Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, did not encompass the idea of an open door for all who wished to come here. The simple tale is that the generous French offered Liberty as a gift, honoring America's cherished ideals of freedom and opportunity for all of its citizens. The true circumstances, of course, were much more convoluted. The idea for the Statue of Liberty first took hold of the imagination of its sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, during a dinner party at the home of Eduoard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a French intellectual and activist who hoped to sponsor an enormous monument that might serve as propaganda against the conservative leaders of the then shaky French government. Bartholdi had always wanted to create a colossal, awesome structure, and Laboulaye named him to create what Laboulaye envisioned as a powerful political lever for shaping French government and society.

The first conversations with Laboulaye occurred in 1871, more than fifteen years before the Statue of Liberty would actually stand within New York Harbor. A lot of arm-twisting for funds took place in the meantime, along with two trips to the United States, and a variety of differing sketches for the statue. At the same time, Laboulaye managed to rise quickly to prominence within the French government, pushing an amendment through the chambers of parliament that essentially called for the establishment of republican status for France. The result: the Third Republic. To fortify their regime, Third Republic leaders strongly advocated the completion of Bartholdi's statue. What better way to cement their image of France, writes historian Marvin Trachtenberg, than with a truly grandiose monument linking the history and destiny of France with the great modern republican state, the America that had not only triumphed over its internal enemies but was ascendant in every sphere, already marked to be one of the great world powers? Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty to ensure coherence with this agenda. He positioned her within New York Harbor to face outward toward Europe (and particularly, France); looking across the Atlantic in hope that Europe's countries might soon realize her strength. Not laden with the swords and shields of war and imperialism, but instead standing resolute with a torch to "enlighten the world" to democracy, the Statue of Liberty was built to be an icon of France's republican ideals. Someday, Laboulaye and his followers hoped, their country would grow stronger by recognizing her strength.

The oft-quoted Emma Lazarus sonnet obviously was not a part of the gift from France and some say it was added to the base later without the explicit approval of the congress. Lazarus in writing her poem was merely reflecting on the persecution suffered by Jews in Eastern Europe. Many feel now that the great waves of immigration of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries are over, the Lazarus poem is no longer relevant except as a historical artifact conceived and added after the Statue of Liberty had been in place for some time. The "golden door," lighting the way should no longer be fully open as it was before the bronze plaque with Lazarus’s poem was afixed to the base. It perhaps should remain ajar for those for whom a need can be demonstrated but not for all who wish to come here. The torch of freedom burns as brightly today as it did when the statue was first unveiled but it is not and never was a torch that beckons a new wave of immigrants now that America is fully developed and settled. Economic growth based solely on population growth is unsustainble.

What is Raza?

WHAT IS RAZA

"La Raza" (The Race) is a broad term which refers to those whose ancestry is indigenous to the area of Mexico (or "Aztlan"). MEChA members refer to themselves as "La Raza" or "Raza," but the term itself is used to indicate camaraderie among those in different organizations with the same objectives. There are a number of organizations who consider themselves to be La Raza.

The most visible of these groups are MEChA, The Brown Berets de Aztlan, OLA (Organization for the Liberation of Aztlan), La Raza Unida Party, and the "Nation of Aztlan" to name a few. Although the activism of these organizations vary from somewhat radical to extremely radical, they share the same objectives, the "liberation of Aztlan." Each follows the Raza manifesto "El Plan de Aztlan (sometimes called "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan"). The Nation of Aztlan, tied to La Voz de Aztlan disseminates the exact same propaganda that MEChA spreads including antisemitic propaganda. Believers in the Aztlan legend insist upon the indivisibility of "La Raza" and their common goals, one of them being the need to abolish the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There is a myriad of Raza college newspaper. Some are El Popo, Aztlan News, Chispas, Gente de Aztlan (UCLA), Voz Fronteriza (U.C. San Diego), La Voz Mestiza (U.C. Irvine) and La Voz Berkeley. It is not uncommon for the writers of these publications to refer to the U.S., as "AmeriKKKa."

