You have to wonder how liberal elites at the Times wouldfeel if such problems suddenly visited their neighborhoods — drunkenillegal aliens stumbling about in the street. Driving without a licenseand insurance. Or contemplating their next violent crime?
Millions of Hispanics,mostly poor and uneducated, have immigrated to America illegally sincethe early 1990s. Most are Mexicans and most of them are high school dropouts. Comparedto what they might have had in a slum or impoverished rural area ofMexico or Central America, these immigrants have done well here.
Ithas been different story for their neighbors — middle-class Americans.For them, illegal immigration has often meant a deterioration of theirneighborhoods, public schools, and their quality of life — especiallyacross America’s Southwest.
Somehave watched their culture erode: It’s not uncommon to see Mexicanflags flying in Spanish-speaking enclaves in towns and cities fromTexas to California. This includes “sanctuary cities” like Austin, theTexas state capital, where until recently I’d lived for the past fewyears. Most middle-classAmericans are fed up with illegal immigration. They get no sympathyfrom liberal elites, however, including the open-borders elites at thatlofty bastion of American journalism, the agenda-setting New York Times.
There is some amusing liberal hypocrisy going on here when you consider where top editorial staffers and executives at the Timesand many of their affluent readers live. It’s in trendy parts of NewYork City: places like gentrified Brooklyn and SoHo and Manhattan’sposh Upper East Side. You definitely won’t find any Mexicans crowdinginto low-rent apartments in those areas, creating Spanish-speakingenclaves resembling shabby parts of Mexico.
Some Timesreaders and top staffers don’t live in the city but in the suburbs –in pleasant “bedroom communities” boasting first-rate public schools,safe neighborhoods, and a high quality of life. In exclusive towns likeWestport, Connecticut(pop. 27,000), a place I’m familiar with. It’s composed almost entirelyof very expensive single-family houses. Oh, and something else aboutWestport: It’s overwhelmingly white.
Stroll down Westport’s boutique-lined Main Street,and you’ll see mostly well-to-do white folks and maybe a few Asians.There are plenty of Mercedes and BMWs on Main Street. But you won’t seeany pick-ups racing about with an illegal alien at the wheel, drivingwithout a license and liability insurance — a common problem in Texas. InWestport, homes have not become flop houses for large numbers ofillegal immigrants. There are no menacing Hispanic gangs. In Austin,which prides itself on being inclusive, multicultural and diverse, gangactivity is surging, say police. However, Austin’s politically correct media tiptoes around the Hispanic character of gang violence.
It’snot as if Connecticut has no illegal immigrants; it does. Theworking-class city of Danbury just north of Westport — a 40-minutedrive away — is home to thousands of illegal immigrants from Ecuadorand Brazil. They comprise an estimated 20 percent of the 80,000population.
Angryresidents blame the invasion for straining the city’s schools andsocial services and lowering its quality of life. Above all, homeownersare outraged at seeing their property values decline. “They’reblue-collar workers and their whole life savings is tied up in theirhouse and they’re seeing their neighborhood being destroyed,” homeownerPeter Gadiel told Fox News.
Zoning Wall of Exclusion
So why has nothing like this happened in Westport? It’s thanks to draconian zoning rules. In Westport, apartments are all but prohibited; thereare only a handful of them. Overwhelmingly, Westport consists of veryexpensive single-family houses; the medium sale price is $1.2 million.Accordingly, housing is too expensivefor middle-class Americans to buy or rent and it’s too expensive forunskilled immigrants, too. This prevents them from gaining a footholdin Westport. Instead, they go to working-class and inclusive placeslike Danbury or to “sanctuary cities” like New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University.
Backin the mid-1980s, before illegal immigration was a problem, critics ofWestport’s zoning policies accused the town of creating a “zoning wallof exclusion.” As a consequence, middle-class people working in one ofWestport’s many office complexes couldn’t afford to live in town; theyhad to commute from less affluent towns and cities in the region.Westport’s homes also were too expensive for policemen and firemen,school teachers, and social workers.
Yetthat’s exactly what Westporters wanted: exclusivity. Accordingly, theycreated a Planning & Zoning Commission, hired a town planner, andelected fellow Westporters to that body to enforce their will: maintainthe town’s character, property values, and resist calls to allow”affordable” apartments and even condominiums.
Inother affluent bedroom communities in the northeast’s blue states,that’s how they do things. “Nobody has the right to live anywhere. Theyhave a right to earn the right to live anywhere,” aninfluential member of Westport’s powerful Planning & ZoningCommission, a Democrat, told me in June, 1985.
Iwas a young journalist at the time, writing a freelance piece aboutWestport’s lack of “affordable” housing for the Connecticut section ofthe Sunday New York Times. I was a Democrat back then, andaffordable housing seemed like a darn good idea to me, one everybodywould surely rally behind.
