When I was 19 years old I packed up all my belongings and left New Jersey for Los Angeles. The only work experience I had was working in a grocery store and as a bus boy. It was 1989 and the economy was entering into a long slump that would eventually cause President Bush his job. I held four jobs while I lived and went to college in LA. I worked at Au Bon Pain as a busboy, at Cafe 50’s as a waiter, at a deli in Westwood called Breadstiks, and at a retail store at the Santa Monica Mall. But to land those four jobs I had to apply to over a thousand classified ads.
The types of jobs I was qualified for were being taken by Mexicans, and Central and South Americans. But I learned an important lesson. I was a lousy employee. My first priority was my studies, my second was meeting girls and hanging out with my friends. The Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Brazilians I worked with had no higher priority than work. And they worked hard. They taught me what little I know about having a work ethic. As for the employers, they saw it too, and they vastly preferred to hire hispanics because they were more reliable, had better retention, they didn’t complain, and they worked hard. In my experience, they didn’t pay them any less.
But apparently Pat Buchanan thinks the nation is imperiled by hard-working immigrants (and believe me, the legality of their immigration is a secondary issue for Pat):
What are these Bush Republicans afraid of? Dirty looks from the help at the country club?
:::flip:::
Pat goes on to say:
Where is Bush? All wrapped up in the issue of whether women in Najaf will have the same rights in divorce and custody cases as women in Nebraska. His legislative agenda for the fall includes a blanket amnesty for illegals, so they can be exploited by businesses who want to hold wages down as they dump the social costs for their employees — health care, schools, courts, cops, prisons — onto taxpayers.
And, finally, Pat proposes an extreme remedy:
Well, we are being invaded, and the president of the United States is not doing his duty to protect the states against that invasion.
Some courageous Republican, to get the attention of this White House, should drop into the hopper a bill of impeachment, charging Bush with a conscious refusal to uphold his oath and defend the states of the Union against “invasion.”
It may be the only way left to get his attention, before the border vanishes and our beloved country dissolves into MexAmerica, what T.R. called a “polyglot boarding house for the world.”
There are legitimate concerns about illegal immigration. It is a difficult issue to tackle, both politically and pragmatically. But Buchanan’s racism is so obvious that it overwhelms any legitimate points he might have.
At this point, I don’t think Buchanan should be employed by any cable news channels, and I don’t think he should be invited to be a guest either. He is just a flat-out racist.
It’s good to know that the set of people calling for impeachment is broadening. But his rationale for impeachment is grotesque.
We need to have a dialogue in this country about the effect of illegal immigration on wages, the health care system, and the education system. But Pat Buchanan’s demagoguery should not be a part of that conversation.
Pat should go work for that asshole in Crawford. They’d get along great.
….
Say, what does everyone think of what Bill Richardson did in New Mexico — meeting with the governor of the Mexican state across from NM, and asking him to bulldoze the deserted border town that is a refuge for illegal drug activities and for illegal immigrants?
I watched the story on CNN (I think) this weekend … they only interviewed one white guy who lived immediately across from the town that was bulldozed — it’s visible from his property. He was pissed. He feared repercussions. (But he could be a anti-Richardson Republican too … the reporter didn’t say.) They didn’t interview any other residents of New Mexico.
I can see why Richardson wanted it bulldozed. It’s completely deserted and the drug dealers/immigrants use the buildings for cover.
But I wondered too if that was the most politically sensitive thing to do.. it instantly reminded me of Israelis bulldozing Palestinian homes (of course, those are inhabited).
P.S. What do you call residents of New Mexico? New Mexicans?
Our nationality isn’t in any way meaningful without enforcement of our borders. I don’t think deporting illegal aliens is in any way a racist policy position. It is – in fact – the law. One can argue the issue of how many legal aliens we wish to allow in, but to cede deportation as a means of enforcing immigration laws is to invalidate immigration law altogether. This is – unfortunately – the policy position Bush appears to have taken. –M
and our drug policies make no sense if we don’t control drug smuggling. It doesn’t work.
We can’t put our army on the border or march on Mexico City as Pat demands.
We also can’t deport 7 million people. I’m open to constructive ideas, but Pat doesn’t have any.
Oh, I don’t think he’s seriously suggesting that the US invade Mexico as a solution to the immigration problem. That’s just rhetoric.