Rhetoric by some Chicano educators strongly suggest Communist or Socialist leanings. In May, 2000, more than 1,200 students gathered at UCLA for the seventh annual Raza Youth Conference, which the members say promotes higher education and recognition of the Aztlan culture. Sponsored by MEChA, the year's theme was "Reclaiming Our Razas through education, resistance, and promoting the idea of remembering the historical struggles of Raza" said Erika Ramirez, co-chair of the conference. The conference drew students from 80 middle and high schools and community colleges; featured speeches by those actively involved with the Chicano community.

The keynote speaker was Antonia Darder, a professor of education and cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University and director of the Institute for Cultural Studies in Education, who received a standing ovation for her speech.

Darder described American capitalism and what she said were its impacts on racism and sexism. "I grew up in a capitalist society, a society that taught us that the greed of corporations control politics," Darder said. "Capitalism is the root of domination. Racism and sexism exist because capitalism requires it." Darder said a globalized economy forced smaller countries to give up their self-sufficiency, resulting in people migrating to the U.S. "We're here because U.S. foreign policy in Latin America has forced us here," she said.

The University of Oregon Chapter of MEChA hints at its communist sentiments by posting a picture of Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro. On its web site, "La Voz de Aztlan" has an excerpt from a speech of February 7, 1997, by Fidel Castro who said "the United States should return to Mexico huge chunks of that country's territories it acquired more than a century ago" La Voz de Aztlan, whom Antonio Villaraigosa refuses to repudiate, also disseminates antisemitic propaganda,

Apparently, these "Raza" cults are composed of people who unabashedly hate the United States and often support other groups and leaders who also hate America. Raza's hatred of America is so intense, that most make bedfellows to anyone else who also hates America, like dictator Fidel Castro; murderer of his own people Sadam Hussain; and the women hating Taliban -- and of course they sympathize with all Islamic Terrorists over the Israel/Palestine issue. Raza cults are the loudest and most insistent element of the immigration lobby in California. Inebriated with a sense of righteous victimhood, and entranced by myths of a heroic racial past, devotees of the Aztlan cults are rapidly extending their influence within California's Hispanic population, particularly among students in the university system. Mexifornia, a state of becoming.

MEChA

"Everything for the race. Everything outside the race, nothing."

MEChA Constitution says (Article II, section 1): "General membership shall consists of any student who accepts, believes and works for the goals and objectives of MEChA, including liberation of Atzlan, meaning self-determination of our people in this occupied state and the physical liberation of our land."

The acronym MEChA stands for "Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan." or "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan."

MEChA is an Hispanic separatist organization that encourages anti-American activities and civil disobedience. The radical members of MEChA who refer to themselves as "Mechistas," romanticize Mexican claims to the "lost Territories" of the Southwestern United States -- a Chicano country called Aztlan. In its national constitution, MEChA calls for self-determination by its members to liberate Aztlan. MEChA's national constitution starts out: "Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán."

These anti-American "Mechistas" live with the false illusion that they are being racially discriminated against because they are Latinos while totally dismissing the idea that maybe it is their ideology that is being discriminated against.

The Only Way Forward????

A blogsite called "The Firm Center" has advanced what it calls the "Only Way Forward". While not totally devoid of merit, I find it intensely interesting when someone professes to know the only solution or way forward on a complex problem. Some quotes from H. L. Mencken are instructive in this regard:

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong. In the United States, doing good has come to be a favorite device of persons with something to sell. Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice."

"Firm" accurately describes the great divide in immigration reform over what to do about the 12- 20 million illegals. However, it is presumptuous for him to presume that his ideas are the "only way forward". Firm shows us where his sentiments lie when refers to the process of “repatriation” as “chasing some away”.

Many who oppose granting legal status acknowledge that rounding up all12 million illegal immigrants and repatriating them is not the right approach because it fails to recognize the legitimate needs of employers for foreign workers. Few wish to take such drastic action. A more measured approach is preferable in which employers are forced to provide irrefutable proof that they have made a good faith effort to hire citizen workers at a fair wage before they can hire or retain any foreign workers. This is a workable solution but not the only one.

Firm believes the only way forward is to offer illegal immigrants temporary visas for a long-enough period – say five years – so they would risk paying a fee and gaining legal status, even though there would be no guarantee that Congress would extend their visas. Those who didn’t come forward in coming months would forfeit any hope of ever becoming a legal resident. This sounds a lot like a status quo or amnesty proposal because it rewards the illegals with the object of their illegality, the ability to remain and work in this country.

