Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives
Previous Post: Tax stuff
Next Post: Hmmm
Posted in:
This question was suggested by commenter “Papa Legba.”
How will the current organized and coordinated protests by Latinos impact the long term future of politics in Illinois…? Does the organizational strength of this group surprise/not surprise/interest/not interest people?
Let’s try to stay with the topic at hand, please. As before, racist comments will be deleted and violators will be forever banned from commenting.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 3:59 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
Previous Post: Tax stuff
Next Post: Hmmm
WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org.
powered by WordPress.
To me, any protester loses credibility just for protesting… unless they are attacked by police. Peaceful protests go unnoticed. I think people are generally disinterested with any protest, even ones that are highly attended.
Comment by Lovie's Leather Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 8:14 am
It does not surprise me at all. Latinos’ are a large ethnic group, second only to whites’. Their community is closed to outsiders, for the most part. It appears to me that they are happy with having their own community within the larger community. As for the demonstrations being so large, how many people who do not speak spanish listen to a spanish radio station (probably nobody unless you like the vibe and beat of the music because you don’t understand the words).
Comment by Anonymous Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 8:36 am
Electorally speaking they don’t matter until they start voting. Look at the number that it take to get a write in candidate on the ballot…
http://www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/ElectionInformation/PDF/06canguide.pdf
The point is that those numbers are based on % of those that vote. Latinos are not voting. for instance 4th Cong Dist. 6,800-10,900 needed to 19th 15,900-25,500. Note the also the Latino House and Senate Dist. as well.
Comment by southernilrepub Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:07 am
I was in PHX recently and the demonstrators were all HS students, just wanting out of class. School dismisses by 2pm every day and the administrators told them they were free to do whatever they wanted to on their own time. They still chose to disrupt school.
And they wonder why Americans aren’t sympathetic? Those are our tax dollars they are wasting.
Comment by Shelbyville Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:17 am
I find it interesting that most letters to the editor recently (esp the Trib over the weekend) missed the point entirely.
These weren’t illegal immigrants protesting — these were citizens who were either children of immigrants (legal or illegal) as well as naturalized citizens. They are protesting the harshness of the current GOP proposals in Congress (esp. the “leave them to die in the desert” attitude and the one-sidedness of punishing the migrants and the priests that care for them but don’t hold the businessmen illegally employing accountable).
Contrary to the right-wing’s sensationalization of this issue most illegal immigrants don’t come across the Rio Grande. They come in an airplane and simply overstay their visa.
And forget this baloney red herring about “lowering wages”. Name one out-of-work white collar man or woman who would be willing to go into a raspberry patch and get their arms ripped up on the thorns for $20 an hour (as opposed to the lower wages employers of illegal immigrants try to get away with). Or be a maid, or be a nanny, or cut grass and trim shrubs… I won’t hold my breath. (And how much are raspberries or lawn-cutting or maid services going to cost if wages were anywhere near equal to the hard work required???)
Comment by NW burbs Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:19 am
Yep, I rest my case with Shelbyville’s comment. By and large the folks protesting ARE Americans — citizens by rights or by birth, just like you and me. And in Chicago, among the first of the protests, the marchers included sons and daughters of Irish, Polish and other immigrants (legal or illegal).
If the people protesting were nearly all white instead of nearly all brown would the right-wing have a different opinion (be honest)?
Comment by NW burbs Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:22 am
One of the first things I had to learn as an immigrant was to respect my new country’s laws and customs, and learn the language, otherwise I would be sent home ASAP. I knew they meant it too!
But what I have been seeing is a group of immigrants who feel entitled to rights others cannot have. The comfort and similarities to families, religion and history are giving Latinos special privledges not granted to other groups.
It is discriminatory to demand that all immigrants spend thousands of their saving and spend time and effort going through the naturalization process to let Latinos simply mob their way in.
This country’s special relationship to Mexico is understandable, however we do not treat other countries we share a special relationship with in the same manner. Why? Canadians, the British, Germans or the Dutch all have to go through an immigrantion process that has been worked out over the past 300 years. It is not anti-immigrant to enforce immigration laws.
