I was sitting in the Kaiser waiting room earlier this week when
two people next to me began to talk loudly about how terrible
California is: the crowds, the traffic, the houses built up on the
hills. They both spoke of how much better things were
”
back home.
”
I was sitting in the Kaiser waiting room earlier this week when two people next to me began to talk loudly about how terrible California is: the crowds, the traffic, the houses built up on the hills. They both spoke of how much better things were “back home.”
I gritted my teeth and kept reading, but I really wanted to yell at them, “If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from!” Which in their cases was New York and Kentucky.
I feel exactly the same way about people who say that their primary identification is Mexican, not American. I wish they would go home and make Mexico a better place to live and stop cluttering up my state.
Of course, no one is going home to Mexico, or to Kentucky, for that matter. There are few jobs in Kentucky, and none in Mexico. There are no jobs in Mexico because the government is corrupt. Bribery is not a scandal in Mexico; it is a way of life. Business cannot prosper in Mexico. So there are no jobs. Surprise.
Therefore I can fully understand the illegal immigrant’s desire to sneak into California and take a crappy job for substandard wages. He wants to work, make money, eat and support his family. I can even understand why he wants to return to his family and home. Family ties are strong; homesickness tears the heart.
I cannot understand the Reconquistas and the Aztlan movement. These are the people who will say publicly that California, nay, the entire southwestern United States is, and of right ought to be, part of Mexico. They say we stole it from them. They say they are in the process of reconquering it. These claims stagger me, for two reasons.
My first reason is historical. This land we call California was inhabited by animals from the beginning of time to approximately 15,000 years ago, when human beings from Asia apparently took advantage of an Ice Age to cross the Bering Strait to America. These Asians conquered America, stole it from the animals.
In 1769, Spanish Europeans arrived in California, entering from the south to prevent Russian Europeans from making more permanent bases in the north part of the state. The rights of the contemporary inhabitants were ignored. In 1822, California’s allegiance was given to the newly independent nation of Mexico.
In 1846, John Drake Sloan raised the flag of the United States over Monterey. Mexico formally ceded California to the U.S. in 1848. We have been part of America ever since.
So historically, Mexico’s claim to California is hogwash. America has held California for 160 years, Spain held it for 53, Mexico for only 24. Mexico’s claim is the weakest of any.
My second reason is political and economic. Why in heaven’s name would we turn the government of California over to Mexico? They cannot even govern their own country, can’t provide jobs or security or liberty or justice or basic human services to their own people.
One of the top three revenue sources in Mexico is the money Mexican emigrants send home from jobs they hold in the United States. If Mexico took over California, our economy would evaporate and all of us would have to sneak over the border into Nevada for jobs. Insane.
Unfortunately, just because an idea is insane does not preclude it from happening. There was no sane political or economic reason to give the USSR control over Eastern Europe. The USSR could not adequately govern itself, never mind a third of Europe. But they got it and held it and kept it backwards and impoverished for 44 years.
There is no sane political or economic reason to hand over control of Israel to the Palestinians. Israel is a prosperous, modern, democratic nation; Palestine is a rogue terrorist camp. But the Arabs who live in Israel have on average nine children per family, and the Israelis have only four. In 30 years, Jews will be outnumbered in Israel.
The Reconquistas’ claims and plans are insane, if one values prosperity, justice, truth, or liberty. But that is no reason to ignore them.
Malthusian outcomes take very little notice of prosperity, justice, truth, or liberty.