As for troop deployments, given our current situation we certainly can’t guard our national border because Bush has already over-deployed. IOW: he’s deploying troops to wage his war overseas instead of holding our borders. Not that I think Buchanan’s rhetoric claiming that illegal immigration in any way represents a real military threat from Mexico. But he is right that we’re not defending our borders. And yeah – why not – if we had the troops to deploy should we not use them to prevent illegal immigration? Is that so wrong?
As for deporting 7 million illegal immigrants… can we not do this for practical reasons, or are you suggesting that it should not be the policy of the US government to deport illegal aliens? –M
that from a cost, humanitarian, political feasibility, standpoint we can’t do it. It would rougly approximate the deportation of European Jewry in size, and have a lot of the same outcry.
It just can’t be done.
Hey, cabana boy. Bring me an iced tea.
An excellent idea, in fact: impeach Bush.
As for the rest, you are absolutely right. Buckminster Fuller wrote about this more than thirty years ago. At that time the prevailing wage in south Texas was maybe $2 or $3 an hour. The prevailing wage across the river was something less than a dollar a day. Fuller wrote that there was not enough military force on the planet to enforce a border with that kind of wage differential. What Fuller wrote is as true today as it was then. There is no military or law enforcement solution to our porous southern border. There might be an economic solution with the right kind of governments on both sides of the border. Unfortunately, we don’t have the right kind of government on our side of the border, and I don’t think the Mexicans have the right kind on their side either.
Buchanan’s comments WILL be part of the equation, sadly – presumably he still has an audience out there.
Nobody likes change – whether for good or bad. We all feel secure in the status quo. But our status quo is not the same as someone else’s. So other people have other motivations.
‘Having it so good (as never before)’ as Harold Macmillan put it, is a cue for inaction. Or eating too much.
‘Changing the game’ (Kaos Pilots) is what this is all about.
How do you sell change?
Because nothing else is neeeded more right now, The world cannot go on as it is. Change is needed, and people are so goddam afraid of change…
In regards to: “What are these Bush Republicans afraid of? Dirty looks from the help at the country club?” They are not afraid of a thing, them we should fear. Fox has played with bush on this subject…. Bush is soon to speak on Identity theft, add the problems at the border, ID card/chip to the rescue. the bush republicans want nothing less than a police state here in America. The police state is pretty much here, announcement to come, with next staged event.
Yes, well, living in one of the identity theft hot spots (Michigan), I can say that the dangers aren’t “ellos que hablan espanol”, either. Identity theft is real, but it is a complete straw man with respect to people crossing our Southern border.
Since I’m renting in a country club development, I have the privilege of watching the hard-working Latino landscapers every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Now I’m growing a home craft business of my own and I’m on duty around 13 hours a day X 5, and I’ll put in 8 or more hours on a weekend as well. Being at home I can swing past a blog to comment a few times a day, but I can’t conceive of having the time to write a diary.
I’ve worked 10 hour days on 6 day shifts in construction, carpentry and boatbuilding. In every labor job I’ve had, one of the first thing older workers would do was to show newbies who looked green some tips about how to survive hard work over the long haul. I may owe a toothless W. Va. ex coal miner my actual life, for cautioning me to wear my dust mask when cutting concrete. Not for that job–for the boatbuilding job that came next, where I had to handle loose powdered asbestos for putty thickener.
So before I get too excited about the productivity of our immigrant laborers, the first thing I want to see is some stats about their health and longevity. Then let’s look at the time they have to invest in their families for their children’s future.
From what I gather–casually, to be sure–about health, education and crime stats among immigrant labor groups, I’m suspicious of what we’ll find.
If the stats satisfy me that they and their families are contributing to society and benefitting it as we all know they should, by all means, bring ’em on. But my suspicion is that they’re Walmartting themselves and their families, causing all kinds of harm that we’ve known to prevent among our own communities and families for a century.
We need immigrants, we’re an immigrant society. But we need to be fair to our citizen workers by ensuring that work is humane for our incoming immigrants as well.
First the humanity, then the market competition.
Well, we all seem to agree on one thing: it’s a conundrum. The construction industry has been taken over by immigrants, starting in the early ’70s in LA, and slowly moving North. They are hired for the same reasons they were in the food service industry: most work.
I’ve worked with people from different areas of Mexico, El Salvador, and Columbia. They were tradespeople, an electrical engineer, and an architect (who finally got his California license).
