Victor Davis Hanson
Myth #2: Our two-party establishments oppose illegal immigration.
1) Corporate America/the Chamber of Commerce/the Wall Street Journal business intelligentsia all welcome open borders. They oppose E-Verify, The Wall, deportations, etc. Under their euphemism “comprehensive immigration reform” they want to return to the Reaganite Simpson–Mazzoli Act nothingness that destroyed border enforcement and the policy of deportations but did ensure amnesties and an unverifiable and unworkable I-9 document system. In sum, the corporate Right at all costs wants cheap, non-union muscular labor. They demand hard-working Oaxacans to work in meat packing, landscaping, hotels, restaurants, construction, and agriculture, who, when hurt, disabled, or aging are then recycled into the public health system at taxpayers’ expense. The employers then begin their cycle anew with replacement imported workers.
2) The Democratic Left is giddy that it has flipped California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and soon, it thinks, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. The days of California governors—Reagan, Deukmejian, Wilson—are over.
It believes by weakening balloting laws and screaming “racism!” at opposition to illegal immigrants having the vote, it eventually will succeed in allowing all 20–30 million illegal aliens to vote, even without formal amnesties. In the Left’s view, it has no choice: its agendas from the border to the economy to energy to crime to race to foreign policy attract about 40 percent support. So it must either change the system (junk the Electoral College and filibuster, add new states, pack the Supreme Court, etc.) or use the big money and institutions (Silicon Valley, the media, academia, K-12, entertainment, professional sports, foundations, etc.) it controls to warp the vote, or to change the demography by importing voters in need of ever bigger government, who in exchange for “stuff” will pledge their fealty at the polls.
Remember how its game is played: the Left writes books with braggadocious titles and subtitles “Demography is Destiny” or “The New Democratic Majority” that forecast GOP doom due to its “shrinking” white majority. Then when a conservative—such as Tucker Carlson—nods agreement that destroying the border is precisely what the Left sees as its ticket to success, it grows irate. Suddenly its heralded “democracy is destiny” becomes the awful, racist, right-wing embrace of the “great replacement theory”—which is precisely the subtext to all the Left’s policies.
3) The Leftist La Raza. The ethnic chauvinists have been battered since the 1960s, given the U.S. is a multiracial society in which “Chicanos” are in competition with other constituencies well beside whites (note the current Chicago protests where blacks are demanding an end to illegal immigrants entering their communities en masse). Still, the ethnic zealots believe that the greater the number of “Hispanics,” the more likely the old U.S. will be, as Obama envisioned, “fundamentally transformed,” as its institutions will begin to function more like those in Central and South America—which is an apparently good thing.
The existential paradox, however, in any immigrant chauvinist movement, is self-evident: if immigrants do not assimilate, integrate, and adopt the customs, traditions, and lifestyles of the hosts that they, on their own volition, seek out, but instead keep the same mentalities and habits of their mother country—then why would they not believe they were just recreating here the very conditions from where they fled? That is not a judgement call, but simply the logic of the direction in which immigration flows: if Californians go to Texas and remain in mindset Californians, would they soon not wreck Texas and kill the golden goose that once laid what they thought were golden eggs?
If an immigrant does not embrace a new American identity, what then is his operative assumption? “I can continue to be a Salvadorian or Cuban or Mexican in the U.S. precisely because most others will not be and thus, they ensure an American rich ocean in which I can still swim solo—again, as long as others do not do as do I.”
Discussion (4)
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Log In to CommentI think you live in a fantasy world. Sure, some illegals will be serviced by a W/C policy but most will not. Many small businesses are already paying these illegals under the table and do not make them a part of the normal employee protections. Visit any emergency room, especially in CA and I'm not saying just for a minute or two to get a look at the ethnicities......but pay attention to the injuries and hear the term in broken english "medicaid" or in your case I think it is called medi-cal but I could be wrong. There is absolutely NOTHING positive that comes from illegal immigration......nothing.
The employer may be financially responsible, in the immediate sense. But he will pass the cost of the claim on to his customers in the form of higher prices. And the health care providers will pass the increased cost along and we who pay into insurance plans will see our prices rise.
I think the Left view a town, not as one's beloved home about which they have a sense of territoriality, but as a kind of apartment they happen to live in that are full of neighbors with whom they never socialize, and just sometimes share an elevator with, their eyes cast down to the floor.
Victor in the first paragraph you write that Corporate America "demand hard-working Oaxacans to work in meat packing, landscaping, hotels, restaurants, construction, and agriculture, who, when hurt, disabled, or aging are then recycled into the public health system at taxpayers’ expense." California workers' compensation laws are very encompassing. Section 3351 of the Calif. Labor Code defines "employee" to include "aliens", whether lawfully or unlawfully hired. So if an illegal Alien (I like this old term) is injured on the job and files a W.C. claim, the employer (not taxpayer) could be held financially responsible.