How is Mexican immigration different, Part II
Mexican immigrants are entirely integrated economically. But by and large, they are absent politically and civically.
This is new for America, and, given Mexicans’ spread across the United States, it’s harmful for this country.
Most immigrant groups have progressed economically and politically roughly at the same time. Mexicans are different.
I wrote part of my book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration (http://www.samquinones.com), in Chicago. About a million Mexicans inhabited the Chicagoland area, yet there was not one elected Mexican politician.
This in an area where history has shown that immigrants move ahead by combining into voting blocs (witness the Irish, Italians, Poles, blacks). I understand a few folks of Mexican descent now hold elected office, though this is recent.
Mexicans are politically and civically absent for a few reasons (listed in no particular order):
1) Most have come thinking they’ll be here for a short while and thus involvement in civic affairs is pointless. Their feet are here; their hearts and minds remain in Mexico. (though that’s been changing lately)
2) Many are from Mexico’s ranching regions, famously independent, where politics and politicians are shunned as corrupt and dangerous. Their attitudes don’t change though folks are now in the United States.
3) Many are illegal and keep a low profile.
4) Many are working long hours and raising large families, leaving little time for involvement.
5) Many have no good experience with local government in Mexico and thus imagine that local government here is as useless.
This political and civic absence is where Mexican immigration poses some of the greatest costs and stresses in this country, I believe.
The story in my book about South Gate, California, for example, is about the cost of this lack of political involvement.
It’s about how newly enfranchised Mexican immigrants elected an unscrupulous politician who used campaign tactics forged in Mexico. He took control of the town and ran it to the brink of bankruptcy.
He did so by understanding that Mexican immigrants who had just become citizens still were thinking the way they had back home, and thus would fall for PRI-like tactics. Which they did. Until, at the last minute, they woke up, and ran the guy and his cronies out. He’s now doing 10 years in federal prison.
Lack of political involvement is one thing. Lack of civic engagement is another.
By this, I mean involvement in neighborhood clean-ups, neighborhood watches, etc. – things you can do whether you can vote or not. This is what makes towns and neighborhoods work.
But many Mexican immigrants, for many of the reasons I just cited, simply aren’t civically engaged.
This poses a huge burden on cities, but especially in poor neighborhoods or the small towns where they live in large numbers. US city government relies on an at-least partially involved citizenry. It doesn’t have the budget or staff to do, or pay for, everything itself.
In Los Angeles County, in an area known as Florence-Firestone, county officials have even taken to giving classes to immigrants on how to use local government – to pretty good results. This was necessary because immigrants wouldn’t, or didn’t know how to, use the levers of local government, such as calling the county about abandoned sofas, for example.
Lack of involvement in schools is yet a third problem. Most Mexican parents want their children educated. But they often have a limited idea of what constitutes an education. Also, often they don’t themselves have the education to prepare their kids to arrive at kindergarten or first grade already familiar with numbers, reading or knowing the alphabet.
On the contrary, many times their kids don’t speak English. I’ve met US-born children of Mexican immigrants who as teens still don’t speak English well.
Moreover, in Mexico, education is the job of the teachers and the school. Parents, especially poor and uneducated parents, know to keep out.
Doing the parents’ job is a huge and costly task that I don’t believe any school district can accomplish. Small-town districts where immigrant populations are large are especially stressed.
Moreover, Mexican immigrants parents often don’t participate in school activities. It sounds harsh to say it, but you’ll find it’s true if you ask school teachers and principals.
(Note to the picayune: I understand these are generalizations and there are exceptions. OK? These exceptions don’t change the argument or the general facts.)
All of this is to say that the Mexican enclave remains hard to penetrate.
Of course, immigrant enclaves aren’t new to America. But they’re usually confined to a few large cities and dissolve after about a generation. The Mexican enclave has grown and spread over time.
It’s in Chicago. It’s in South Gate. It’s also on the High Plains of Southwest Kansas.
In my story on the high school soccer team there, I talk about how young soccer players with 4-year colleges begging them to take scholarships would turn them down and return home to Garden City and family to work in the meat plants because it was quick money. They were afraid of being far from family, incurring student-loan debt (the cheapest money available), and competing with whites. Thus, when I was there, Mexican youths were actually following their fathers into the meat plants instead of going to college. (Vietnamese refugees also worked there but they would whip any of their children who wanted a job in those plants.)
