Ah, now I can see your point ....
Actual, some of this already happend with the Irish Republican Army IRA. They were able to get 'political cover' for fund raising, recruitment, and other activity in the US from naive and/or venal politicians, notably Irish ancestery politicians in the North East US - Tip O'Neil, Kennedys, etc.
This occured despite well documented complaints of terrorist activity from the UK.
The US track record on this stinks.
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Mexican immigration is now all over the US, with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii. The three cities with the largest Mexican populations are Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The division between pro-Mexican and other areas is driven more by history than latitude.
Texas and New Mexico are the most pro-Mexican, Mexicans having fought afor Texas independece from Mexico, and extensive intermarriage, business deals, etc. resulting in a population which has a near-seamless continum from one popultation to the other.
New Mexico has Santa Fe, which has had Universities since 1597. The South East corner of New Mexico is much like Texas. New Mexico has the weirdest economy of any US state, with Scientific research labs, usually for weapons development, natural resources extraction (oil, coal, uranium), tourism and welfare payments being major factors in th eeconomy. Manufaturing, finance, education are not hevily weighted.
California is more complex, having been a colony of Spain directly. There was considerable resistance when Mexico tried to assert authority over California, and to some degree, the Spainish Californians chose to favor going with the US instead of Mexico. There were political, racial and economic factors in this decison. There were a number of small waves of immigration from Mexico to California. After about 1910, there was extensive immigration into Southern California from the rest of the US - because of movies, citrus fruits and oil.
By 1950 people were saying that there were more Iowans in Los Angeles than Iowa. Iowa being a bland, boring plains state, settled by Germans, Scandinavians, and English.
Relations in Los Angeles were generally good, the Sheriff for Los Angeles county in the 1930s was Hispanic, and elected several times.
Immigration in after the 1950s created a number of problems, in social costs, labor issues, etc. California being a wealthy state, was able to bear these costs much easier than other states.
Cesar Chavez, the leader of the Farmworkers Union and the grape boycott, once threaten to have his union members block illegal immigration from Mexico by monitoring the border.
Arizona has been more hostile to Mexicans, possibly because the Indian wars went on for a long time. Many Arizonans dislike the economic costs of illegal immigration.
Florida, which has a large Cuban origin population, is not very pro-Mexican. Many Cubans dislike Mexicans. Some Cubans really dislike Mexicans.
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So most of the Sun Belt will be a mixed bag as you wrote, with Texas being the strongest pro-Mexican. I'm not sure where California will land. |