It seems goofy to have so many Americans simply roll over and sell out their principles when they are challenged. Do we believe anything anymore? Do these people believe in fighting for anything? It is pathetic and lazy to cover your lack of interest, by pretending to be more open minded than those enforcing our laws. I have discovered that those who claim to be “politically correct” to be the most ignorant of other cultures, and just want everyone to be as happy and as ignorant as they. To know something is to believe in something, and these PC people believe in nothing but themselves.
Politicians who pander for votes should not be re-elected when they are willing to sell out our laws and beliefs to stay in office. Legal immigrants should not be discriminated against just because politicians want to court Mexican votes.
I find legal immigrants to be pro-USA. They chose to live her, go through naturalization and endure social changes. You cannot do that in a country you don’t love. On the other hand, due to the special spoiling Latinos have been getting, I am seeing illegal immigrants refuse to follow our laws, go through naturalization, but still feel entitled to protest in our streets and wave the flags of a country they walked away from. We don’t need people like this, we need law-abiding citizens. It is not too much to demand that we enforce our laws in a non-discriminatory manner.
If these people get their way, then we should refund the millions other immigrant groups have been shelling out to become citizens. It ain’t right!
Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:41 am
Just another in the long list of special interest groups. Each one has a special need that effects a large group and can get people involved at least for a while. Each one has a period where they get very organized over a select series of events. They do have some effect. How long depends on the effort they put into it, the skill of their leadership, what economic impact they have, how well they hit on the legislative reps, and how the leg reps are personally effected by it. Single protests as a whole are simply TV time which may be a good kick start, but without a strong behind the scenes effort most protests, by themselves, do not do much. Latinos, right to life/choice, religion based, disabled, education, small business, farmers, truckers, and others all have specialized policy that is important to them. Their success is based on how hard they work and can generate/maintain support. Ethnically, Latinos are a growing force just as Poles, Blacks, and many other ethnic groups have been. Some have faded, others are well in grained in the system.
Comment by zatoichi Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 9:50 am
If the Latino population of legal U.S. citizens wants to protest in an appropriate fashion (which it appears they have) great. If they want me to hear what they have to say, they have to say it in English. I don’t speak Spanish, and I don’t really have the desire to learn it. I don’t care what color anyone’s skin is, but we speak English in the US (except Miami). In our homes and amongst our friends of shared heritage we may speak another language, but all United States citizens should have English at least as a second language. Then when you tell me why the bill is to harsh and unfair, perhaps I can agree and try to assist. But when you say it in a foriegn language people are going to assume you are a foriegner, right or wrong, and then people want to know why foriegners are protesting on American soil.
Comment by leigh Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 10:37 am
I think what was most important and what the media and these bloggers miss, is the political implication of these marches!
Awareness in the Latin Communities that there voices will be heard, will inspire them to start voting in record numbers!
Granted that hispanic ward votes are not as high as the 19th, and 11 ward, but those wards vote because everyone there either work for the state,county or city, or they have relatives who do! Also if you see the voting trends across cook county and the nation, latin voter turnout is bigger and bigger in each election!
I think what the establishment fears is having to share the pie with another group!
Hispanics are savy politically and will succeed!
The organizer of the March was truely Juan Ocho from the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,he developed the stratgy and obtain the resources to coordinate the event!
His participation was key and every organization who came also have sparked interest in organizing hispanics to have a voice!The days of being silent are done!
Imagine, if all the hispanic immigrants in Chicago were Cuban, instead of Mexican. If they were Cuban, they would have taken over Illinois by now and would have put many politicians out of Bussiness!
But Mexicans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans and others will start to work together and eventually not have a seat at the table,but will deciding who sits where at the table!
Comment by Red,White and Blue American Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 11:07 am
Two Points:
1)Hispanics, just like every previous immigrant group are learning the language and assimilating into the country. If you think that they are not fully American, you have never met a Hispanic teenager.
2) People who criticize illegal immigrants as being mere “lawbreakers” must have never gone a mile over the speed limit in their life. Also, I’m assuming that neither you nor your children had drank a sip of alcohol before age 21. Either that, or you’re hypocrites. There are good reasons to have tighter border security, but it’s too bad that the stupid ones are often yelled the loudest.