I saw the enclave, too, in the attitudes of immigrants toward educating their daughters. This is especially harmful and upsetting. The attitude is often that there’s no reason to educate them since they’re going to get married any way. Even when educating a daughter is a priority, they’re often prohibited from going far away, thus limiting the daughters’ options.
This is all part of Mexico in the United States that harms both this country and the immigrants and their children themselves. It’s caused by huge numbers of people congregating in areas, and having those numbers continually replenished by new immigrants.
I find this ironic. They’ve come looking for change, but only so much. The enclave slows that change.
Mexican immigrants come escaping the Old World attitudes and customs that created the poverty they were mired in. But then in the enclaves they often insist on retaining many of those attitudes (toward education, banking, debt, the role of girls and women, civic engagement, politics, etc.) that helped create that poverty in the first place.
As I said in yesterday’s blog, many folks don’t understand what they really came here for. They think it’s for the jobs and opportunities. (On one level of course it is). But really it’s for a collection of attitudes and traditions and customs in America that give rise to those jobs and opportunities and it’s here that freedom lies.
One reason they don’t is yet another and final way that Mexican immigrants, at least today, are unlike other groups of immigrants.
That is, Mexican immigration hasn’t stopped. Mexican immigrants have been coming in large numbers since at least the 1940s, essentially doubling in number every 10 years.
Many immigrants, meanwhile, return to Mexico often for vacation, and dream of returning home for good one day. So the enclave is replenished with new folks, whose thinking remains anchored in Mexico, while those who are here already are thinking of returning.
Cheers,
Sam
http://www.samquinones.com
Comments (16)
How is Mexican migration to the US different? As usual his observations are offered with no particular detail or any kind of authority, just general impressions. One crucial way in which Mexican migration is different, that he doesn’t emphasize enough is that unlike previous immigrant groups there does not exist any legal mechanism that permits Mexican workers from entering the country legally. And one fundamental way in which Mexican migration is the same is that like other immigrant groups Mexicans come to the United States in search of work, for which there is ample demand. Another similarity: Quinones neglects to mention that all available evidence shows that second and third generation Mexican-Americans integrate into American society at the same rate and with the same success as every other immigrant group. There is simply no evidence that 2nd or 3rd generation Americans of Mexican descent are more alienated from American politics, society, or culture than the descendants of any other immigrant group. Be it voting patterns, public opinion surveys, military service, etc.--every single piece of data we have indicates that 2nd and 3rd generation Americans of Mexican descent conform to the norm. Likewise, no evidence exists to indicate that recent arrivals from Mexico are any more alien to their new environment than recent arrivals from Ireland, Italy, Poland, etc,, were upon their emigration to the US.
What Quinones offers here is somewhat similar to the nativist rants of Samuel Huntington, a critical review of whose work on immigration you can read here.
Let me also offer some on Quiñones’s earlier posts where he asks why Mexicans are leaving Mexico City. Since Mexico City grows in population every year the question doesn’t make much sense. He should be asking why are so many people entering Mexico City?
Well, it ain’t rocket science, and you don’t have to wax poetic about the “Old World” or “culture” or any such ahistorical nonsense. (And in any event, for all of Quiñones’s talk of Mexico City’s supposed “old world” characteristics, the fact is that the capital city is the most modern, cosmopolitan, and liberal city in all of Mexico.) Why do any people anywhere in Mexico leave for any place else, whether it be from a small rural town to a state capital or to the national capital or even from anyplace in Mexico to the United States?
All together now: because they are looking for work!
Here a review of some basic information seems in order. All numbers unless otherwise noted are from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática. And all the information about Mexico only refers to Mexicans actually residing within Mexico. Most of the data is for 2005 but where not available I cite data from 2000.
The total population of Mexico is about 103,263,388 million with an annual growth rate between 2000 and 2005 of about 1%. (The stereotype of Mexicans having ridiculously large families is now outdated.) There is no evidence of a net loss of the population due to emigration. Of those 103,263,388 Mexicans, about 6,044,547 are indigenous, of which about 12% does not speak Spanish. The rural population is 23.5%, down from 25.4% in 2000, 26.5% in 1995, 28.7% in 1990, etc.
