Thursday, October 05, 2006

Illegal Immigration and Victor Davis Hanson's "Mexifornia"


Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia was published three years ago. Hanson's ideas informed much of what I wrote here about what Hanson calls "some sort of earned citizenship for most hardworking illegal aliens and [his] objections, on both practical and ethical grounds, to mass deportations." In almost three years of blogging, the only truly nasty (sometimes disturbing) comments I have received were in response to my immigration posts.

Hanson now believes public opinion has passed by his book. His approach to the issue, which was considered fairly conservative but practical, is now midde-of-the-road at best. He explains today in Real Clear Politics:
Because the United States is increasingly less a majority of whites of European ancestry and more a mixture of dozens of races and ethnicities, the need for a common unifying language and culture has never been more important. When Americans look abroad at the violent messes in the Balkans, Rwanda, Darfur and Iraq, the notion of emphasizing separation here at home by race, tribe, language or religion makes absolutely no sense. But the idea of letting only enough legal immigrants in who can be easily assimilated surely does.

So how does this new popular worry over illegal immigration play out among a variety of working-class groups and minorities?

While there remains controversy over amnesty and a guest-worker program, there is now little disagreement over first enforcing the law and closing the borders - whether through periodic fortification, more Border Patrol officers, tough employer sanctions or viable identification cards.

In the last three years, while I haven't changed my views about the need for an earned-citizenship program or the impracticality of deporting 11 million illegal residents, an angry public has passed "Mexifornia" by. Once caricatured as illiberal for calling for an end to illegal immigration, the book now reads as middle of the road, if not passe.

Indeed, if extremists continue to demonstrate for open borders, blare out ethnic and linguistic chauvinism, and flout the law, then this current public anger against illegal immigration will unfortunately appear mild in comparison to what is on the horizon.
I hope that the 700-mile fence, as much as I wonder about its usefulness, will calm the concerns of hard-shell anti-immigrationists suffiicently that we can deal with the question of dealing intelligently with the 11 million illegals who are here already.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

IMHO It really centers not so much on immigration as it does on refusal to assimilate. The shear numbers translate not into ghettos but ghetto states. America works because of the melting pot -assimilation.

"Too many, too fast", who believe their new country is really their old country are much of the cause of the resistence. Those in-your-face Mexican flags and the strong association with marxist left-leaning groups organizing the rallys have back-fired and hurt their cause.

Bush and the GOP Senate, forcing the issue may have caused the GOP at least this election - if not the mext. 

Posted by DL

Saturday, October 07, 2006 7:29:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have enormous concerns about illegal immigration. I see it as one of the great causes of my generation. It is right up there with terrorism. If we fail to act. If we fail to prevent the Third World from flooding into our grat land we will be culturally destroyed. The United States of America became the great nation that it is because it was founded by WESTERN MAN. Each time we allow someone to come to our shores who is not WESTERN, we shake the very foundation that is who we are. Islam does not have the capacity to write an American Constitution, yet some think a Muslim can come to America and our nation will be no different. It will be different. With each non western body on our land it becomes more and more different. If we do not act to stem this illegal immigration from every corner of the globe, we will perish. Our culture will be destroyed if we allow this nation to grow by another 100 million non western people over the next 50 years.

Monday, September 17, 2007 6:09:00 AM  

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