Re: I said at the time of the marches, the organizers screwed up big time by allowing the marchers to carry Mexican flags. The backlash will be big.........
With signs announcing "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us," the demonstrators are likely to turn off more Americans than they win over.
Excerpted from:
Message 22312728
The above excerpt points to another crucial difference between Hispanic immigration in the US and (North) African immigration in Europe: unlike Europe's nonwhite immigrants, most Latinos, especially Mexicans, feel historically entitled to settle across the US border! As they put it, it's the border that crossed them... following US wars of conquest and annexation in the XIXth century. Somehow, Mexicans fancy themselves as North Americans whose forebears settled Mexico, California, Texas, Florida,... well before the Anglos barged in --hence the area's Spanish toponyms: Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Diego, Orlando, San Antonio, you name it. Mexicans feel like Arab Israelis in Israel: any Jew from New York or Amsterdam who relocates in Israel will enjoy a superior status/citizenship than Arab natives who've been dwelling in the country for generations... Likewise, any Brit or Irishman or blond, blue-eyed Swede who fancies the American Dream will be more welcomed in Texas than the wetbacks next door....
Europe's immigrants can't use the same rationale --Europe's borders never crossed them or, if they did, they eventually rolled back (in Algeria, Turkey, Cyprus,...) Hence the lingering "guest complex" of most nonwhite immigrants that keeps telling them that they don't really belong....
Gus |