A little over 8% of the population is over the age of 60. In the year 2000 there was 141 economically active people for every 100 non-economically active people. In 2005 the ration was 151 economically active people to 100 non-economically active. The unemployment rate is about 3.2% but the underemployment rate is upwards of 25%.
Stop and think about that and then reflect on Mr. Quiñones’s lamentations that migration is bad for Mexico—again, he gets the cause and the effect confused. There isn’t enough work for everyone so some people leave, and even so you still have this massive amount of people left behind struggling to make ends meet. You get migrations because there is unemployment, you don’t get unemployment and emptier rural towns because there is migration.
Before reviewing the data for Mexico City a few clarifications are in order. When most observers talk about Mexico City (also known as the Federal District, or the DF) they really are talking about the greater Mexico City area, which comprises the DF plus the twenty-odd municipalities within the state of Mexico (with its capital at Toluca) that border with the DF. Since the census data gives population figures by political entity to figure out how many people live in the greater Mexico City area you need to first look up data on the DF and then on each of the surrounding municipalities from Mexico state. Rough estimates for the greater Mexico City area range from 20 to 40 million people, with most the consensus estimate usually at 30 million (that is, 30% of Mexico’s entire population). I don’t have time to analyze the census data for more precise information, so let me just give some basic information on Mexico City (ie, only the area under the actual control of Mexico City municipal authorities).
The total population of the DF is currently 8,720,916, representing 8.4% of Mexico’s entire population. About 1.5% of that number are Indians (ie, people who speak an indigenous language), and of this number only 2.1% can’t speak Spanish. Between 2000 and 2005 Mexico City increased its population by .24%. Between 2000 and 2005 about 188,000 people moved to Mexico City. By comparison, during the same time period about 491,000 people left the city. Of those 491,000 that left a whopping 57.1% left for the state of Mexico. How many of that 57.1% moved to the 20+ municipalities that border the DF? Again, I don’t have the time to look it up. But even if we assume a ridiculously conservative 20%, that’s 98,200 people. And that’s a very conservative estimate.
Bottom line, while the DF per se is growing at a very slow rate, the greater Mexico City area is expanding rapidly with most of the growth occurring at the edges. And this gets back to Quiñones’s question—why is his obsession always with people leaving and not with all the people entering? He goes to rural towns and he thinks all of Mexico is emptying out. He could be forgiven for this mistake since the rural population is on the decline. But then he goes to Mexico City, the greater metropolitan area of which is experiencing the most rapid population growth in the country, and he again asks, why is everyone leaving?
Here’s another piece of data to back up my point: Over 2.7 million people moved within Mexico between 2000 and 2005, representing 2.7% of the entire population. The two places in Mexico that received the most newcomers were the state of Mexico with 417,000 newcomers, or 17.3% of all internal migration and, you guessed it, Mexico City, with 187,000 newcomers, or 7.8% of all migrants. And again, the same caveat about how a good proportion of the migration to the state of Mexico is actually to the greater Mexico City area applies.
Now, I’m not saying Quiñones should have bored everyone with so many numbers. I only offer the numbers just to show how unreliable his anecdotal impressions are. In the end, I really can’t figure out what Quiñones is getting at. What do all these rambling observations on Mexico—most all of them based on massive amounts of (to put it politely) factual confusion—amount to?
The Cranky Historian
October 4, 2007 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
October 4, 2007 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know I'm really not sure where to begin.
Let me begin by saying, what you claim to be truth is not my experience in my neighborhood. In fact most of what you have written in this post sounds like the "conventional wisdom" advice I got from the Community Developement Corp that was working in our neighborhood.(bad advice as it turned out) It makes me suspect that those are the folks you've been talking to rather than the folks in the neighborhood.
Lack of civic engagement is another.
By this, I mean involvement in neighborhood clean-ups, neighborhood watches
Maybe someone should just ask.
That's all I did. The first year a few participated and threw some junk in the dumpster. The next year they were sweeping the streets, damnedest thing I've ever seen.
On the contrary, many times their kids don’t speak English. I’ve met US-born children of Mexican immigrants who as teens still don’t speak English well.