Comment by Lawman Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 11:08 am
Illinoisians are probably more aware of the immigrant debate than they were before the demonstrations and the national political debate.
It’s hard to tell if anti-immigration sentiment will grow as a result of fears raised by the
demonstrations. It wouldn’t be surprising.
This Sunday’s New York Times The Nation section had a good article on the economics of illegal (and legal) immigration. Not all may agree. But one point made is that while those born in Mexico make up 56% of iillegal immigrants (an additional 22% were born in the rest of Latin America) the Mexican birthrate is dropping, which could substantially reduce immigration from Mexico in the coming decades. So this high rate of illegal immigration from Mexico may be a temporary phenomenon.
Instead of worrying about the ethnicity of illegal immigrants, perhaps we should worry about the downward pressure of illegal and legal immigration on US wages, with Hispanics and blacks seeing the highest decline over the past two decades. This downward pressure, combined with outsourcing, seems to created the biggest threat to the well being of Illinoisians, regardless of their ethnicity or national origen. We really are all in this together.
And Blago’s welfare state isn’t going to fix our economic problems. Our current governor and legislature and their wealthy liberal supporters are stuck in the welfare state past when it comes to solutions for current economic
problems. Giving illegal immigrants cheap housing, almost-free health care and free or low cost preschool and university education isn’t going to stop that downward pressure on US wages.
Comment by Cassandra Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 1:10 pm
VanillaMan: What’s “pathetic and lazy” is paintaing evaryone with a broad brush and truying to get awat with it. Lawman points that out– are there not exceptions to every rule, whether of this country or not?
As you paint it, only Latinos are here illegally. That’s ridiculous when more than 25% of the undocumented come from non-Latino countries (even your county of origin, whatever it is).
There are also plenty of legal immigrants from Mexico who pay there fees and the compromise bill in Congress will recognize this and not let anyone bully ahead of the line.
“I find legal immigrants to be pro-USA…you cannot do that in a country you don’t love.” You’re kidding, right? Have you not seen ant-war protesters or pro-choice and pro-life protesters tell the president and this country to go to hell? Have you not seen American citizens move away from this country in protest (but keep their citizenship)?
VanillaMan, you are entitled to you opinion, but I’m entitled to pint out how bogus it is. I’m glad you’re proud to be an American. Now, how about stepping aside and letting some others get the chance to be some also?
Leigh, you do a good job of outlining how narrow-minded some people are on this issue. Per your calculation, Say it in English = right; say it in another language = wrong. Okay, here’s English for you: You are not an empathetic individual who is able to go beyond their immediate circumstances and put themselves in the shoes of others. Since it’s in English, I guess am right.
Comment by The King Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 1:19 pm
The King:
You must be joking. You evidence the ethnic diversity of illegals by stating that around a quarter of them are NOT of hispanic lineage? You do realize your own numbers, if true, scream loud and clear that some 75% of this nation’s illegal population are latino, do you not?
Comment by Veritas Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 3:47 pm
To the topic at hand, I can’t imagine why anyone would be surprised by the hispanic community’s ability to organize such large showings.
1) Large scale protests are a halmark of political unrest in latin-american countries.
2) An insular community concentrated in pockets across the country, hispanic immigrants of the illegal stripe have long sense estbalished networks of travel and colonization in the US. Certainly this pre-existing network of travel and communication lends itself to networking on a large scale.
3) If your choices were a life of subsistence in a third world nation or earning an actual living in the land of the free, wouldn’t you be willing to fight to stay here?
Comment by Veritas Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 4:01 pm
Veritas, my fight is not with you so I will clarify that the reason I pointed out the 25% figure was because VanillaMan took Latino immigrants to task as specifically being granted special privledges and that all other non-Latino immigrants do it legally. That’s the significance of the 25% illegal figure.
Comment by The King Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 4:18 pm
I would like to point out that I am for an expansion of immigration “quotas.” I had two very good friends who came here, illegally, from Poland. Both were very educated, spoke english better than most *Americans* and tried very hard to gain citizenship. No dice. They went back to Poland after five years of trying to play by the rules. BTW. They cleaned houses to make ends meet. A sorry fact for two people with very extensive experience and degrees in civil engineering.