If government created this mess, as Firm believes, then we need to have ways to hold accountable those who failed in their obligations to the American people. We could begin by declaring any failure on the part of any Administration to enforce immigration laws to be an impeachable offense. Subordinates in the INS, ICE and Border Patrol would similarly be held accountable with the threat of termination for failure to perform their duties faithfully.

No one wants the status quo. To begin with we want more border security and vigorous enforcement of the laws already on the books. Then we need the process for employers in need of foreign workers outlined above; a machine-readable, tamper proof, photo, biometric ID that specifies the type of work the foreign worker is authorized to do; and finally a immigration status verification system and workplace enforcement to hold miscreant employers accountable.

Firm doesn’t get to decide who is and who is not a fair-minded advocate on either side of the debate. We should not accept an arbitrary number of foreign workers just because they are already here and because of malfeasance on the part of our government. Those who want to put illegal immigrants on a path to permanent legal status say their approach is "both realistic – since the economy depends on millions of undocumented workers and the government doesn’t have the capability of hunting them down and driving them from the country – and compassionate, because it would allow them to come out of the shadows and stop living in fear." This reasoning is questionable from several points of view. First, make no mistake about it, not just some but most of the illegals could be repatriated if the job were to be put into the hands of private enterprise. Training and initial supervision could be provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to assure that the job is done right. The identification and repatriation could be accomplished at no cost to taxpayers. The contractors should recover all costs and a modest profit from the illegals, their families, their homeland governments and/or their employers. To describe this legitimate process for enforcing the law as "hunting them down and driving them from the country" betrays Firm's biases. This is merely the the sting of justice Mencken was referring to in his quote above.

When Firm speaks of compassion, where is his compassion for American workers and American taxpayers? He doesn't say how his way forward will assure that American workers are able to get jobs at a fair wage to support their families. As Mencken points out, doing good has come to be a favorite device of persons with something to sell. What bill of goods is Firm trying to sell us? Amexico perhaps? Maybe he hasn't taken the long view at all and remains focused on a short run, shortsighted solution to a long run problem.

How Mexico Treats Illegals

A substantial number of illegals entering Mexico from the south are unaccompanied minors. Mexico's National Migration Institute estimates that, on average, 30 minors are being sent back to their home country each day: there have been 4,577 cases from January through May. Three-quarters are boys.

The rise in child migration is driven in large part by the desire to reunite with family, say observers. Like their Mexican counterparts, many Central American children have been left with aging grandparents or distant relatives, while their parents work in the US.

When a parent's economic situation stabilizes in the US, he or she will often contract a smuggler to bring the child, sometimes as young as 4 or 5, from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador – especially now that increased security along the US-Mexico border means that taking the trip is riskier.

But most of the migrants, according to advocates, tend to be teenage boys who travel without the help of a smuggler. "It's a subculture phenomenon of youth," says Nestor Rodriguez, who codirects the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston. "You migrate if you are unattached."

That's exactly how Alfredio ended up in Mexico. At age 14 he is already working from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. selling balloons on the central plaza here in Tapachula. He studied until sixth grade and knows how to read, but since he was 10 years old, he says, he has wanted to leave Guatemala, where he helped his parents raise animals on their farm. He crossed the river that separates Mexico and Guatemala six months ago, joining two older brothers who left before him.

"For me, this is more comfortable than working on the farm," he says.
Many kids do head straight to the US border on their own, but many others have ended up in towns like Tapachula. If a child was shepherded by a smuggler who's been caught by authorities, that child often gets left behind without the street smarts to continue north. Other children who've made their way into Mexico stay put for a while because their friends are there.

They often work as "little kangaroos," dubbed such because of the trays of the gum and candy they wear across their fronts. They also wash car windows in traffic, sell balloons, and do other odd jobs.

They have a 'love-hate' relationship with Mexican citizens. Rodolfo Casillas, an immigration expert at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico City, says residents have a "love-hate" relationship with the migrant children. "The feelings are conflicted about them. On the one hand they ... dynamize the economy," he says. That includes eating at markets and renting rooms that five or 10 might share.

Alfredio, for example, says he earns about $120 a month selling balloons, most of which goes to food and paying his share of the rent.

