Mexican Immigration: Special Challenge

Mexican immigration is a test unique in United States history. That's because of the scale of the immigration, because of our common border with Mexico, and because the American Southwest was once part of the Spanish empire and, for twenty-four years, part of an independent Mexico.

In1820 the Spanish governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila granted land to an American citizen, Moses Austin, to establish an Anglo-American colony in a rough, wild part of his state known as Texas. Ten years later, after Mexico had won its independence from Spain (and after many changes of government in Mexico City — coups among the Creole elite), a new Mexican President decided to clamp down on the 30,000 Anglos living in Texas among about 4,000 Mexicans.

It was too late. The Anglos rebelled and won their independence after a vicious war. Nine years later, the United States' invitation to Texas to join the Union triggered a U. S. war with Mexico, the scope and intensity of which few Americans grasp. U. S. troops occupied Mexico City. The war cost Mexico two-fifths of its territory. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the U. S. the California and New Mexico territories in return for $15 million and forgiveness of debts Mexico owed the U. S. (1)

The Mexican War has consequences in 2006 that it did not have just twenty years earlier because of heavy Mexican immigration over the past two decades:

The more historically valid the Mexican claim that 'vast portions' of the Southwest constitute their 'homeland,' the more dicey it is to allow such a large chunk of immigration to come from Mexico. True, the fabled 'Reconquista' is hardly a real threat now. But who can guarantee what future generations will think? Irredentism is the source of conflict and killing around the globe. Why should the U.S. be permanently immune? Simple prudence might tell Americans it's best if there 's a mix of immigrants and if the vast majority of them can't possibly think they're coming back to their own former land. ("Irridentism," Mickey Kaus, Kausfiles , Slate.com , April 8, 2006)

It is Victor Davis Hanson's warning: "Too many, too quickly, from one place" expanded thusly, "Too many, too quickly, from one place, with grievances."

I have just read Texas and the War With Mexico (1961) by Fairfax Downey. From the foreword: "We in the United States may have forgotten the Mexican War . . . but the Mexicans have not forgotten it."

I could well understand why the Mexican elite have not forgotten and why there might be more than a little animosity in the Mexican government's systematic and comprehensive efforts to undermine U. S. immigration laws, sovereignty and culture — a detailed account of which is Mexico's Undiplomatic Diplomats, by the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald (City Journal, Autumn 2005). A sample from my notes on Mac Donald's essay:

MEXICO AGGRESSIVELY PROMOTES THE TEACHING OF MEXICAN CULTURE AND HISTORY IN AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

...Mexico's five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the "Mexican nation extends beyond . . . its border" — into the United States. Accordingly, the government would "strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and the teaching of the history, values, and traditions of our country."

The current launching pad for these educational sallies is the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior. The IME directs several programs aimed at American schools. Each of Mexico's 47 consulates in the U.S. . . . has a mandate to introduce Mexican textbooks into schools with significant Hispanic populations. The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles showered nearly 100,000 textbooks on 1,500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year alone [2005] . Hundreds of thousands more have gone to school districts across the country, which pay only shipping charges . . . the consulates try to ensure that students actually read the books. L.A. consulate reps, for instance, return to schools that have the books and ask questions. "We test the students," explains Mireya Magaña Gálvez, a consul press attaché. "We ask the students: what are you reading about now? We try to repeat and repeat."

For a capsule summary of Mexico's interference in U. S. internal affairs see veteran foreign correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer's "Mexico's Plan Puts American Values to the Test," Universal Press Syndicate, April 3, 2006. Brief notes:

MEXICO STRIVES TO KEEP ITS EMIGRANTS — U. S. CITIZENS OR NOT — FIRMLY LOYAL TO MEXICO:

...what is happening with illegals in America . . . the refusal to become American while demanding all the rights of committed citizens, the desperate hanging on to "Mexicanness" — is not accidental. It is the result of careful and cynical plans on the part of the Mexican government to develop its own constituency inside American society — and to keep it forever Mexican.

...the vast majority of Mexican immigrants won't ever become Americans in their hearts because their government goes with them wherever they go. There are now upward of 45 Mexican consulates in the U.S. that keep immigrants demanding ever more . . . privileges of "El Norte."

OBJECTIVE: OPEN BORDERS:

Immigrants are used as a political wedge to demand more guest worker programs of Washington and to fight border control in the name of some utopian (but unworkable and dangerous) open-borders plan for all of North America.