Another thing that sticks in my craw were the H1-B visas that were issued by the basket full in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Many of these high-tech workers from another country accepted wages that were less than half of what their American contemporaries were being paid. How many of these people over stayed their visas and remained here as illegals? My guess is a lot. They kept the lowered wage positions in the Tech Sector after the bubble burst and shut out many white collar Americans from these positions.
Comment by Papa Legba Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 6:07 pm
Back to the question at hand: the subject was the recent protest marches by pro-immigration groups. I’d say judging by the previous posts, it is an interesting subject.
I happened to find myself face-to-face with the Chicago rally, trying to take the Orange line to Midway to catch a 5:00 flight. Every train was packed with people leaving the protest march. I almost missed my flight. The CTA must have made a bundle that day, 100,000 riders easy, and many heading southwest, most in front of me. A restaurant I know of had to close because too many employees decided to risk their jobs to attend the march/protest/traffic nightmare.
I’d call it the most impressive political march Chicago has seen in some time. Which speaks volumes both about this subject and the anti-war movement, whose marches typically feature more police/security than actual marchers/protesters.
Hmph. What’s up with that? But I digress.
Anyway, as for the long term: it might have a lasting impact if this newly energized coalition keeps agitating and votes in proportion to its numbers.
The actual electoral muscle of the “pro-immigrant” coalition remains to be seen. As for their ability to screw up a Friday evening rush hour, 1,000 bike riders can have the same effect. But most of the critical mass riders actually vote.
Comment by 47th Ward Monday, Apr 3, 06 @ 8:07 pm
Looking at the giant pro-immigration rights marches in Los Angeles, Chicago and other U.S. cities, I’m not as surprised as Washington politicians and media pundits about the emerging ‘’Latino Power'’ in the United States. It stems from a new phenomenon — the “transnational citizen.'’
Last week, U.S. politicians and media experts were stunned by the size of the marches to protest congressional efforts to pass a punitive anti-immigration bill. More than 500,000 largely Hispanic demonstrators took to the streets in Los Angeles, 300,000 in Chicago, and tens of thousands in Phoenix, Denver and other U.S. cities.
Why are these large crowds suddenly coming out of the shadows, after so many years of Latin American migration to the United States, these surprised politicians and pundits ask themselves.
One of the answers is anger. Many of the marchers were undocumented workers, fearful of being chased out of the country. But many others were legal residents and naturalized U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent who were fed up with the daily anti-immigrant tirades — which some see as bordering on racism — by their local politicians or television anti-immigration evangelists such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs.
(It’s not surprising that in South Florida, where 62 percent of the population is Hispanic, there were no such massive demonstrations. There was no need for it: In Miami, politicians and the media almost unanimously reject draconian measures such as turning all undocumented workers into criminals. They understand, rightly, that the only way to reduce the flow of migrants will be to help narrow the income gap between the United States and Latin America.)
But, in addition to anger, the fact that so many legal immigrants turned out at the protests reflects the new profile of millions of U.S. Hispanics.
Unlike what happened decades ago, today’s immigrants are much closer to their home countries, largely thanks to dramatically lower travel and communications costs. Millions of immigrants have become “transnational citizens.'’
Consider:
• Only a decade ago, most Latin American immigrants could only afford calling home once a month. Today, thanks to cheaper telephone rates — you can buy a $5 telephone card at any gas station and make calls to Mexico for more than 7 hours — many call their loved ones in Latin America several times a day.
• A decade ago, most Latin American migrants got their news about their home countries from the ‘’foreign briefs'’ in Spanish-language media. Today, thanks to 500-channel cable television systems, millions of Latin American immigrants watch their native countries’ nightly news shows live in their living rooms.
• Many of the estimated 14 million U.S. Hispanics who use the Internet read their native countries’ newspapers online, rather than U.S. newspapers. Most U.S. newspapers have so little news about Latin America that it could hardly be any other way.
• Thanks to cheaper air fares, millions of immigrants can visit home much more often than their predecessors.
• The fact that Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and other countries have accepted dual citizenship has removed agonizing dilemmas for millions of immigrants about their true national allegiance. Transnational citizens shrug at the question of which country they consider home — it’s like asking who do you love more, your mother or your father, they say.
