facts and principle that lie behind opposition to the Senate’s latest amnesty proposal. Playing the nativist (read: racism) card allows propagandists like Gerson to ignore both."
Her article is timely, given the additional "piling on" today by the President himself, who charged that those who oppose the bill "don't want to do what's right for America." This followed reprehensible rhetoric by DHS head Michael Chertoff, that those who oppose the bill believe in "execution" and "capital punishment" for illegal aliens.
A side note: something that continues to baffle me is if, as Gerson claims, Hispanic illegal aliens are focused on "education and social mobility," and if, as the White House claims, illegal immigrants are "doing the jobs Americans won't do/aren't doing," then who is going to do those jobs once the borders are supposedly closed and Hispanics move up into the middle class?
It seems to me that the current illegal immigrants are either being condemned to serve as a ghettoized permanent "underclass," or we need an endless supply of future illegal aliens if Americans really won't do certain jobs. Which is it?
posted by Laura @ 5:50 PM
7 Comments:
"...Gerson claims, Hispanics are focused on "education and social mobility,"
In light of this, the school district I work in has 36,000 students. Of that, 1/3 are classified as English learners. On Saturday, the district held a full day of workshops, in Spanish, covering everything a parent who is not English speaking and from the Hispanic culture would need to know to manuever through the educational system, and to be able to successfully steer their child. Also, q&a's on just about everything. Also on the district's dime was free transportation to and from the local high school where the symposium was held, and free lunches. Notices were sent home with all English Learners (in Spanish), mass phone mesage notices, newspaper ads, and the district website announced it, also. How many showed up? A grand total of 175 parents...of approximately 12,000 English learners. You do the math.
Just...wow.
Thanks for the fascinating -- and sad -- anecdote.
Laura
Take off the rose-colored glasses, folks. It's not funny anymore. Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich only have it partially correct. George Bush may well be the worst leader of ANY nation in history. Too extreme? Hardly. Never in the rise and fall of nations have we seen a man so thoroughly destructive to his civilization. I can rattle it off--criminal deficit spending, far-flung useless warmongering, dismantling of our manufacturing infrastructure, deliberate incompetence and dissembling at every level of his Administration, open borders in a time of war . . . and this 1,000 page immigration bill as the topper. In the private sector, Bush would be in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit doing a perp walk in front of the cameras as onlookers jeered. In 10 years you'll have 100 million desperate Mexicans amnestied and chain-migrated to the United States at a cost well in excess of the $2 trillion determined by the Heritage Foundation. That's a fifth column army of anti-American Reconquista socialists. That's the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean. That's curtains, folks. The litmus test for every true conservative, patriot and Republican is clear at this point: Bush must be forced from office in a massive 10 million person demonstration to the White House. He must resign immediately, in disgrace. Are you willing to save your country? Do you give a damn?
Dana:
So interesting! Thanks for sharing that. I might have to use this as part of a blog post of my own, if you don't mind.
I get sick and tired of hearing why we should embrace Mexican immigration... They are religious, family-oriented, coming here for a better life and an education. That is not my experience AT ALL, and your anectdote illustrates that. If they were so interested in education, they wouldn't pull their kids out of school a month at a time to visit Mexico. If they were so religious, we wouldn't have the gang problems we do, if they were so family oriented, the parents would show their faces and keep track of what their kids are doing. Sheesh!
I think it's telling that entire school districts here in So. CA, including Santa Ana and Carpinteria, have changed their school calendars in an attempt to accommodate the month a majority of their students spend in Mexico. My SIL is a teacher's aide in Carpinteria, and they now start school in August, rather than September, in order to accommodate three full weeks of vacation in Dec.-Jan. (I'm not sure if Santa Ana is at 3 weeks or up to a full four!) This speaks to both a general lack of interest in education and assimilation in U.S. culture on one side, and the (unappreciated) ways in which some aspects of our society are being changed in order to accommodate the wishes of (probably mostly illegal) immigrants.
I am also a bit jaded in some respects due to my proofreading business -- easily 50% or more of workers' comp deponents are illegal aliens milking the W.C. system -- which drives up the cost of doing business, yet we're told illegal immigrants make everything more affordable? (I couldn't count how many of those W.C. claimants are single mothers of children with multiple fathers, always using aspects of the welfare system such as Medi-Cal.) Most of the trials I read are related in some way to Hispanic gang warfare. Unregistered guns, gang members, and the Mexican mafia come over the border, and no one in our government seems to want to stop it. Consequently, some areas of cities like Long Beach have become very dangerous. Is it "nativist" to be worried by this? I don't think so.
Best wishes, Laura
" yet we're told illegal immigrants make everything more affordable?"
I'm sure I'm not the only one willing to pay more for tomatoes and strawberries.
UNG,
No problem re using it for your blog. As we enroll new students to our school who don't speak English and of course neither do their parents, we make a point to hand them an Adult Ed flyer listing all FREE ESL classes & times, etc., also a flyer for the ESL parents' class held at individual school sites in the evening. Most either get annoyed, don't want it or leave it behind. Once in a while there are those truly anxious to learn the language and to become a pro-active communicative participant in their children's education. Not most, but once in a while.
Laura and Dana:
Wow, more interesting anecdotal evidence on the benefits of unchecked illegal immigration. I am marking this page of comments in my del.icio.us account. Do you guys have one of those? It is an excellent way to keep track of bookmarks. If you spend as much time online as I know you do, you should look into it.
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