Is today's Mexican campaign to expand its culture and population northward and to interfere with U. S. immigration law and undermine U. S.

...our focus is on the immigrants as individuals. Thus our leaders talk about illegal immigrants as "good dads," "hard working folks" seeking to better their lives and their family's prospects. In fact, this is not about individual immigrants and their families, legal or illegal. It is about a great national migration, a nation of people moving into our nation's land, in order to reproduce on it their own nation and people and push ours aside. ("The Second Mexican War," Feb. 17, 2006)

If war is defined as "any hostile course of action undertaken by one country to weaken, harm, and dominate another country," then Mac Donald, Geyer, Auster and others muster compelling evidence. Moreover, war of a cultural and demographic kind could prove at least as consequential. Thoughtless immigration policies now threaten European civilization. See While Europe Slept  (2006) by Bruce Bawer.

What of the latest skirmishes in this "second" Mexican War?

The Internet is providing remarkable footage. The organizers of the immigrant rights rallies of late March gave little thought to the effects on viewers of seeing abundant Mexican flags — a mistake not repeated in early April:

The Stars and Stripes outnumbered Mexico's El Tricolor in Sacramento Monday as thousands of local demonstrators joined immigration protests nationwide . . . many of the protesters proudly displayed both flags. In earlier demonstrations across the country, the widespread waving of the Mexican flag triggered barbed rebukes from commentators who questioned the allegiances of the marchers. "The student brandishing the Mexican flag signals divided loyalty or perhaps loyalty to a foreign power," columnist Robert Novak remarked on Fox News March 29.

Responding to such criticism, protest organizers have encouraged their people to defuse the issue by displaying more U.S. flags. ("Unity's theme at Capitol as more U.S. flags flutter," Sacramento Bee, April 11)

Rally organizers must have watched CNN's Lou Dobbs Report, which took note of the Reconquista spirit animating the March rallies:

Lou Dobbs: There are some Mexican citizens and some Mexican-Americans who want to see California, New Mexico and other parts of the southwestern United States given over to Mexico. These groups call it the Reconquista, Spanish for Reconquest . . .

Christine Romans: ...Aztlan [mythical home land of the Aztec Indians: the U. S. Southwest] has long been the provenance of the radical fringe. A lot of open borders groups disavow it completely. But the growing street protests in favor of illegal immigration, Lou, are increasingly taking on the tone of that very radicalism . . . (three-minute video)

The Mexica Movement , a Reconquista web site, has an extensive "Photo Summary" of the March 25, 2006 rally in Los Angeles. Don't miss Part 2, towards the bottom.

Among artistic productions in reaction to the rallies, the four-minute Aztlan Video has the edge. It combines closeups of rallies with voice overs of prominent Mexican-American Reconquistas.

For more indicators on the Reconquista movement — from a Zogby poll on Mexicans' belief that the U. S. Southwest is theirs to billboards placed throughout Los Angeles by a Spanish language radio station proclaiming the city Mexican to statements by high Mexican officials that the nation extends beyond its borders, see "Immigration and Schools, Part 5: Action."

Endnotes

1) Was the Mexican War a just war? Some notable Americans thought not. Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln voted for a 1848 declaration stating that the war was "unnecessary and unconstitutionally commenced." The vote cost him reelection. Ulysses S. Grant, a veteran of the Mexican War — where he fought alongside future adversaries Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis — would write in his Memoirs (1885) that the Mexican War was "one of the most unjust ever waged on a weaker country by a stronger."

Wherever the Mexican War lines up on some absolute moral yardstick, however, it may have been inevitable:

The important fact is . . . that in the 1840's the United States was a young, growing nation eager to thrust westward to the Pacific . . . It was inevitable that the trappers and traders, the farmers and land-hungry immigrants living on the edge of the vast unsettled frontier should move ever westward in search of new land. These people believed in expansion, and they were prepared to fight for it . . . and they were willing to fight Indians or Mexicans or British or anyone else who stood in their path. (Texas and the War With Mexico by Fairfax Downey, 1861)

Follow-Up

The History Channel has produced a scholarly, yet gripping 4-DVD documentary history of Mexico (200 minutes), "Mexico: A Story of Courage and Conquest" (1999). It's a superb, balanced account of the troubled history of this very important next-door neighbor of ours. I recommend it highly.

Tom Shuford [email protected] is a retired public school teacher living in Lenoir, North Carolina

Published April 17, 2006