by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n Recently there was a demonstration not far from my home in central California. A number of illegal aliens were marching to demand the right to obtain California driver\u2019s licenses. Their shrill advocates on television claimed that illegal residents of the state were willing to put up with demeaning questions about their legal status\u2014but only if it meant in exchange gaining sanction to drive and obtain government identification.<\/p>\n Not long after the 9-11 commission released its findings. It rebuked government agencies for their laxity in issuing IDs. At least 14 of the 19 hijackers had obtained drivers’ licenses and then used them as entr\u00e9e to acquire a host of other certifications, credit cards, and bank accounts. Some were here illegally; many entered on questionable visas from Saudi Arabia issued under dubious circumstances.<\/p>\n The same week as the commission\u2019s findings were published, the press reported that a number of Middle Eastern males were apprehended crossing the US-border. Are we as a nation unhinged, in contemplating easing rather than tightening the criteria to obtain the most common form of American certification\u2014at a time when thousands of our stealthy enemies depend on just such laxity to ensure our very destruction?<\/p>\n Why then is illegal immigration the third rail we dare not talk about?<\/p>\n The politics of it are surreal.\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0economic libertarians cite cheap labor and robust demography brought on by unchecked immigration as an economic plus for us in an increasingly global economy. The Left apparently sees an entire new generation of voters who can be nursed on the need for government entitlements to ensure them a parity of result rather than an equality of opportunity.<\/p>\n Yet despite the politics, there are other reasons why all citizens of conscience should worry about illegal immigration well beyond national security and deficit spending. It is a moral quagmire that soils everyone and everything it touches. A complacent and often corrupt Mexican government has not made needed social and economic reforms. Despite oil, minerals, favorable climate, and soil, it cannot feed its people or treat them humanely. Why? Mexico City prefers to export dissent, hoping to rid the country of its surplus poor\u2014even as it counts on $12 billion in remittances from loyal and nostalgic expatriates to prop up a failing system back home in need of long postponed reform. Mexico is not a close friend of the United States. If one were to ignore all the cheap attacks on America in its wild press, and simply examine its policy toward American sovereignty, it would be classified by any fair standard as a belligerent.<\/p>\n American employers need not seek continual mechanization nor pay U.S. citizen workers\u2014many of them legal immigrants from Mexico\u2014a decent wage when there is a constant pool of hard-working young males without documentation who cannot organize or collectively bargain.<\/p>\n We the public, who benefit for a time from having cheap labor to run our hotels, serve our food, and pick our fruit are in a fool\u2019s paradise. Not only is unemployment of U.S. citizens still high, but we have created an aristocratic sense of entitlement among some of our youth, who prefer the mall to the summer peach orchard.<\/p>\n There is still an untold collective wage to pay when millions of poorly educated workers age are injured or are laid off. Without legal status or education, they all have a future rendezvous with unemployment insurance, workers\u2019 compensation, welfare subsidies, and disability pensions. A bricklayer of 19 from Oaxaca may appear happy and a great bargain for the United States\u2014but only if he stays 19 and healthy of the next fifty years.<\/p>\n We have also created an entire La Raza (\u201cthe race\u201d) industry of well-heeled grandees whose reason to be is a perpetual underclass in need of group rather than individual representation. Under the old system, when Mexicans entered the United States mostly under legal auspices and in measured numbers, the melting pot of integration and intermarriage worked. Thus 1960s rhetoric about \u201cbrown power\u201d and \u201ca bronze state for a bronze people\u201d increasingly grew superfluous and finally merely annoying. Only a continuous stream of millions heading north, one illegal, exploited, and living in the shadows of American society, can sustain the race industry in our political caucuses, Balkanized media, and Chicano Studies programs.<\/p>\n Our government also is contaminated when it forfeits the very sanctity of its laws. Why should students who are citizen residents of New Mexico report their out-of-state status truthfully to California universities when they know illegal residents of that state will pay a third less for college tuition? Why should parents pay much attention to providing birth certificates to obtain their teenagers\u2019 licenses\u2014a rite of passage at the Department of Motor Vehicles\u2014when they know those who broke the law will not?<\/p>\n Illegal immigration is a cancer eating away at the values, ethics, and laws of America\u2014a tragic malignancy that is no longer an economic or defense problem so much as an abject moral wrong.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2004 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Recently there was a demonstration not far from my home in central California. A number of illegal aliens were marching to demand the right to obtain California driver\u2019s licenses. Their shrill advocates on television claimed that illegal residents of the state were willing to put up with demeaning questions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1ce","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":643,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-flip-side-to-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":0},"title":"The Flip Side to Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Forgotten in the latest hype about illegal immigration is the cycle of lawlessness that follows illegal entry into the United States. The simple fact is that once someone chooses to enter the U.S. illegally and remain here illegally, breaking the law, either deliberately or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8549,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/san-francisco-one-sick-sanctuary-city\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":1},"title":"San Francisco: One Sick Sanctuary City","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As is true daily in other sanctuary cities, San Francisco rolled the dice with someone else\u2019s safety, resulting in the murder of Kate Steinle.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media The horrific \u2014 but likely preventable \u2014 death of Kate Steinle at the hands of five-time deported illegal alien\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, right, is lead into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana Garciaor, center, for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released Monday, July 13, 2015. (Michael Macor\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1-500x348.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4612,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-terminator-will-he-end-decades-of-squander-in-desperate-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":2},"title":"Our Terminator: Will He End Decades of Squander in Desperate California?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Only Arnold Schwarzenegger could get away with praising Richard Nixon and repeating the line \"girlie-men\" in a thick Germanic accent\u2014and in prime time at a national convention.It is equally amazing that he is a Republican governor of an overwhelmingly Democratic state, surrounded by Democratic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2004"","block_context":{"text":"September 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/september-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10333,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10333-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":3},"title":"From A Not So Angry\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From A Not So Angry Reader: Dr. Hanson: I am a frequent listener to the Classicist. After listening to the episode \"A Cold Civil War?\" I had a few questions. I do not intend\u00a0this to be inflammatory, I simply do not want to make assumptions about your beliefs. First, do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10912,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-unfinished-train-overpasses-become-californias-stonehenge\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":4},"title":"Will Unfinished Train Overpasses Become California\u2019s Stonehenge?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The misbegotten project, now stalling, should never have been started. \u00a0 Nobody quite knows who built Stonehenge some 5,000 years ago in southern England. The mysterious ring of huge stone monoliths stands mute. \u00a0 Californians may leave behind similarly enigmatic monuments for puzzled\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Transportation"","block_context":{"text":"Transportation","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/transportation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":623,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/incoherent-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":4602,"position":5},"title":"Incoherent Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up. 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