by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia
When Everything Is a Lie
Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible.
Fleeing to an Oppressive Society?
Most of the advocates for open borders agitate from a position of criticism of the U.S. By that I mean we rarely hear La Raza activists explain why they want amnesties for millions of illegal aliens, at least in the sense of why millions have left Mexico to risk their lives to arrive in the U.S.
What is it about America that attracts patriotic Mexican nationals to abandon their own country en masse? That is not a rhetorical question, given much of the immigration debate is couched in critiques of the U.S. The pageantry of an open-borders demonstration is usually a spectacle of Mexican flags. How odd that almost no advocate ever says, “We want amnesty so that our kinsmen have a shot, as we have had a shot, at an independent judiciary, equality under the law, the rule of law, true democracy, free speech, protection of human rights, free-market capitalism, and protection of private property. For all that, millions risk their lives.” But instead there is either nothing, or a continual critique of the U.S. If we were to take a newly arrived illegal alien, and enroll him in a typical Chicano Studies course, he would logically wish to return across the border as soon as possible.
Unemployment Is Too Low?
Do we really need millions of new workers in a supposedly worker-scarce America [1] from Latin America? The unemployment rate in the American Southwest is still high. Floods of illegal immigrants only drive down wages in agriculture, the hospitality industry, construction, landscaping, and social services [2]. The influx enriches employers, dumps the resulting medical, legal, educational, criminal justice, and social costs on the taxpayers, and undermines the viability of U.S. workers, many of them, for example, Mexican-Americans. If one wished to hurt American maids, nannies, gardeners, plum pickers, roofers, cooks, and janitors, one could do no worse than flooding the border with illegal immigrants. Elites benefit from cheaper entry-level wages, and then brand all others as nativists and xenophobes who object to the hypocrisies involved (e.g., so the Menlo Park techie must sigh, “Juanita is the best maid I ever had; but I had to put our Connor and Ashley into prep school because with all these immigrants coming into our area, they watered-down the AP curriculum at the local high school”).
Diversity Bad?
Likewise, racist chauvinists who destroyed immigration law call others racists. But in fact the open-borders movement is race-obsessed to the core. Its message is anti-diversity, and anti-inclusiveness. Latino activists (in the age of the Redskins controversy, how has the racist rubric La Raza continued [3]?) have essentially hijacked U.S. immigration policy and set the following parameters: almost all illegal immigration shall come only across the southern border from Mexico and Latin America. Almost all legal immigration shall be predicated on family ties, which ensures Latinos will be privileged over all other groups, regardless of skill sets or education. If one objects that such a de facto policy is ethnocentric and does not result in ethnic, cultural, or professional diversity, then he is rendered a xenophobe. Racialists through extra-legal means have expropriated federal immigration law. It no longer exists. The losers are the Kenyan dentist, the Filipino nurse, the Estonian doctor, the South Korean architect — any who are not Latino, any who do not break U.S. immigration law, and any who have professional degrees and skill sets to offer America. How is that not biased to ignore all notions of diversity and meritocracy in favor of using only ethnic criteria?
A Health Crisis on the Horizon
Hunger is said to plague recent immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. I am sure that it exists. But right now the U.S. is suffering an epidemic of deadly obesity among its newly arrived and residential Latino population, at rates much higher than the high U.S. obesity level. Mexico suffers from the highest rates of obesity [4] in the world, and the condition only gets worse given the plentitude of cheap and innutritious U.S. fast and processed food, almost all of it subsidized by various state and federal agencies. One of every four state residents admitted to California hospitals for all causes is discovered to suffer from diabetes. Dialysis clinics are now popping up throughout rural California. No one addresses this public health crisis. Instead, we talk more of the starving and the plague of malnutrition because it channels into the open-borders narrative. We dare not suggest California is sitting atop a health tragedy of unprecedented proportions, as an epidemic of obesity among Latino immigrants and their American-born children is leading to early diabetes and with it costly hospitalization and lifelong medical support. I see relatively young people — in their thirties and forties — with near blindness, amputations, and the inability to walk. Go to any lab for a blood test, visit any GP in Central California, enter an emergency room — and the crisis is manifest; read any newspapers, turn on the news, listen to the latest talking head — and it does not exist. The ramifications of this health crisis threaten to dwarf the prior AIDS epidemic as the immigrant population both expands and ages.