Yetat spirited town meetings, I was shocked to see red-faced Westportersshout and hiss at proposals to allow affordable housing and evenrent-controlled condos. Now, I think I understand: People change a lotwhen they get married, buy houses, and put down stakes in theircommunities. Some Democrats even become Republicans. I’ve known atleast two Times staffers who lived in Westport.
Inthe suburbs outside New York City, there are lots of towns likeWestport, situated within an hour’s train ride from the heart of NewYork City. They’re popular abodes for well-to-do liberals, people whoearn six figure salaries in business and finance, and even in big-timejournalism. This is not to say that there are not some open-bordersRepublican elites living in these places, too.
Memories of Westport and its affluent and civic-minded residents drifted back to me while reading an article in the New York Times: “Texas Mayor Caught in Deportation Furor.” The article was part of the Times‘ongoing “Remade in America” series on immigration, and it focused onefforts in Irving, a Dallas suburb, to crack down on illegalimmigration.
Spinning its story around an open-borders agenda, the Times portrays Irving’s residents (its white residents) as narrow-minded hicks. Yet even the Times cannotignore some of the changes that have happened in Irving due to illegalimmigration, primarily from Mexico. Residents of Danbury should payclose attention.
Backin 1970, Irving had a population of 100,000; 95 percent of itsresidents were white. Now, whites are a minority, as they are in Texas. Hispanics comprise 45 percent or more of the population of 200,000 -and according to city officials, 20 percent of them may be illegalimmigrants, noted the Times.
Hispanicbirthrates have been explosive in Irving and across the nation. Many ofthese children are the offspring from millions of illegal immigrantswhom Congress allowed to stay under an amnesty in the 1990s. Today,Irving’s future may be found in its public schools: 70 percent of kidsenrolled in kindergarten through fifth grade are Hispanic, notes the Times. More than a few experts on immigration have expressed concern that the sons and daughters of these immigrants tend to do poorly in school, and dropout up until the fourth generation. Indeed, compared to other immigrant groups, the children of Hispanic immigrant groups have the highest dropout rates, say experts.
All of which underscores that cultureis a powerful thing: It does not change easily, especially in sanctuarycities where “diversity” and “multiculturalism” are presumed to bevirtues. “The people who come here illegally across the border are noteducated people. They don’t have any culture or any respect for ours,”Sue Richardson, vice president of the Greater Irving Republican Club,tells the Times.
Americais experiencing massive levels of immigration that are unprecedented inscale and fact that many of the newcomers are from the Third World, notEurope as in the past. The impact of this flood of immigrants is thesubject of the Times series “Remade in America.” Itsunderlying theme is that America is remaking the immigrants. But that’scertainly not the case in Irving, parts of which now have the shabbylook of Mexico.
Residents Fight Back
Twoyears ago, Irving’s residents decided enough was enough; they demandedthat America’s immigration laws be upheld. Naturally, the Times is outraged.
Sowhat did all those rubes in Irving do that was so shocking? Did theygive the KKK a permit to march through town or ban people who lookHispanic from sitting at lunch counters? Have the city’s rednecks and”white trash” been racing around in pick-ups? Shouting lewd insults athapless Mexican women? Roughing up shabby-looking Mexicans? Or torchingMexican-American business?
No, it’s much worse.
IrvingMayor Herbert A. Gears — a well-known supporter of Hispanic groupsand causes in the past — did something truly despicable in what the Timescalls a “once welcoming” city. The formerly “immigrant friendlyDemocrat” ordered Irving’s police to start running “immigration checks”on everybody whom they arrested and tossed into Irving’s lockup.Suspects found to be in the country illegally were turned over toimmigration authorities and deported.
What’sthe upshot of all this? Last year, Irving’s crime last dropped to arecord-low level. And illegal immigrants appear to be steering clear ofIrving. Following the immigration checks, Mexico’s council in Dallasissued a warning advising its citizens to avoid Irving.
Yet to Irving’s “Hispanic leaders” and open-borders defenders with whom the Timessympathizes, the immigration checks are unconscionable. Irving hasabrogated a federal responsibility, they complain. Even worse, thedeportations are “breaking up families.” It’s an argument the Times highlights by focusing sympathetically on the plight of a hapless 35-year-old Mexican, Oscar Urbina.
Last summer, Urbina’s life as an allegedly model citizen unraveled when he ran into what the Timescalled “paperwork” problems when buying a Dodge Ram pickup. Urbina, itturns outs, had been using a false Social Security number sinceimmigrating illegally to America in 1993. Until then, he’d been a”portrait of domestic stability” — a man “with a nice home, a thrivingfamily and a steady contracting job,” the Times claims.
Now, he faces deportation.
Ahyes, “breaking up families:” It’s a familiar complaint amongopen-borders liberals. Yet oddly, they never seem to decry anti-familypolices in places like Castro’s Cuba. It’s a regime that’s broken upcountless families — either by tossing family members in jail forpolitical reasons, or by even killing them on occasion.