Legal or undocumented, America is still a magnet for people who, other than Canadians, want to live in the most democratic nation in the hemisphere. So in some sense, we’re looking at the problem – as usual – from the wrong side of the border.
We could formalize the de facto neutral zone extending a few miles into the U.S., and roughly 20 miles into Mexico. In essence move the official border crossings back to those lines, and mutually patrol and police the zone itself.
Where the two countries differ in rights and responsibilities, negotiate terms. Let the market work from there. (One of those terms would be application of all U.S. labor and environmental laws).
Making that zone dual-control would require much more cooperation and coordination between law enforcement agencies. Also provide a secondary buffer between illegal crossings in both directions.
Just a thought.
Back in the mid 90s I worked with many “illegal immigrants” in an agricultural situation in N CA. All hard workers, reliable, and 8,10 or more hours per day, well, “no problem”. And no hesitation to loan me a few bucks if I was short prior to payday.
IMHO, much of CA agriculture would cease to function without these “immigrants” and possible several other industries, such as lumber, with which I am less acquainted. So who is kidding who here?
And then with real wages in the US compared to Mexico running a factor of some several times. (7, according to the welder’s wages in CA vs. Mexico.)What are you going to do, build a Berlin Wall on the Mexican border? Unless Mexico’s economy improves greatly they will continue to emigrate one way or the other.
I would think there has to be some way to document who’s who and allow work permits of some sort.
There’s “illegal” and there’s “immoral”. The more serious hazards these people face crossing the border now fall into the latter definition.
fear-riddled, hate filled and phobic whack job whoshould have had his media plug pulled by MSNBC long ago. The idiocy of his “fortress america” isolationist dogma is so absurd it’s beyond description, a certain recipe for economic and social disaster in America if ever he got his way.
As for the tricky subject of immigration itself, without getting off into a too long and too complex spiel about it, I just want to say that it seems apparent to me that the government in general will not ever really attempt to control the borders too completely for the simple reason that we need lots of “illegal immigrants” to do all those low paying and thankless jobs that most of us are either no longer willing to do or no longer able to afford to do.
I’ve long thought that one of the main reasons we’ve sought to keep many of our close neighbor countries to the south relatively poor is so that we’d always have a ready supply of desperately cheap labor.
As illegals pour across the border, which could be Iraqis/terrorists. Or Bin Laden family members(ooops they get top military treatment from the bush family. As illegals could be carrying bio weapons or suitcase nukes. Americans need to go through a no-fly list check, and possible strip search. At airports, and possibly on trains, or subways. Bin Laden is free, are we ????
Bush should be impeached for this, as well as the failures of 9-11, as well as fixed elections, as well as lies to the American public, as well as outing a CIA agent(who exposed his Yellow-cake lie), as well as the Iraqi war. Let’s not forget his stealing from taxpayers to give to the corporations and war contracters, as well as huge tax breaks for the rich. His attacking/sliming of desenters and whistleblowers does not sit well with me either. His appointments of convicted criminals to high positions, should do it as well. His attacks of TRUE PATRIOTS as America Haters should be good enough as well.
Where is Main Stream Media, ?? Let’s deal with them as well, for their corrupt and immoral behavior.
Where is our Senators, ?? Let’s deal with them as well, for their corrupt and immoral behavior.
Buchanan makes this remarkable statement;
but I guess he doesn’t realize that the overwhelming number of people who actually commit any of these crimes against Americans are in fact other legal, born and raised Americans themselves.
Also, while he laments the amount of tax dollars being spent as a result of illegal aliens, (an ugly term), he conveniently fails to acknowledge that the Bush regime’s tax giveaway to the wealthiest 5% of the country, combined with his huge taxpayer gifts to his pals in pharmaceuticals, weapons manufacture and the oil and coal and timber industries eclipses what will need to be spent in relation to illegals over the next decade by several orders of magnitude.
I can’t recall a single viable solution Buchanan has ever proposed for any problem.
in certian places that no one wants to think about or admit that exist.
up his ass about preserving the US as a Protestant country ever since I remember. This is just more of that obsession.
His cry to protect the pure whitey Americans from being “assaulted, robbed, raped and murdered, and having their children molested” would be really funny if it didn’t have the potential to whip up so much violence. Ask the next illegal migrant worker, cleaning lady, or busboy who is getting assaulted, raped, murdered, and molested, and by whom.
