{"id":9159,"date":"2016-03-15T08:40:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T15:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9159"},"modified":"2016-03-15T08:40:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T15:40:22","slug":"the-weirdness-of-illegal-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-weirdness-of-illegal-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weirdness of Illegal Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ <em>Works and Days<\/em> by PJ Media<\/p>\n<p>Set aside for a moment all the controversies over illegal immigration\u2014the wall, deportation, amnesty, Donald J. Trump, \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform,\u201d etc. Instead, contemplate what happens in a social, cultural, and economic context when several million immigrants arrive from one of the poorest areas in the world (e.g., Oaxaca) to one of the most affluent (e.g., California). For guidance, think not of Jorge Ramos, but of the premodern\/postmodern collision that is occurring in Germany, Austria, and Denmark.<\/p>\n<p>The first casualty is the law. I am not referring to the collapse of federal immigration enforcement, but rather the ripples that must follow from it. When someone ignores a federal statute, then it is naturally easy to flout more. In Los Angeles, half the traffic accidents are hit-and-run collisions. I can attest first-hand that running from an accident or abandoning a wrecked vehicle is certainly a common occurrence in rural California. Last night on a rural road, a driver behind me (intoxicated? Malicious? Crazy?) apparently tried to rear-end me, then turned off his lights, sped up, and at the next stop sign pulled over swearing out the window in Spanish. In this age and in these environs, why would one call a sheriff for a minor everyday occurrence like that? The point is simply that when there is no federal law, no one has any idea how several million arrive in the U.S., much less what exactly they were doing before their illegal arrival. I note the latter consideration, because legal immigration does require some sort of personal history, and at the airport I am always asked by U.S Customs what exactly I was doing in Greece or Germany that prompted my trip.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Out here almost all laws concerning the licensing and vaccination of dogs seem to have simply disappeared. No one can walk or ride a bicycle along these rural roads without being attacked by hounds that are unlicensed and not vaccinated\u2014and that have no ID or indeed owners that step forward to claim ownership once the victim is bleeding. The Bloomberg Rule reigns (i.e., if you can\u2019t keep snow off the street, deplore global warming or cosmic war): we talk of dreamers because we have not a clue how to ensure that hundreds of thousands of pets are registered and given rabies shots. No one suggests that once one breaks the law of his adopted home, and continues to do so through false affidavits, aliases, and fraudulent documents, then the law itself become an abstraction, useful as a shelter, expendable if an inconvenience. Again, one assumes that if a citizen were to do that, he would face a felony indictment.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think we have many zoning laws left, at least for particular constituencies. Yesterday, in field research for this essay, I drove in a 10-mile radius and counted the percentages of rural dwellings that had some sort of living quarters haphazardly attached\u2014garages, Winnebagos, sheds, trailers, etc. Seven out of ten residences had multiple dwellings, and I counted an average of six cars at each residence\u2014in a manner that 30 years ago would have quickly earned a visit from a county zoning officer (or would today, if county officials thought the violator would pay quickly the fine). Noncompliance has apparently become a cultural and economic necessity\u2014especially with bigger fish to fry (such as the SWAT-team assault \u00bc miles away last month on a den of supposed prostitution and drug sales, camouflaged in a barbed-wire enclosure in an orchard no less). That racket was certainly no \u201cact of love.\u201d Jeb Bush, where are you? The arrested were not on their way to have ice cream when the SWAT team pounced. Barack, where are you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJ Media Set aside for a moment all the controversies over illegal immigration\u2014the wall, deportation, amnesty, Donald J. Trump, \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform,\u201d etc. Instead, contemplate what happens in a social, cultural, and economic context when several million immigrants arrive from one of the poorest areas in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[111,16,495],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2nJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1632,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-could-they-do-that-in-arizona\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":0},"title":"How Could They Do That in Arizona","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Arizona Hysteria Racist! Nativist! Profiler! Xenophobe! Write or say anything about illegal immigration, and one should expect to be called all of that and more \u2014 even if a strong supporter of legal immigration. Illegal alien becomes undocumented worker. Anti-immigrant replaces anti-illegal-immigration. \u201cComprehensive\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;April 2010&quot;","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10722,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-the-rhetoric-of-illegal-immigration-and-the-perils-of-ignoring-thucydidess-warning\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":1},"title":"California, the Rhetoric of Illegal Immigration, and the Perils of Ignoring Thucydides\u2019s Warning","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Eureka Vocabulary changes always reflect the agendas of a political debate. The fight over illegal immigration plays out by altering words and their meanings. Take the traditional rubric \u201cillegal alien.\u201d The English has been clear and exact for nearly a century: illegal alien (cf. Latin\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Thucydides&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Thucydides","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/thucydides\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8628,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-illegal-immigration-finally-turned-off-the-public\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":2},"title":"How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 31, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"If there were not a Donald Trump, he would likely have had to have been invented.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media Why did the illegal-immigration issue launch Donald Trump\u2019s campaign? Why did his recent tense press conference exchange with Univision\u2019s Jorge Ramos please even some of Trump\u2019s liberal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Shot and chaser: Democrat activist Jorge Ramos of Univison badgers Donald Trump; is (temporarily) deported from presser by Trump\u00e2\u0080\u0099s security. (AP Photos\/Charlie Neibergall)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump_ramos_8-30-15-1-500x213.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9281,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nihilism-of-sanctuary-cities\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":3},"title":"The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJ Media There are an estimated 300 or so jurisdictions -- entire states, counties, cities, and municipalities -- that since the early 1980s have enacted \u201csanctuary city\u201d laws, forbidding full enforcement of federal immigration law within their jurisdictions. Most of these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Immigration&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net\/e1\/victordavishanson\/user-content\/2\/files\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/illegal-immigration-is-immoral\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":4},"title":"Illegal Immigration Is Immoral","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Illegal immigration has been in the news daily during the Republican primary campaign, even though a depressed economy here, stronger border enforcement, and vast new finds of petroleum in Latin America may soon radically curtail the number of illegal entrants into the United\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Immigration&quot;","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":8723,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-sanctuary-cities-the-new-confederates\/","url_meta":{"origin":9159,"position":5},"title":"Are Sanctuary Cities the New Confederates?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online There are now 340 sanctuary cities in the United States \u2014 and the list is growing. All of them choose to ignore federal immigration law by refusing to report detained undocumented immigrants to federal authorities under most circumstances. Partly as a result, deportations\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via media@limitgov.org","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Kate-law-needed-to-end-sanctuary-cities-500x388.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9161,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9159\/revisions\/9161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}