The Timesbelittles Irving’s lower crime statistics, suggesting immigrationchecks and deportations are mostly rounding up illegals guilty of minoroffenses such as identify theft. A closer look at those statisticsreveals much about the Times biases and values. As the Times itself notes:
Asof early March, of the 4,074 people whose arrest led to their beinghanded over to immigration officials, 129 had been charged with violentcrimes or illegal possession of weapons, and 714 with other types ofserious felonies. In addition, 579 had been charged with driving whileintoxicated. The other 2,625 had been arrested for lesser offenses; thelargest categories were public intoxication and not having a driver’slicense or insurance.
All in all, the immigration checks are producing some terrific results. Yet the Timesportrays Mayor Gears as being a conflicted man for having imposed sucha morally problematic policy as immigration checks. “I’m the hero ofevery redneck in America,” the Times quotes him as saying, while noting he speaks only “scant Spanish.” It’s interesting that the Times used that “redneck” quote in what must have been a lengthy and wide-ranging interview, one filled with lots of good quotes.
You have to wonder how liberal elites at the Times wouldfeel if such problems suddenly visited their neighborhoods — drunkenillegal aliens stumbling about in the street. Driving without a licenseand insurance. Or contemplating their next violent crime?
Interestingly, the Timesnotes that many of Irving’s “Hispanics” don’t vote. Well, so much fortheir civic engagement values, a hallmark of Americans whoseself-reliant European ancestors immigrated to America, learned Englishand reinvented themselves as Americans. Today, these folks are nothyphenated Americans, as are the Hispanic-Americans to which the Times refers; they’re just Americans.
Along similar lines, it’s interesting that the Timesdoes not interview one group of Texans in Irving — Americans ofMexican ancestry whose roots go back for generations in Texas; peoplewho are members of the solid middle-class and who do not reflexivelythink of themselves as hyphenated Americans. There are plenty of peoplelike that in Texas.
Social Class — not race
Why do liberal elites at the New York Timesfind it so much easier to identify with illegal immigrants than withmiddle-class Americans? Two things obsess them: race and ethnicity; sothat’s how they define the immigration debate. Accordingly, ordinaryAmericans upset over illegal Hispanic immigrants must be “racist” and”xenophobic.” Indeed, that’s how former Mexico president Vincente Fox,during a visit to this country, described Americans opposing illegalimmigration from Mexico. Fox got away with that remark until he went head-to-head with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly on the national airwaves.
Whatin fact upsets residents in Irving and other communities are issuesrevolving around social class, bad behavior, and quality-of-lifeconsiderations. Like most Americans, they expect the law to be obeyed.Illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America would be anon-issue if it consisted of an orderly flow of immigrants withmiddle-class backgrounds; people settling in the country legally andlearning to speak English. Asian immigrants have this sort ofbackground, and there is no backlash against them — and no wonder.Their children do well in school. They Anglicize their names and learnEnglish.
PresidentObama, for his part, seems determined to give 11 million illegalimmigrants, mostly poor and uneducated Hispanics, a path tocitizenship. No doubt, he believes this will again demonstrateAmerica’s “moral authority” to an audience whose opinions matter tohim: anti-Americans elites in Mexico, Europe, and the Third World. Andno matter if his immigration plan changes the nation’s culture for theworse for ordinary Americans; or at least for ordinary Americans whodon’t holler and applaud at Sunday church services when their ministeryells, “God damn America!”
Onhis recent visit to Mexico, President Obama spent much time hobnobbingwith that country’s elites. He also should talk with ordinarymiddle-class people in Latin America, outside of Mexico, to get theiropinion on illegal immigration. Most have no sympathy for gate-crashingMexicans and other illegal Hispanic immigrants.
ThePresident will have no trouble finding these folks who are solidlymiddle-class. They form long lines starting early in the morningoutside the gates of U.S. Embassies across Latin America. They’re eyesare pensive as they clutch carefully prepared applications for visasand work permits. They wait patently in the hot sun. Most will bedisappointed by the decision of the Embassy official behind the glasswindow. But those whom I’ve met vow to try their luck again some otherday.
Tothem, America is about more than economic opportunities and socialprograms. They admire America’s culture: believe it’s a place with arule of law that applies to everybody, whether you’re Kenneth Lay orMartha Stewart. And they believe it’s a place in which ordinary peopleobey little social courtesies, like going to the back of a line at abank, rather than bribing a security guard to let them go to the front;that’s how it’s done in parts of Latin America I’ve visited.
President Bush and one of his new supporters
InAmerica, you stop your car at a red light, even when no cops arearound; that’s the sort of civic culture that foreigners admire who arefrom dysfunctional countries without a civic culture. Accordingly,gate-crashing Mexicans who are deported get little sympathy from them.
Theimpact of uncontrolled immigration, especially from Mexico, promotedthe late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to pose atroubling question:
“Willthe United States remain a country with a single national language anda core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americansacquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with twocultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish).”
David Paulin is an American Thinker contributor. He blogs at The Big Carnival.