• While generations ago most Mexican immigrants in California and Texas prohibited their children from speaking Spanish, in the belief that they would integrate more quickly into U.S. society, many now teach their children Spanish. In the age of free trade, globalization and customer satisfaction, they see bilingualism as a competitive advantage.
A new nationwide poll of legal immigrants released last week by Bendixen and Associates for New American Media confirms the changing profile of U.S. Hispanics.
While decades ago many legal immigrants wanted to shut the immigration door behind them, the poll shows that 73 percent of them now say illegal migrants help, rather than hurt, the U.S. economy.
My conclusion: I don’t see the new ‘’Latino Power'’ as a strident separatist movement, as many U.S. anti-immigration advocates paint it. More likely, it will be a subdued mixture of U.S.-born Hispanics and transnational citizens who will be largely invisible most of the time, but will take to the streets if threatened by immigration opponents who often come across as hate mongers.
So as witnessed on that day in Chicago, Mayor Daley was present and gave the best speech in his life in support of all immigrants in America!
Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 4, 06 @ 1:47 pm
The United States has returned to its recurring debate over immigration. This edition of the debate, focused intensely on the question of illegal immigration from Mexico, is phrased in a very traditional way. One side argues that illegal migration from Mexico threatens both American economic interests and security. The other side argues that the United States historically has thrived on immigration, and that this wave of migration is no different.
As is frequently the case, the policy debate fails to take fundamental geopolitical realities into account.
To begin with, it is absolutely true that the United States has always been an immigrant society. Even the first settlers in the United States — the American Indian tribes — were migrants. Certainly, since the first settlements were established, successive waves of immigration have both driven the American economy and terrified those who were already living in the country. When the Scots-Irish began arriving in the late 1700s, the English settlers of all social classes thought that their arrival would place enormous pressure on existing economic processes, as well as bring crime and immorality to the United States.
The Scots-Irish were dramatically different culturally, and their arrival certainly generated stress. However, they proved crucial for populating the continent west of the Alleghenies. The Scots-Irish solved a demographic problem that was at the core of the United States: Given its population at that time, there simply were not enough Americans to expand settlements west of the mountains — and this posed a security threat. If the U.S. population remained clustered in a long, thin line along the Atlantic sea board, with poor lines of communication running north-south, the country would be vulnerable to European, and especially British, attack. The United States had to expand westward, and it lacked the population to do so. The Americans needed the Scots-Irish.
Successive waves of immigrants came to the United States over the next 200 years. In each case, they came looking for economic opportunity. In each case, there was massive anxiety that the arrival of these migrants would crowd the job market, driving down wages, and that the heterogeneous cultures would create massive social stress. The Irish immigration of the 1840s, the migrations from eastern and southern Europe in the 1880s — all triggered the same concerns. Nevertheless, without those waves of immigration, the United States would not have been able to populate the continent, to industrialize or to field the mass armies of the 20th century that established the nation as a global power.
Population Density and Economic Returns
Logic would have it that immigration should undermine the economic well-being of those who already live in the United States. But this logic assumes that there is a zero-sum game. That may be true in Europe or Asia. It has not been true in the United States. The key is population density: The density of the United States, excluding Alaska, is 34 people per square kilometer. By comparison, the population density in the United Kingdom is 247 per square kilometer, 231 in Germany and 337 in Japan. The European Union, taken as a whole, has a population density of 115. If the United States were to equal the United Kingdom in terms of density, it would have a population of about 2 billion people.
Even accepting the premise that some parts of the United States are uninhabitable and that the United Kingdom is over-inhabited, the point is that the United States’ population is still small relative to available land. That means that it has not come even close to diminishing economic returns. To the extent to which the population-to-land ratio determines productivity — and this, in our view, is the critical variable — the United States still can utilize population increases. At a time when population growth from native births is quite low, this means that the United States still can metabolize immigrants. It is, therefore, no accident that over the past 40 years, the United States has absorbed a massive influx of Asian immigrants who have been net producers over time. It’s a big country, and much of it is barely inhabited.
