Welcome To Nuevo America
I hate to be the first “or the last” to tell anyone that this the truth of the immigration situation situation, but this article in today’s Chicago Tribune tells the story. It’s all over now. The United States of America is (as Adam said to Eve upon leaving the Garden) about to experience some radical, fast-moving changes.
The Mexican invasion has succeeded. This Taco Bell is never going to be unrung. They are here and they aren’t going back again. They won, we lost, and not a drop of blood was shed. Get used to it. Even Victor David Hansen understands this. Hansen also says we use weasel-speak when we talk about it. We are afraid to tell ourselves the truth.
They are rubbing our noses in it. Monday they will demonstrate. The nation will notice and things will tilt a little more izquierda from the political pressure. Who’s fault is it? You and I must find a mirror to understand that. It’s our fault.
We collectively created a low-price, low-wage society which still attracted people who saw our low wages as high and who wanted what we have. Well, my friends, they got it. We have enjoyed the low prices at Wal-Mart, cheap car washes, and cheap hamburgers at the fast food joints and it has been fun. It’s been addictive and without them we will suffer.
As it turns out, it wasn’t all that cheap. All it cost us was our country, and we paid it with a smile on our faces while saving all that money. In insisting that the lowest price spread was the only one we would buy and the fact that the lowest priced spread was therefore needfully produced and delivered by Mexican illegals what was going on was, well, ok with us. We are all conspirators in this plot. Now we have the Spanish Language National Anthem. What’s worse, I kinda like it. It’s pretty and has corazon.
Building a wall, putting up fences, digging a moat, whatever we do, this isn’t going to change. We aren’t going to deport 12-15 million people from the USA that do jobs we won’t or can’t do. What’s worse, now among white people, Anglos who speak Spanish and English well are more valuable and paid higher than monolingual people. The work force of today has demanded bilingualism in management and those who can’t offer that stay labor.
To put it all in perspective, in 1955 the average wage for the average American was $3000 per year. That’s 50 years ago. In today’s dollars adjusted for inflation that’s about $22,000 per year. Lousy pay by today’s standards. But in 1955 only half the homes in the US had TVs (which got one channel), a third didn’t have indoor plumbing, 20% had no phone (today we see families with a half a dozen cell phones), 55% owned or were buying homes (66% today), and nearly 20% of the USA lived in poverty (less than 10% today).
50 years ago Mexicans weren’t clamoring for jobs in the USA because the pay at the bottom end of the scale was pretty desolate. Besides, there was a ready and exploitable work force they would have to compete with: the black man, displaced farmers (think Grapes of Wrath), and itinerant workers. They clamored for those low-pay jobs. There were also many European immigrants coming to America after the war looking for any kind of work, along with people from China and southeast Asia. We had immigration, the gates were open, we needed people and we controlled our borders.
That all stopped in the last 20 years ago and we began to “regulate” immigration. We wanted to only bring people in who could provide upscale services (computer programming) that was not readily available in the American work force. We stopped importing common labor and a deficit began to develop. Anti-poverty government entitlements corrupted the poor to the point they no longer wanted (or needed) to work. Thanks to the futile war on poverty we now have a country ripe for the pickings for an illegal immigrant alien.
Like I said, it’s all over now. They didn’t win, we handed it to them.
Here are the changes that will take place.
The clock cannot and will not turn back. We will never again go back to how it was in 1950. This labor force will eventually become gentrified and then the cycle will start again.
We (the USA) won’t actually look like Mexico but we won’t look like the USA you know today. They will become like us as much as we will become like them. We are going to adapt to them as much as they adapt to us.
President Bush has the right idea with this worker visa stuff. I’m not going to try to outline and defend it in detail here but I am convinced that his solution is the best we can hope for. I had joked about invading Mexico once. I’m not joking about this. Let’s get behind the guest worker program, new levels of very hard to counterfeit documentation, make all illegals go to the back of the line, get the borders under control (maybe we can hire these new guest workers to do this) and lets get stasis rather than free-fall.
Arguing about trying to build a fence which will only seal in all the illegals already here is foolish. I met an illegal a week ago. I speak some Spanish. He told me he came because he knows the program is going to go into effect. The rush is on to get here and be here when the full stop takes place. Then, get documented and you can go back and forth at will between Mexico and el Norte.
I know many men who are on this side of the border who cannot risk going back to Mexico because they fear they won’t get back in to the USA to work. One man I know has been here for 7 years, earns about $35,000 as a construction worker and sends most of it home to take care of his wife and 3 kids the youngest of whom is 8 (he hasn’t been home to Mexico for 7 years).
So things are going to change. Not all change is improvement, but there is no improvement without change. And this will be change. The Great American Way, alas, I knew ye well.
Goodbye to the old, hello to the nuevo.