"But," adds Mr. Casillas, "they have also taken over the public space. And many feel they contribute to crime."

Migrants are more accepted now, say locals. But the perception that young migrants are making the region more violent lingers, says Carmen Fernandez, an immigration expert at the College of the Southern Border in Tapachula.

Of the migrants that the government agency Grupos Beta helps, local coordinator Francisco Aceves says that some 25 percent are children. Many are unruly. Some have escaped abusive situations, or been abused on their journeys. "There are things that come up with the minors that are very strong, very difficult," Mr. Aceves says. There is a shelter for unaccompanied minors caught in the region "but the boys that are 14 years old ... just escape."

In 2005, Mexico signed treaties with Guatemala and El Salvador to create procedures for repatriating undocumented children traveling alone to their home countries. But often a blind eye is turned, especially in Honduras where a treaty has yet to be signed. Honduran children are left at the Guatemala-Honduras border to fend for themselves and walk or hitch a ride to the nearest town, more than 18 miles away.

Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights recently issued a release condemning the migration institute for not protecting unaccompanied minors working in the streets of Tapachula.

But for Ms. Rodriguez, the human rights activist, the repatriation of children is not a viable solution. Whether children cross alone or are left by a smuggler, they often set out on the journey again. "We have to understand their reality," she says. "They work to survive. If you take that away, what can you offer? Because behind each 'little kangaroo' there is a little brother or a home he is supporting."

La Raza II

I have often posted about the shortsightedness and disloyalty of those who support illegal aliens, amnesty, and/or an increase in legal immigration. I have also used the term Mexifornia to characterize what California is becoming.

National Council of La Raza leader Cecilia Munoz clucks about Americans' "discomfort with Latinos." She and others trivialize such discomfort as arising in a "wave of hate." Munoz seems to feel that enforcing our laws is racist.If there are indeed such things as "Hispanic communities," those communities have provoked our discomfort with their repeated noisy demands that American laws be winked at and that American institutions assimilate to newcomers, especially in the arena of language. They would like us to believe that there is no need to designate English as the official language of the United States because foreigners are speaking English by at least the second generation. However, Munoz rails against making English the nation's official language because she is interested in preserving the Spanish language [as though it is not already well-preserved in almost all of Latin America and Spain].

Mrs. Munoz professes that she is only supporting legal immigration, but she is actually supporting efforts to give amnesty to more than 12 million illegal aliens residing in the United States while doing everything possible to defeat any attempt to secure our borders. Sounds a lot like disloyalty to me. She has no regard for what her ideas will mean for the standard of living and quality of life in America.

For those who object to the term Mexifornia, consider an article from the Los Angeles Times last summer ("6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence," July 28, 2006). The article quotes Alejandra, a Mexican woman, who, with several sisters, originally entered California illegally and then somehow gained legal status. [One has to wonder why our laws or those who interpret them permit those who entered illegally to gain legal status. This is at best an anachronism.]

Nearly a decade ago, the sisters fled California. As the article explains, "Alejandra and her family moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and there were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs." Thus, in Kentucky, they can "earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico." [Perhaps it won't be long before we begin to see bumper stickers in Kentucky that say "Don't Californicate Kentucky!]

Said Alejandra in the article: "What we weren't able to do in many years in California, we've done quickly here. We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken." In a word, it has become Mexifornia.

If Mexican immigrants working unskilled jobs leave Los Angeles because they don't like the effects of the mass influx from Latin America, is it terribly surprising or outrageous that Americans also dislike what's happening? And for this we're excoriated by a spokesperson for the ethnic chauvinist organization, La Raza?

[Paraphrased from Paul Nachman, et. al.]

La Raza

La Raza is a Hispanic rights organization that lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. La Raza received $15.2 million in federal grants in 2005 and actively funds the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, or MEChA, one of the most anti-American groups in the country. MEChA rejects the notion of assimilating to American culture and advocates the “Reconquista” or repatriation of the “stolen” American southwest, including Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State to Chicanos. In April, thousands of Mexican expatriates, many here illegally, and some affiliated with La Raza, MEChA and other Hispanic rights groups, joined others in a massive protest of U.S. immigration laws, whose very existence they find offensive and a violation of their rights to be in an America that they feel rightfully belongs to them.