Never Forgetting the Homeland Illegal Immigrants Are Taken From Us

In the November 28 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune Ruben Navarrette was waxing nostalgically in an opinion piece titled “Never Forgetting Where We Came From.” Navarrette begins by recounting his leaving his home in the California Central Valley and feeling guilty about turning his back on family and friends. Then he references expressions of nostalgia on the part of David Letterman, Bruce Springsteen, and the television show October Road.

Next, he points out that American young people leave their hometowns for the greener pastures of bigger cities. That, he explains, is why Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa proposed recruiting illegal immigrants to help alleviate the state’s perpetual youth drain. What he does not explain is that the farmers, meatpackers, and other businessmen prefer, like Wal-Mart, to hire illegal immigrants for slave-wages than to offer honest wages and benefits to their own people.

In Navarrette’s words, “some folks are looking for immigrants to bail them out.” I would put it differently: Some folks are looking to get richer even if it means destroying their communities. Navarrett says that others resist “because they fear the cultural changes that immigrants might bring.” No kidding! FEAR is the key word here.

One illustration of what is to be feared if one’s community becomes a barrio is provided in the same issue of the paper in a story titled “Leader of Anti-Crime Group Attacked.” The leader is Alberto Capella, “who has spoken out boldly against violence and corruption in Baja California,” but who was “yesterday on the verge of tears,” having just survived “an attack at his house by heavily armed assailants,” his house “pockmarked with 220 shots.” CRIME, CORRUPTION, and VIOLENCE are the cultural changes that immigrants bring that ordinary Americans (those who cannot live isolated in affluent safe communities) fear.

And you might remember the recent story on Tijuana titled “Residents Protest the Surge in Crime Rate.” The president of the Baja California Citizens Council for Public Safety, Alberto Capella, said “kidnappings in Baja California are up for the third year in a row, with 220 so far this year.” So why would Americans not fear having the crime, corruption, and violence that is rampant in Mexico and other nations south of the border being brought—legally or illegally—into their communities?

As a rhetorician what Navarrette seeks to draw the reader into the universality of the theme of nostalgia for the home left behind so that it can be applied sympathetically to illegal aliens who have left their national home behind to invade the U.S., saying, “And I bet you thought that protesters waving Mexican flags were making some sort of obnoxious political statement. Nope. It’s a personal one.” Of course, the Mexican flags were a political statement, which was that THE HISPANIC NATION IN AMERICA IS UNITED. But Navarrette is right when he says that the flags expressed a personal sentiment, which is Mexico, not America, is the first home of the Mexicans-in-America. And everywhere the Mexicans go in America they create mini-Mexicos called barrios.

Navarrette intentionally uses equivocation when he tries to get his reader in the mood for understanding the nostalgia the illegal immigrants feel for their homeland by implying that leaving home to go off to college is similar to leaving one’s national homeland to go off to live, work, benefit, and multiply in someone else’s national homeland. But that is not the situation. The situation is that Mexicans consider themselves first and foremost Mexicans living in America. Mexicans will never be Americans for two reasons. First, their homeland is next door. Second, they see Americans as gringos, i.e., as their enemy.

Mexicans have hated Americans ever since the Americans took a large part of Mexico, which Mexicans call Aztlan, and Americans will always hate Mexicans for invading their country illegally and because they know that the invasion has been encouraged by the Mexican government, and now a Mexican television network, TV Azteca, will be providing English lessons on television in America. What better way to ensure that the millions strong civilian army that now occupies the U.S. will remain?

Navarrette says that for Americans “who never forgot where they came from and still remember the road back, it shouldn’t be so hard to relate” to the homesick Hispanics who have set up camp in America. That is like saying the Iraqi people should feel sympathy for the homesick Americans soldiers who illegally invaded Iraq. I don’t think so. Beside, the Mexicans still have a homeland to feel nostalgic about. Soon Americans will feel nostalgia for a homeland that will have been taken from them. Then every road back will lead them to a barrio. Take, for example, Navarrette’s hometown of Fresno, California. Latinos are now the dominate group in Barrio Fresno.

Halloween Has Become a Lot Scarier for Americans

Ruben Navarrette Jr. said in a recent San Diego Union-Tribune column that San Diego is America’s most flammable region. That is certainly true in more ways than one. He also said that the city is “one of the most desirable and livable cities in the country.” But though that may be true for the growing Latino population, it is less true for the Americans living in San Diego, because though the fires are out San Diegans are still very much threatened by the fires of illegal immigration.

An American Halloween nightmare is having hundreds of Latino children knocking at the door and saying TREAT AND TRICK, and never seeing a single American child because their parents have either moved out of the city for greener, albeit dwindling, American pastures or have kept their children inside their grated homes for protection in what has become a alien and hostile neighborhood. The fact is, traditional American communities become barrios once illegal Hispanic immigrants move in, and barrios become infested with criminal activity, especially that caused by Hispanic street gangs. Just ask the black Americans who live in the community where 14-year-old Cheryl Green was murdered by a Hispanic gang member. (Travis Barrett’s novel GRINGO is dedicated to Cheryl.)

Even Navarrette, a true friend of and propagandist for illegal immigrants (he doesn’t believe local police should enforce immigration laws), acknowledges in his column that illegal Mexican immigrants are “suspected” of being out during the fires tricking the good citizens at Qualcomm Stadium by treating themselves to truckloads of relief supplies. Navarrette calls it a “despicable act,” but the illegal act that brought them into the country in the first place is an understandable illegal act of desperation that should receive the forgiveness of amnesty.

What this way of thinking overlooks is the connection between the crimes committed by illegal immigrants and their children and the crime of illegally entering the United States in the first place. Were the illegal aliens not in the U.S., they could not commit crimes in the U.S. And let’s face it, breaking the law is nothing new among illegal Hispanics immigrants, who break the law when they invade America (by land and sea), use forged papers to get jobs, drive without a license or with an illegal license, and so on and on.

For illegal immigrants, crime does pay, but Americans foot the bill in the form of taxes, medical costs (such as the $45,000 to $500,000 for each of the 11 illegal aliens in UCSD burn units?), criminalized communities, deteriorating social services (schools, hospitals, etc.), lower wages, and deadly diseases (for example, the two following news items: “HIV likely entered the United States through a single infected immigrant from Haiti, scientists said Monday” and “Several infectious diseases that are rare in the native US population occur often in the Latin American population”).

Why is it that illegal immigration has not been attacked with the same vigor as the fires were? The damage that illegal aliens are doing and will continue to do to America is far more severe. Americans who lost their homes to the fire can rebuild, but once American communities have been taken over by illegal aliens, they are lost forever. Mexicans living in America will soon celebrate the Day of the Dead. I expect that the Day of the Dead could become a national Latino holiday celebrating the demise of the old America and the rise of the new Hispanic Nation.

In his book STRANGERS, Travis Barrett describes an American family who suffers a house-jacking by illegal aliens. As they flee what was once their community, but now belonging to the invaders, the father is shocked to discover a Day-of-the-Dead photo in which his family have become skeletons. The story may seem far-fetched, but if cities did not have million-dollar graffiti removal programs, it would become frighteningly clear just how many American communities have become gang infested barrios. In fact, I suggest that the graffiti be left as a warning sign indicating the alien transformation that is rapidly occurring in the United States, a transformation that is not so unlike what is seen in zombie movies. Suddenly, one’s neighbors have become aggressive strangers.

I expect that by the end of this century, Americans will have become ghosts, like today’s Native Americans, haunting a nation that was once theirs. Then Halloween will be really scary and the Day of the Dead will be a celebration of America’s demise. Happy Halloween!