Actually (and someone please correct me if I’m wrong), I thought Buchanan was a Catholic.
of course. His background is Catholic, and he went on record praising the dictator Franco of Spain as the “Catholic savior” or something close to that. And yet his rhetoric reflects the old American “protestant ethic” with its sense of entitlement for those of European descent. His hostility to the rest of the variety of people makes no exception for Catholics originating elsewhere.
Anyway, I intended to bloviate about his allegiance to a puritan worldview, but then went on a detour somewhere along the way. Thanks for pointing it out.
The only answer to this problem is to help Mexico and other Latin American countries reform their political and especially economic systems to the point that Mexicans (and other Latin Americans) would find it feasible to stay at home with their families and develop their own country. They’re not coming here to enjoy the weather – they’re risking their very lives out of sheer desperation. From everything I’ve ever heard, I’m sure my great-grandparents would rather have stayed in Italy and Poland, if it was feasible.
The alternative is a massive structure like the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall in England, or the Korean DMZ that would likely bankrupt the government to build and enforce.
Throughout history, any time you’ve got economic and political disparities across a border this happens. Rome had exactly this problem with folks coming into the empire across the Danube – they eventually had to naturalize them all and give them the province [I believe it was Thrace (modern Bulgaria)? Booman will know. They also used the immigrants to reinforce the army, as wealthy Romans had no interest in enlisting – sound familiar?]
Sooo much cheaper and wiser to just do the right thing and be a good neighbor and offer a real hand of friendship, but it seems that’s never been our policy regarding Latin America, so I’m not holding my breath for it to start anytime soon.
I fully expect we’re going to take exactly the approach Rome did – the cheap and lazy way out. Call it human nature; virtuous behavior is rare and fleeting.
(He said, while chopping his California produce for dinner, picked by guess who…)
Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson seem to think the United States has a divine right to invade other countries or to murder their leaders. It does not.
Neither expects the children of the rich to risk their lives belling cats. That’s what the poor are for.
People in other countries do not like being invaded or having their governments overthrown. Some of them fight back, as do those who sympathize with them. They fight back asymmetrically so we call them terrorists. The United States does not know how to defeat terrorists, only how to increase their numbers.
He knows that the job market being what it is, that pushing fears of immigrants will gain him some popularity. Problem with that is, the job market problems are not all the fault of immigrants. People in India don’t live here, don’t buy here, don’t spend their money here and don’t vote here, but they have a hammerlock on customer service. But they also are a foreign face in what was an american job. Probably some folks can’t distinquish between immigrants and outsourcing.
Indeed, Buchanan is a right-wing populist and a fairly effective one and here he’s appealing to one of the more disgusting aspects of the American character which is to single out a specific demographic in the bottom 20% of income earners, blame them for the results of conservative economic policies and claim that they destroy or wish to destroy the social fabric.
The most recent demographic this happened to was single mothers/deserted wives trying to raise children by themselves and the results of that little experiment in ‘personal responsibility’ can be seen in the rapidly deepening child poverty rates but I will resist that rant this morning.
The thing is that what Buchanan is doing here is echoing and voicing the opinions of most of the conservatives I know. I can’t say how many conversations I’ve had lately about the terrorist and economic threat of people who speak Spanish as their first language. There are a good many people in this country who are violently opposed to the notion of the US changing from something other than a majority white population. I think the whole illegal immigrant business (minus any mention of who is profiting from their labor, of course) will become a major theme in elections for quite some time to come. And don’t get me started on Lou Dobbs…
Just today in a local forum I said immigration and illegal aliens will be the poster boy for Repubs to beat up on.. Buchanan is one of several trial ballons (altho a loose cannon at that)
In other words, for the white folks. Remember, he’s the guy who galvanized opposition to the Republicans in 1992, with his convention speech in which he promoted a culture war.
And then there is Molly Ivins unforgetable comment on Buchanan’s 1992 speech: It sounded better in the original German
Buchanan has been flacking his anti-immigration views for many many years. Anyone who thinks of Franco as a model leader for a country should be getting laughs of derision and not taken seriously – think Lyndon LaRouche, etc.
Dork Buchanan. This is just boiler plate bloody flag racism under a cloak. He’s floating the trial baloon for one of their code-word issues. None of these “Immigration Issue” people know anyone from Latin America, their American kids, the wry jokes they make about their own patriotism, or the way they’ve made their own way in the world.