On this level, the immigration issue poses no significant questions. It is a replay of a debate that has been ongoing since the founding of the country. Those who have predicted social and economic disaster as a result of immigration have been consistently wrong. Those who have predicted growing prosperity have been right. Those who have said that the national character of the United States would change dramatically have been somewhat right; core values have remained in place, but the Anglo-Protestant ethnicity represented at the founding has certainly been transformed. How one feels about this transformation depends on ideology and taste. But the simple fact is this: The United States not only would not have become a trans-continental power without immigration; it would not have industrialized. Masses of immigrants formed the armies of workers that drove industrialism and made the United States into a significant world power. No immigration, no United States.
Geography: The Difference With Mexico
Now, it would seem at first glance that the current surge of Mexican migration should be understood in this context and, as such, simply welcomed. If immigration is good, then why wouldn’t immigration from Mexico be good? Certainly, there is no cultural argument against it; if the United States could assimilate Ukrainian Jews, Sicilians and Pakistanis, there is no self-evident reason why it could not absorb Mexicans. The argument against the Mexican migration would seem on its face to be simply a repeat of old, failed arguments against past migrations.
But Mexican migration should not be viewed in the same way as other migrations. When a Ukrainian Jew or a Sicilian or an Indian came to the United States, their arrival represented a sharp geographical event; whatever memories they might have of their birthplace, whatever cultural values they might bring with them, the geographical milieu was being abandoned. And with that, so were the geopolitical consequences of their migration. Sicilians might remember Sicily, they might harbor a cultural commitment to its values and they might even have a sense of residual loyalty to Sicily or to Italy — but Italy was thousands of miles away. The Italian government could neither control nor exploit the migrant’s presence in the United States. Simply put, these immigrants did not represent a geopolitical threat; even if they did not assimilate to American culture — remaining huddled together in their “little Italys” — they did not threaten the United States in any way. Their strength was in the country they had left, and that country was far away. That is why, in the end, these immigrants assimilated, or their children did. Without assimilation, they were adrift.
The Mexican situation is different. When a Mexican comes to the United States, there is frequently no geographical split. There is geographical continuity. His roots are just across the land border. Therefore, the entire immigration dynamic shifts. An Italian, a Jew, an Indian can return to his home country, but only with great effort and disruption. A Mexican can and does return with considerable ease. He can, if he chooses, live his life in a perpetual ambiguity.
The Borderland Battleground
This has nothing to do with Mexicans as a people, but rather with a geographical concept called “borderlands.” Traveling through Europe, one will find many borderlands. Alsace-Lorraine is a borderland between Germany and France; the inhabitants are both French and German, and in some ways neither. It also is possible to find Hungarians — living Hungarian lives — deep inside Slovakia and Romania.
Borderlands can be found throughout the world. They are the places where the borders have shifted, leaving members of one nation stranded on the other side of the frontier. In many cases, these people now hold the citizenship of the countries in which they reside (according to recognized borders), but they think and speak in the language on the other side of the border. The border moved, but their homes didn’t. There has been no decisive geographical event; they have not left their homeland. Only the legal abstraction of a border, and the non-abstract presence of a conquering army, has changed their reality.
Borderlands sometimes are political flashpoints, when the relative power of the two countries is shifting and one is reclaiming its old territory, as Germany did in 1940, or France in 1918. Sometimes the regions are quiet; the borders that have been imposed remain inviolable, due to the continued power of the conqueror. Sometimes, populations move back and forth in the borderland, as politics and economics shift. Borderlands are everywhere. They are the archaeological remains of history, except that these remains have a tendency to come back to life.
The U.S.-Mexican frontier is a borderland. The United States, to all intents and purposes, conquered the region in the period between the Texan revolution (1835-36) and the Mexican-American war (1846-48). As a result of the war, the border moved and areas that had been Mexican territory became part of the United States. There was little ethnic cleansing. American citizens settled into the territory in increasing numbers over time, but the extant Mexican culture remained in place. The border was a political dividing line but was never a physical division; the area north of the border retained a certain Mexican presence, while the area south of the border became heavily influenced by American culture. The economic patterns that tied the area north of the Rio Grande to the area south of it did not disappear. At times they atrophied; at times they intensified; but the links were always there, and neither Washington nor Mexico City objected. It was the natural characteristic of the borderland.