Again , not my experience. In Kansas City , Missouri, I found this to be true: 4 yr old- no English, a 6yr old- you can carry on a conversation with, 8yr and up are the translators for the family. Ive knocked on a lot of doors and talked to a lot of Mexican immigrants in their home, so I trust my observations. A teenager with limited English skills is someone who has only been here a couple of years. (no matter what he told you)
Mexican immigrants parents often don’t participate in school activities
It is often hard to do when the meetings are conducted in English and the mother only speaks Spanish. Translators help but they draw attention to the Nonenglish speakers.
Mexican enclave remains hard to penetrate
"enclave" now there is a loaded word, How about "community".
As for penetrating them?
I've found a smile and a wave as I drive down the street works.
Handing out tulip bulbs does to. I still remember the large smiles I got from a group men when I was able to use a couple of words in Spanish. I had looked up the words for tulip and for the colors.
It's a matter of building trust one small step at a time.
Old World attitudes
Oh, I hate those too. Those nasty old world attitudes, like : community, family, neighbors, children, hard work.
Jack
Who's stopping before he gets pissed again.
October 4, 2007 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, none of the stuff he said really conformed to my experience either, especially all the nonsense about kids of Mexican parents not speaking English well. And there is just so much evidence to the contrary it's amazing a journalist can just disregard that. But the truth is if you don't believe in looking things up you'll notice whatever you're looking for.
The Cranky Historian
October 4, 2007 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
CRANKY "...I really can't figure out what he's getting at." If Quinones was describing first-generation Mexicans, I think he was on the mark. He has managed to describe my non-Mexican god-daughter's first-generation Mexican husband, and most of his friends and relatives.
However, Quinones did not deal with an important characteristic among the first-generation and to an extent second and third generation immigrants, and one which may be the root cause of what he considers 'problems' with Mexican immigrants.
Calls for an anecdote. My god-daughter's Mexican husband has Mexican clothes and gringo clothes in his closet. He wears his gringo clothes when he and his wife go out to dinner because if he doesn't when he's on the way to the bathroom, say, restaurant patrons invariably ask him for water, a coffee refill, whatever. At the same time, he wouldn't be caught dead in his 'gringo' clothes any place else.
He says that he's 'caught' between two cultures, neither fish nor fowl and not even sure which of the two he actually wants to be an integral part of. His plight may help explain much of the stuff on Quinones' 'list.'
October 4, 2007 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
But my point is that if Quinones is only talking about recent arrivals to Mexico (you're not "1st generation" unless you were born here in the US) then what he sees as very unique is old hat--all recent arrivals, past and present, cling to the culture of their country of origin. Hence, my point--in that sense Mexican immigrants are absolutely no different from any other immigrant group. All the things he criticizes--the tendency of people to live in the same neighborhood, for example--were equally true of, say, Italian or Jewish immigrants.
The Cranky Historian
October 4, 2007 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Cranky Historian
I am simply stunned at the way you distort my views, misread what I’ve said, rant at the most minor points, and avoiding the larger argument all the while.Ditto that your only tone seems to be screaming (though thankfully without the capital letters).
Ditto the tangents you go off on that I never intended, but that you attribute to me.ONE EXAMPLE IN YOUR LATEST RANT: I didn’t say people were leaving Mexico City, the physical place. Read the blog, man!! They’re escaping what Mexico City represents in Mexican culture! That is most certainly the case.
ALSO: People move to Mexico City because – DUH! -- Mexico City has starved the rest of the country for resources in numerous ways for decades -- which would also tend to support my thesis! But anyone who has lived in Mexico for mere months would see that fact very clearly. Not you apparently. Facts on the ground don't interest you, for some reason.Who are you, homes?
Your approach is an amazing thing to behold – cowardly, cheap, intellectually dishonest, especially because you do it anonymously.At least identify yourself if you’re going to engage in what amount to virtual ad hominem attacks.
Just so we can all know and you’ll have some accountability for what you say.What amazes me most is that you hold against me that I’ve actually spent many years of my life reporting from and writing about the very regions that most Mexican immigrants come from.
That doing so, in your view, must surely lead me to erroneous, purely anecdote-based conclusions. That I’ve spoken to so many immigrants, both here and in the US, is my real problem, I guess. That I’ve visited dozens of villages, seen the houses, seen the depopulation that is most certainly going on has surely gotten in my way of seeing your truth. That what I’ve actually seen how Mexico appears to win but really loses with immigration of its hardest working people is really a mirage.Maybe you’d like to tell us all about these areas you presume to know the reality of.