Eh,
Pat has his faults, but its a (ridiculous) stretch to call this “racist”.
Yes, most of the people breaking the law and illegally settling our country are hispanic. That’s not because of their race, its because they’re the poorest population in walking distance of to us. But its still breaking the law, it still has many negative impacts on the quality of life of average Americans. Do you honestly think Pat would be pro illegal immigration if it were millions of say, Irishmen? It would still be illegal, it would still have the same exact detrimental effects. And Pat would still be against it.
Sure, many of the illegal immigrants are hard-working. Does that make it okay to ignore the law? Many of the legal immigrants are hard working too. Their economic livelyhood is also undercut by the cheap (exploited) labor.
If our industries really need cheap labor to exploit at below-market wages — they can seek legal remedies. Now, its a bit ironic that the great infallible system of capitalism is claiming it has to resort to illegal workers to avoid paying the prevailing market wage of legal workers — so much for supply and demand.
And yes, illegal immigration is different from outsourcing. But on principle, its the same — American workers getting screwed by industry willing to exploit a low wage workforce unprotected by anything approaching US labor laws — safety, fair hours, fair wages, etc.
So, why exactly should we “liberals” embrace breaking the law?
Isn’t the law what we’re relying on to protect the stuff we really believe in — civil right, abortion rights, voting rights.
Besides, throwing up our arms and saying “gee, its too hard. Just let them come” is a ridiculous strategy.
If the concerns are for cheap farm labor, or other economic reasons — demand we increase the legal immigration quotas.
If they are moral concerns — well, more than just the people of Mexico are poor. Like say the people of India and China. I don’t see much sympathy for those foreign people taking white-collar jobs from Americans via outsourcing. But they are just bettering themselves, too, through hard work.
Here’s a reminder: We are Americans not just because we sit in the lower 48, Alaska, Hawaii, or the US territories. America is more than Geography. Because we’re born into it, its so easy to forget that once upon a time America was a conscious choice — to reject an essentially comfortable life for a life of true freedom, to come together as a people in defense of shared principles and to forge a new country.
As Americans, we still have a primary responsibility to … Americans.
That doesn’t mean we turn our back on the world. The world affects us too. An aids ravaged Africa, powerless women of the middle east, poverty — these all affect us as citizens of the world.
But America exists to take care of Americans, first and foremost. And that’s just as true for we progressives as it is for people like Pat Buchanan.
To declare otherwise is to impose our own personal morality as being higher than the Constitution of America. That’s a religio-fascist nutjob position. I hope to hell it isn’t “ours” too.
As Americans, we still have a primary responsibility to … Americans.
As a human being, my primary responsibility is to other human beings.
Personally, I have a hard time feeling much resentment towards illegal immigrants to the US because I’ve been trying for years to emigrate to one of the freer, more civilized, and more prosperous countries myself. The problem, though, is that they’re all reluctant to accept Americans in any case, and they definitely prefer rich Americans to middle- and lower-class ones. I know what it’s like to be in a country you love and have the natives sneer at you as an foreigner, regardless of your being willing to work hard, obey the laws, and serve in time of war — especially when that’s more than many of the natives are willing to do.
Except perhaps for certain classes of day labor, the strategic advantage that Mexican immigrants have in the US economy is not a willingness to work for sub-minimum wage. I haven’t found many instances of that, though to be fair, overtime isn’t paid very often. Mexicans living in the US on low wages live in the same dire conditions as US citizens living on low wages, compounded by, more often than not, sending a big chunk of their checks back to their families in Mexico, where they have real poverty.
What gives the Mexicans an economic advantage is their willingness to cooperate. It’s the same advantage that many groups of Asian immigrants have as well. They’re willing to live in groups of family and friends in cramped conditions, saving their money until they can afford to buy houses and start businesses and send their kids to college.
Poor white Americans, having largely discarded their extended families, rejected savings and embraced unnecessary debt, and refused to do a lot of the hard work that immigrants have been only too willing to take over, have suffered as a result. Most of the complaining about immigration comes from people who lived for a long time behind the barriers of trade protectionism, doing unskilled labor for artificially high wages. Unskilled labor, particularly at the low end of the demand scale, is simply not a stable way to make a living, immigrants or no, and to expect that one can continue to live that way, insulated from normal economic and population fluctuations, is not a stance that deserves a lot of sympathy.
Sorry,
I usually agree with your posts, but this one is more propaganda than fact.