Incomprehensive Immigration Reform
Comprehensive immigration reform is a chimaera. It simply does not exist. Talk to any Latino activist in private and ignore what the Democrat and Republican hierarchy profess and the paradox is clear. Secure the border? I know of no supporter of comprehensive immigration reform who, as a requisite for compromise, wants to finish the fence [5], fine employers who hire illegals, and deport those who have broken numerous federal laws. To do so would weaken all the forces that Democrat operatives see breaking their way, that Latino elites see as essential to their own self-appointed perches as group spokesmen for the perennially dispossessed, and that employers see as a way to ensure cheap good labor.
Deportation is now a joke. When the Obama administration bragged of near-record deportations before the 2012 election, we knew it was a lie. And so it was, predicated on redefining “deportation” as temporary turn-back at the border. Otherwise explain to a supporter of CIR that you favor deporting those with criminal records, with no work history, with long residence on public assistance, with only a brief residence in the U.S. — and yet would be willing to grant green cards to those working, paying taxes, not employing false names and fraudulent documents, with long tenure in the U.S., with no record of criminality or public assistance — and outrage still follows! Continue the conversation and you learn that CIR is a synonym for blanket amnesty and its supporters do not wish to deport anyone, to close the border, or fine any employers. Republicans know that as well as Democrats. In my experience, the Tea Party is not very likely to want to deport everyone while the race industry and Chamber of Commerce are very likely to want to deport no one.
1984 Redux
Finally, consider statistics. Try a brief experiment. Google rates of health problems, education, and hunger in terms of illegal immigration (using the appropriate euphemisms), and then all sorts of studies pop up from social scientists and bureaucrats, the themes being that racism has led to inequality and lack of parity. Then look up rates of criminality, incarceration, graduation rates, and public assistance predicated on illegal status, and you will either hit a brick wall, or quickly learn such data is “problematic.” It is quite Orwellian how research is predetermined to find the host culpable, but never to suggest the guest is at fault.
If immigrants came in manageable numbers, if they arrived in legal fashion on the basis of ethnically blind and meritocratic criteria, if the host believed in the melting pot and promoted integration, assimilation, and the mastery of the English language, if the arrivals were reminded why they were leaving their homelands and why they were entering the United States, then we could manage. But, alas, the very opposite of these criteria is true.
It has become a cachet of elites to mouth platitudes about “comprehensive immigration reform” as they carefully construct their own apartheid existences in Nancy Pelosi style [6]. They are not so much immune from the ramifications of their own ideology as found guilty of racial bias and prejudice by their very efforts to talk in the abstract in a way that offers them psychological recompense for never living that way in the concrete.
(Artwork created using a modified Shutterstock.com [7] image.)
URLs in this post:
[1] new workers in a supposedly worker-scarce America: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/07/28/wasting-away-again-in-obamaville/
[2] and social services: https://twitter.com/KLSouth/status/494995508297871360
[3] how has the racist rubric La Raza continued: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/224980/la-raza-facts/michelle-malkin
[4] the highest rates of obesity: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-takes-title-of-most-obese-from-america/
[5] wants to finish the fence: http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/06/21/watch-remember-complete-danged-fence-amnesty-hypocrite-john-mccain-changes-tune-border/
[6] in Nancy Pelosi style: http://twitchy.com/2014/07/16/perfect-iowahawk-finds-a-great-place-to-send-all-those-unfortunate-border-kids-pic/
[7] Shutterstock.com: http://www.shutterstock.com
Thank you so much for telling the truth about the lack of action on the border and immigration. Both sides are bought off and the middle class is stuck paying for it with increased taxes and lower wages.
Perhaps some day the people will revolt against precisely what’s wrong with Progressive education. Progressive K-12’s worst sin appears to be its anti-Reaganism, namely that rube-students are taught to trust (ones own leaders) but never verify (ones own leaders.)
Hence, Progressive education says, in essence, “Oh rubes, always ask yourself the question, Are you doing the right thing?”… while crucifying any thinker who say this also must be added, “Beware! Always ask yourself the question, is the right thing happening around me?” (i.e. How are we being taken advantage of, or told to huddle inside a sinking ship whilst leaders get berths on lifeboats?)
The problem with unraveling the Progressive worldview… is that it is hard to think of its memes! It’s hard to think about how the Progressive worldview pedagogy ruins the American citizenry. It is a pedagogy that insists on “ever-trust” and “never-distrust” the Progressive worldview… means it must be mesmerizing.
