Re: Nice theory Gustave. It's a little skewed by distance.
All right, how about Pr Victor Davis Hanson's viewpoint? He's in the thick of it:
Do We Want Mexifornia?
Victor Davis Hanson
[...]
Census data show us that median household income by the mid-1990s had risen for a decade for all groups, except for the nation’s Hispanics, whose incomes dropped 5.1 percent. Although recent immigrants from Mexico and their U.S.-born children under 18 now officially make up only 4.2 percent of America’s population, they represent 10.2 percent of our poor. When you add in longtime residents, Hispanics account for 24 percent of America’s impoverished, up 8 percentage points since 1985. The true causes of such checkered progress—continual and massive illegal immigration of cheap labor that drives down wages for working Hispanics here; failure to learn English; the collapse of the once strong Hispanic family due to federal entitlement; soaring birthrates among a demoralized underclass; an intellectual elite that downplays social pathology, claims perpetual racism, and seeks constant government largesse and entitlement; and years of bilingual education that ensure dependency upon a demagogic leadership—are rarely mentioned.
[...]
Mexican-Americans never experience the physical or psychological amputation from the mother country that most other immigrants to California found, after thousands of miles of seawater cut the old country clean off and relegated it to the romance of memory. But the Mexican immigrant can easily recross the Rio Grande by a drive over a short bridge. A limited annual visit or a family reunion nourishes enough nostalgia for Mexico to war with the creation of a truly American identity.[*]
For Mexican immigrants, the idea of Mexico has shifted from a liability to an important benchmark of ethnic pride in the last two decades. A visiting Mexican soccer club playing almost any American team will find in our local fans a home-crowd advantage—despite being 1,000 miles from home. Mexicans in California turn out to vote in booths set up in California for local and national candidates in Mexico, who come up to campaign in Fresno every year—and often learn to their dismay that California’s Mexicans are among the sternest critics of Mexico City’s endemic government corruption.
Instead of growing more distant, a romanticized Mexico stays close to the heart of the new arrival and turns into a roadblock on his journey to becoming an American. Many immigrants die as Mexicans in California, never seeking to become citizens.
[snip]
city-journal.org
[*] Mexicans' homesickness is exactly similar to Europe's North Africans's. It's likewise easy for Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians living in France, Spain, Italy,... to travel back home once or twice a year to meet their kith and kin. |