Tell us what it’s like in Malpaso, Tlaltenango, Atolinga, El Cargadero, or Jerez, Zacatecas?What color’s the earth that people try to farm near Zamora, Michoacan? Tell me where the folks from Nuevo Chupicuaro, Guanajuato have moved in the United States?
How are things in Tepatitlan or La Barca or Ocotlan, Jalisco? Or how about Ocampo, Guanajuato? Where are the gypsy buses headed when they leave Ocampo, please tell me.
Que tal Jiquilpan, Moroleon, Cotija, Los Reyes, Turicato, Totolan, La Piedad, Puruaran, Tacambaro, Cheran, Paracho, Uruapan, Sahuayo, Emiliano Zapata, Villamar, San Antonio, Jaripo, and Tocumbo -- all in Michoacan (which is a Mexican state, btw)?
Or Refugio Salcido or Juan Aldama in Durango?Or give us the skinny on the entire vast valley or massive Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca? Where else have those Oaxacans emigrated besides the United States. Enlighten us, please.
Know what? Scratch that: pick out any of these places on a map and I’m sure we’d be duly impressed with your perceptive analysis.It’s almost as if you feel I’d have been better off following your lead by sitting before my computer in pajamas and imagining what it all must be like down there.
Some of us have to actually get out and see the world and let it teach us what it has to say.
Name: Sam Quinones
Website: http://www.samquinones.com
October 4, 2007 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. I’m not engaging in any ad hominem attacks. Although I disagree with some of your observations, have taken you to task for your lack of evidence, have tried to correct a few factual errors, etc. I have made no comment about you as a person or insulted you in any way.
2. If you could summarize your argument for me so far I’d be very happy, because all I read is a loose collection of observations, most of them very superficial and largely based, near as I can tell, on very little evidence save for a wealth of personal anecdote. If this is a mistake on my part I would be eager to read a clarification. Put simply, what is your larger argument?
3. I have replied to very specific points that you have made.
--I’ve tried to offer concrete data (which you have not impugned in any way) that offers a far more complicated view of migration patterns within Mexico and from Mexico to the United States
--I’ve argued against your point that remittances hurt the Mexican economy.
--I’ve argued against your point that immigration to the US hurts Mexico.
--I’ve pointed out what I consider to be circular reasoning on your part—ie, to attribute economic failures to migration rather than seeing migration as a response to economic failures.
--I’ve argued against your point that Mexican immigrants are different than previous immigrant groups.
--I’ve argued against your point that people of Mexican descent assimilate slowly to US culture.
Now, this is your blog, so you can or can not respond to whatever suits your fancy. But it’s worth pointing out that the substance of any of the issues I’ve raised has never been addressed directly.
4. It is not my fault that you choose to use very imprecise language or describe things in broad strokes relying on generalizations with little evidentiary material other than personal anecdote. That’s part of the reason I find your observations unconvincing. To point that out is to engage you in debate, not to attack you as a person.
5. I think the only time I responded in anything approaching anger (and even then, I’d say I was just being irritable) was when I read your statement that only the old, crippled, and handicapped stayed in Mexico (I know, I know, I can hear your reply already—you really didn’t mean it literally). But even then I included in my reply data to show why this wasn’t the case. At most I can be faulted for taking you too seriously.
6. On Mexico City. You write that they are leaving because the culture is oppressive. Now you write that they aren’t leaving the “physical place.” What does that mean? They are leaving the cultural place but physically staying put? How exactly does one leave culturally? Are you saying that the Mexicans who are in Mexico City are changing culturally? I don’t really think I’m being terribly unreasonable in pointing out that at first read, that statement doesn’t make much sense. You are now saying that people are not leaving Mexico City “physically” but only “culturally”? Clarification is needed!
7. On Mexico losing it’s hardest working people . . . here, I can only repeat what I’ve already said countless times. It is sad that the Mexican labor market can’t absorb all the people looking for work. And it’s sad that Mexicans have to migrate outside of their country to look for work. But in leaving they don’t further damage the economy—if they stayed there’d be nothing for them to do, no matter how hard working or entrepreneurial they are.
