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Caleb1411 If you can only read one book on the immigration issue, read Mexifornia ( Encounter Books, 2003), which author Victor Davis Hanson accurately desc ribes as "part melancholy remembrance of a world gone by, part detached analysis by a historian who knows well the treacherous sirens of romance and nostalgia, and part advocacy by a teacher who always wanted his stu dents to be second to none." Those students are mostly immigrants or children of immigrants from Mexic o, and Professor Hansona fifth-generation Californian who runs a family farmteaches them about ancient history and civilization at California State University-Fresno. He is also the author of thoughtful and wonderf ully readable books on military history such as Carnage and Culture: Lan dmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. In his writing and teaching he extols Western culture but shows an unders tanding of and respect for those who are first coming into contact with it. He seems like a compassionate conservativewith "compassionate" not meaning easygoing or merely sympathetic, but tough and caring enough to challenge the needy to live as people created in God's image. That's important to keep in mind in regard to immigration. Although its c ritics have often had fun with the term, "compassionate conservatism" in general is not an oxymoron, for the conservative emphasis on faith, fam ily, and the rule of law goes well with successful poverty-fighting both in biblical teaching and historical experience. But the concept is a di fficult fit concerning immigration, where some speak with all heart and no brain and others display the opposite. WORLD: You detail the nasty and often short lives of many illegal immigra nts, not neglecting "the stabbings, the drunk driving . You show how hard-working illegals c arry around cash after payday and are preyed upon by "Mexican gangsters who steal, maim and rape with impunity their own more ambitious brethren from Mexico." How can illegal immigrants gain protection against thugs? HANSON: The time-honored and true antidotes to crimecome out of the shad ows, gain citizenship, speak English, assimilate, and trust law enforcem ent. Criminals abound to prey on illegal aliens because they assume thei r victims are afraid to call the police, carry mostly cash, don't speak English, live as transients among mostly young males, and are not legal participants in their communities. WORLD: You touch on worldview questions in passages such as, "In our coll ective efforts to be angelic we can sometimes be devilish by establishin g the principle that the state is responsible for an individual's succes s or failure. Rather than confess that mankind by its very nature is prone to be murderous, sexist, and racistand that only liberal insti tutions of the West can rein in these innate proclivitieswe instead dem and instantaneous perfection of our own country and no other, both in th e present and in the past." Could you briefly lay out the religious and philosophical presuppositions that have gotten us in such a mess? HANSON: We have given our entire souls to the god Reason, and left little else to the mystery and inexplicable of the world of faith. By believin g that money and education alone can remake man, we of this therapeutic age forgot that his nature is largely fixed and hence predictableand th us saved through law, family, religion, and community that ameliorate an d tame his innate savagery. In our arrogance, we think a millionaire bin Laden or an educated Mohammed Atta is simply misguided, or has legitima te grievances, or is in need of aid and understanding, rather than proud , bullying, full of envyand, yes, eviland thus must be defeated rather than understood if we are going to save the innocent from their murdero us instincts. WORLD: You write that "almost everything stern and uncompromising that fo r two centuries has helped other immigrants to the United Stateslanguag e immersion, autonomy from government assistance, rapid assumption of an American identity, and eager acceptance of mainstream American culture has either been discounted as pass or embraced only halfheartedly." We are recovering some of the 19th-century understanding in poverty fightin g; With perhaps as many as 20 million illegal aliens from Mexico, and the immigration laws in shreds, we are reaching a state of crisis. In a multiracial society such as our own, are we to tell the Fil ipino, the Sikh, the Korean, or the Haitian, "Stand in line, come legall y, wait your turnunless you come across the Mexican border and break th e law in doing so." So, we need to return to what is known to work: meas ured and legal immigration, strict enforcement of our existing laws, sti ff employer sanctions, an end to bilingual documents and interpreters, a nd ethnic chauvinism, English immersionin other words, an end to the di sastrous salad bowl and a return to the successful melting pot. WORLD: You write about Californians' "dependence on seemingly limitless c heap laborthe Devil's bargain we have made to avoid cutting our own law ns, watching our own kids, picking our peaches, laying our tile and clea ning our toilets." You also contrast the scene at the Fresno malls, wher e thousands of healthy American teenagers are hanging out during the rai sin harvest, with the work of the "tough, lean Mexican immigrants" who b ring in the harvest. Is it impossible at this point for middle-class Fre sno parents to insist that kids earn their electronic gadgets by working in the fields? If there were not a perennial supply of cheap l abor, wages would rise, and would draw back workers to now despised seas onal jobs; something is terribly wrong when central California counties experience 15 percent unemployment and yet insist that without thousands of illegal aliens from Oaxaca crops won't be picked and houses not buil t At some point, some genius is going to make the connection that illeg al immigration may actually explain high unemployment by ensuring employ ers cheap labor that will not organize, can be paid in cash, and often r equires little government deductions and expense. WORLD: You note that "America really is endeavoring to level the playing field in one era, rather than in the traditional three generations of pa st immigrant experience, as it feverishly tries to meet ever-rising expe ctations." Yet you note that immigrants "are given every sort of counsel ing, pep talk, grievance boilerplateeverything but a real education tha t might allow them to compete with native Californians." What needs to b e done to make expectations more realistic and at the same time accelera te the ability of immigrants to speed up the timetable by learning vital economic skills rather than emphasizing grievances? We have made a good start by eliminating bili ngual education; we should follow through and cease exemptions as well, and then end government-mandated translation services and replication of documents in different languages. Take a hard look at the therapeutic c urriculum in the social sciences, from Chicano Studies to Sociology and community studies classes that impart little real literary, historical, scientific, or linguistic knowledge, but simply enhance the mechanisms t o complain about not having such advantages. Look at UC campuses' catalo gs to appreciate the seeming insanitydozens of classes on La Familia, L a Raza, low-rider art, or Aztlan, very few courses on the actual America n Revolutionary or Civil War. Something is terribly, terribly wrong, whe n the state (as evidenced recently by the UC-Berkeley quota scandal) tri es by intricate fiat and disguised mandate to increase the number of Mex ican and Mexican-American students in our universities, even as it secre tly worries that there are too many first-generation meritocratic Asians at places like UC-Berkeley and UCLA. So what is the Asian community doing that its Mexican counterpart is not? Is it family emphasis on education, a sense of separation from the moth erland, a tendency to stress achievement rather than victimization, pref erence for private enterprise rather than government entitlement? We nee d to discuss these tab...
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