Tell the “poor, irresponsible, debt-ridden” southerners, westerners, and northerners in the construction industries who’ve seen their $17hr wages drop to $8.
Softheaded liberalism won’t win elections. Hell, it doesn’t deserve to.
If you can’t recognize a greater responsibility to Americans than the people of the world, you’re a nice person, but a lousy American. Its not an either-or choice, you know. But if you honestly think of yourself as a citizen of the world first, an American second… nah, I don’t buy it. That’d be like saying your home state should put all its needs and concerns on the backburner and send the bulk of its money and attention to the federal govt. That’s just being willfully silly. Your state takes care of its needs, and contributes what it can, even when it hurts, to the feds. If anything, I’ll bet yuo’ve even complained about all the money your state has sent to the feds that could be better spend locally.
As for you wish to become an ex-patriot, more power to you. I notice you’ve chosen to wait, go through the legal channels, and wait your turn.
What if your turn never happens, because your destination has no need for legal immigrants — maybe illegals will give them everything you’d hope to offer, but for less, because you’re just a lazy good for nothing compared to those hardworking industrious illegals willing to do anything for any length of time just to make a buck and avoid the authorities…
There’s a difference between supporting your fellow man, and sacrificing yourself for him.
There’s a bigger difference between supporting your fellow man, and sacrificing the livelihood of a countryman you consider ill-educated, lazy, burdened with (in your mind) fellow countryman.
But hey, it doesn’t affect you. Heck, if you leave, no American job will matter, right?
Damn, I never thought I’d see the logic of the anti-contraception crowd espoused by a liberal. You’re willing to sacrifice the economic livelyhood of your spendthrift fellow Americans because you wish to do what you feel is most moral, and help the poor hardworking illegal immigrants out. And they’re willing to sacrifice the reproductive self-determination of their promiscuous fellow Americans because they wish to promote good moral values.
Damn, Eodell. Please tell me that’s not seriously what you think. Don’t tell me you’re buying the corporatist propaganda that these are “jobs American’s don’t want or can’t do”. For heavens sake, white collar jobs are jobs ‘American’s don’t want to do’ if they’re paid a fraction of what they were just a decade ago.
There are ways to help the plight of the poor. Tacitly encouraging them to illegally come here isn’t the most helpful way.
Or, if as a “citizen of the world” our responsibility is to all people equally… well, by that logic, we shouldn’t just quit opposing offshoring, we should damn well volunteer for it. We should make sure every job, white or blue collar, goes to the cheapest (poorest) laborer, no matter where in the world they are. Brilliant.
Lets see… you managed to patronize lower-middle class and upper lower-class working people, implied only illegals want the jobs that 10’s of millions of Americans citizens gladly perform each day, and sided with the needs of the world over the needs of America. Why exactly isn’t that position a “liberal elitist” one?
Or was your post just a knee-jerk defense of the poor and downtrodden illegals? I mean, you end it with a whole paragraph of attacks on strawman-Americans, filled with your own special moral and economic superiority.
Either way, man, you’ve just become a right-wing stereotype of a liberal. Sheesh. Just when I was so sure we could prove that progressives bear no resemblance to that awful cariacture.
Anti-Mexican sentiment made a lot more sense to me, unsurprisingly, before Mexican immigrants reached where I was living (TN at the time) in large numbers. But then, there is always an instinctual tendency to fear the unfamiliar.
Once I found myself around Mexican immigrants all the time, my concerns faded. For the most part, they all seemed like decent, hard-working people, and in most cases, the run-down neighborhoods they moved into improved drastically. The anti-immigration crowd likes to paint the Mexicans as somehow parasitic, but as far as I can tell, most of them are here to work hard, stay out of trouble, and otherwise build better lives for their families. Those are exactly the kind of people you want in your neighborhood. If the Mexicans back home are like the ones that have come here, I say open the damn borders.
In my neighborhood, it’s not the immigrants who are running clandestine meth labs, burglarizing homes, breaking into cars, and vandalizing property. That’s mostly white teenagers, most of whom probably belong to the undereducated, alcohol- and meth-addicted white underclass that constitutes Pat Buchanan’s fanbase. Buchanan’s stance is particularly weird considering that he almost certainly has more in common with the Catholicism, family-orientation, and work ethic of Mexican culture than he has in common with the lower-class white rabble he has made a career out of rousing.