8. On personal experience: read the comment about me supposedly being in bed in my pajamas. I hate to break it to you, “homes,” but that is an ad hominem attack. Personal experiences are immensely valuable, but they can’t serve as the only basis for an argument. I could have littered my posts with countless anecdotes from my many years of working and traveling in Mexico, or with my own father's immigrant experience, or with the countless people I've met on both sides of the border who've had to migrate to the US. But what I was getting at is that these personal experiences can add color to an argument, but they aren’t convincing in and of themselves. In the end, if you only look for one thing that’s all you’ll find.
9. Knowing your full name doesn’t make me trust your observations more. Nor do your claims to authority. Persuasive argumentation backed by sound logic and ample evidence would. That’s what I’ve tried to offer in my posts.
The Cranky Historian
October 4, 2007 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's analysis of a dataset that implies a significant subset of 1st and 2nd generation American born descendants of Mexican immigrants, are not getting assimilated properly.
October 4, 2007 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think immigration, especially when you start talking about mass illegal immigration, million a year, that sort of thing, causes community
upheaval and economic pressure in the places
where they go. If you read the news, it's not
just a US phenomenon, either. There was a story
about Greece today, their reception center being
overwhelmed with people. And, as global population increases, look for more of it. It's
not just Germany, it's not just France, not just Spain, not just Mexico, not just the United States, immigration and illegal immigration
are going to be hot-button issues for years to
come...
October 4, 2007 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
2nd piece of evidence
October 5, 2007 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the issue here is that we're talking about different things. There is no denying that there is a correlation between class and ethno-racial issues in the US (just look at the disparity, for example, between blacks and whites). The question is are the children and grandchildren of Mexican (or more broadly, latino) immigrants assimilating more slowly into US life than the children of other immigrant groups. And on that score, there isn't too much to indicate that many of the worst stereotypes--that latino's don't or won't learn English, that they don't vote, that they don't see themselves as "American"--are true.
The Cranky Historian
October 5, 2007 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I believe that the upheaval is not an inherent part of immigration in America, and the idea is instead based on largely anecdotal reporting, or studies which used dubious data, from sources whose veracity is questionable. Often a bit of digging uncovers motivations which include racism, as well as right-sided and/or anti-Catholic radical Protestant political ideologies.
Also,
the term "illegal immigrant" defames
the very Dreamtime of America.
It can hardly be grounded in original intent:
America is NOT European
America is NOT an ancient and tiny Mediterranean Island State
We are Supposed to be Better Than The Rest
A Shining Beacon of Freedom and Liberty in this Dark World
October 5, 2007 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
After reading your responses in these threads, I started to believe that this may well have been what you were inferring, which is why I placed this as a comment to my own previous post, instead of under the grandparent post of yours. What you are saying needs to be clearly stated though, or it is liable to be used for racial scapegoating, and as denials of hardening class structure in the USA. Both of these are bad for America.
That being said: since I do not remember ever having been involved in a dialogue with you, I'll state a personal underlying bias.
I am an unabashed defender of personal liberty, and believe that an immigrant policy of open borders is a 1st level corollary that is naturally inferred from holding personal liberty as a paramount societal goal. Up until recently, I referred to myself as 'libertarian', but want none of the right-sided baggage that currently loads down the political movement in the US. I have an affinity for term; "Jeffersonian", though.
October 5, 2007 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, despite what Quinones says, there's at least one "elected Mexican politician" in Chicago.
A state senator, Martin Sandoval - in addition to possibly representing the interests of U.S. citizens - serves on an advisory council to the president of Mexico. Would anyone be foolish enough to believe that the advice just flows one way, from him to the Mexican government?
And, several people linked to the Mexican government and Mexican political parties helped organize Chicago's big immigration marches.
And, Barack Obama spoke at one of those marches.
If you think all of that is just fine, then please get Obama to sign the pledge in the description to that video.
October 6, 2007 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Complete asininity, that makes far too many unproven assumptions. The main one being that the persons participating in demonstrations favoring immigrants are not US citizens, and mostly undocumented non-citizens. Care to provided anything substantial to back this up?
The questions should be: why do you fear immigration now that it comes from America's Neighbors to the South. Are your biases racial or religious?
You offer URLs that are to a blog called lonewacko.com. Coincidence or self-patronisation? The You-tube link was by an account called NoMoreBlatherDotCom. Is there a connection between this and lone_wacko?
LooneyTunes, without the humour.
October 7, 2007 2:45 AM | Reply | Permalink