It was not inevitable that the borderland would be held by the United States. Anyone looking at North America in 1800 might have bet that Mexico, not the United States, would be the dominant power of the continent. Why that didn’t turn out to be the case is a long story, but by 1846, the Mexicans had lost direct control of the borderland. They have not regained it since. But that does not mean that the borderland is unambiguously American — and it does not mean that, over the next couple of hundred years, should Washington’s power weaken and Mexico City’s increase, the borders might not shift once again. How many times, after all, have the Franco-German borders shifted? For the moment, however, Washington is enormously more powerful than Mexico City, so the borders will stay where they are.
The Heart of the Matter
We are in a period, as happens with borderlands, when major population shifts are under way. This should not be understood as immigration. Or more precisely, these shifts should not be understood as immigration in the same sense that we talk about immigration from, say, Brazil, where the geographical relationship between migrant and home country is ruptured. The immigration from Mexico to the United States is a regional migration within a borderland between two powers — powers that have drawn a border based on military and political history, and in which two very different populations intermingle. Right now, the United States is economically dynamic relative to Mexico. Therefore, Mexicans tend to migrate northward, across the political border, within the geographical definition of the borderland. The map declares a border. Culture and history, however, take a different view.
The immigration debate in the U.S. Congress, which conflates Asian immigrations with Mexican immigrations, is mixing apples and oranges. Chinese immigration is part of the process of populating the United States — a process that has been occurring since the founding of the Republic. Mexican immigration is, to borrow a term from physics, the Brownian motion of the borderland. This process is nearly as old as the Republic, but there is a crucial difference: It is not about populating the continent nearly as much as it is about the dynamics of the borderland.
One way to lose control of a borderland is by losing control of its population. In general, most Mexicans cross the border for strictly economic reasons. Some wish to settle in the United States, some wish to assimilate. Others intend to be here temporarily. Some intend to cross the border for economic reasons — to work — and remain Mexicans in the full sense of the word. Now, so long as this migration remains economic and cultural, there is little concern for the United States. But when this last class of migrants crosses the border with political aspirations, such as the recovery of lost Mexican territories from the United States, that is the danger point.
Americans went to Texas in the 1820s. They entered the borderland. They then decided to make a political claim against Mexico, demanding a redefinition of the formal borders between Mexico and the United States. In other words, they came to make money and stayed to make a revolution. There is little evidence — flag-waving notwithstanding — that there is any practical move afoot now to reverse the American conquest of Mexican territories. Nevertheless, that is the danger with all borderlands: that those on the “wrong” side of the border will take action to move the border back.
For the United States, this makes the question of Mexican immigration within the borderland different from that of Mexican immigration to places well removed from it. In fact, it makes the issue of Mexican migration different from all other immigrations to the United States. The current congressional debate is about “immigration” as a whole, but that makes little sense. It needs to be about three different questions:
1. Immigration from other parts of the world to the United States
2. Immigration from Mexico to areas well removed from the southern border region
3. Immigration from Mexico to areas within the borderlands that were created by the U.S. conquests
Treating these three issues as if they were the same thing confuses matters. The issue is not immigration in general, nor even Mexican immigration. It is about the borderland and its future. The question of legal and illegal immigration and various solutions to the problems must be addressed in this context.
Only Mayor Daley,Juan Ocho,State Rep.Chapa, State Rep. Mendoza and Burke and Congressman Luis Guitterez have seen the issue for what it is and are addressing it!
Comment by CUBA Tuesday, Apr 4, 06 @ 4:18 pm
Cuba–
Thanks for channeling Dr. George Friedman, Chairman of the highly-regarded Strategic Forcasting Inc., of Austin TX. Next time, when you lift an entire essay, please give the appropriate citation or attribution. Many folks labor for minutes to hours at a time, struggling to come up with original thoughts to type here. Taking, whole cloth, without attribution, someone else’s writings and posting them here is rather irksome.
Remember, it’s not plagarism if you cite the source.
Comment by Habbi Hoarse Tuesday, Apr 4, 06 @ 7:12 pm