And here is the problem: Mesmerization is also hard to think about. In civic life Progressive mesmerization consists of a) Showmanship, b) Stage Hypnotism, c) Suggestion and d) Misdirection.
(This explains why Obama is funding-up against Impeachment, loudly, because he is King Mesmer-man. In the worldview of Progressives, there are the “in-crowd-kings” and there are supplicants. No room for thinkers like Victor Davis Hanson, George Orwell… or peasants who might as well be used as the king’s clay pigeons.)
Lastly: Lies, which of course require mesmerization, are expensive… because they are maintained only by a costly reality-distortion-generation. Look at the mainstream media offerings, and you will understand the frantic, expensive, huge-willed ops that make and love nothing but Orwellian lies and fantasies only the continually dumbed down, the continually hypnotized, the continually exploited could believe.
Someday, someone will thank those who rescue victims of prog-lies from their exploiters of prog-lies. Until then, truth is somewhat rare. But Progressive pedagogy is never rare, it is always demanding, “Trust us,” Never “verify us.”
Now let’s look under the hood of the engine of lies… which causes so much to be a “1984” Redux…
The Hollywood Movie industry is well aware of how actors speak a TEXT while also conveying a SUBTEXT. Hence the dialogue “I Love You!” can be delivered with a kiss, or a sock on the jaw!
So then, this delivery of Truth and Spirit is simply a higher understanding of universal reality. Knowing this, we can understand WHY we live in a “1984” world when the mainstream media can only think somewhat cheaply by using Greed as a subtext and “the stock market makes a new high today!” text. Or by using Fear as a subtext and “Ebola, is it the new disease?” as a news text. Or by using Laziness as a subtext and “Our dollar buys less and nobody knows why!”
What is actually happening, then, in so many news reports? The sub-taught Journalism schools have taught sub-taught journalists to simply go for their career-incomes and ratings… rather than keep an honest spirit and truth. This explains why the news package delivery you most often see is some breathless emotion (fear, greed, laziness) delivered under some nominal truth (Variated bad happened today! Oh, my!”)
Entering into none of the brains of our media and political obfuscating leaders… is the question: What happens when a world or a nation decides, en masse, to think so cheaply? (i.e. to always be gullible and believe a leader who delivers a fear-greed-laziness emotional subtext under some small-truth text?)
What happens is pure slavery.
Thanks VDH, I hope this gets WW attention. You gotta “love it” when a plan (Transforming America) comes together [Sarcasm intended.]
Here’s a simple meme to repeat. Democrats care more about illegals than citizens and the California DREAM Act proves it. 20,000 American kids are being waitlisted every year by UC and CSU while 6000 get educated thanks to the CA DREAM Act.
The DREAM Act: American kids get waitlisted so illegals can get educated.
I believe that a fence becomes unnecessary if we do three simple things, deny work opportunities to illegal aliens by requiring verification of legal immigration status for all new W4 forms, deny citizenship to children of both legal and illegal aliens, and require all public school registrations to be verified prior to allowing children in class. If that didn’t finish off most illegal immigration, two additional things could be done, making the same requirements apply to people buying or renting real estate or transferring a car titles. This doesn’t mean we wouldn’t allow purchases, only that legal status would be required, and the car would not be licensed by any state, and would have to be driven out of the country at visa expiration. A further restriction would be to require proof of status when paying for tickets on public transportation that crosses state lines (airlines, rail, interstate buses, ship). These things should all be in the mix when we talk about “comprehensive immigration reform.”
From the author of “Mexifornia” to God’s ears. More great work from VDH!
A thought just occurred to me (a’la conspiracy theory). What if this immigration flow from Latin America was meant to dilute and replace the African American (AA) political power that currently exists? After all, La Raza has already played the race card in Northern California with one Latina (after denigrating an AA person) stating that she could not be a racist because of her name. Also, remember that it was not that long ago that political power in Los Angeles resided in the AA community. LA now has a mostly Hispanic power base. This phenomenon is also beginning to appear in North Carolina and Atlantaas well as other places (I am watching Chicago). This would be an interesting train wreck to watch save for the fact that we are also passengers on said train…
Illegal immigration will remain within the liberal confines of the United States…. it is especially king in Mexifornia “California.” I have enjoyed reading vdh and the responses by those who have posted. Amazing in looking back that VDH’s Mexifornia started a great deal of this debate. Comparison to Rome and its decline is also of interest to me. Classic and vintage vdh here,
jwc