The Washington Post has a new blog called "Stumped" in which Andres Martinez, a former LATimes editor (who'd been forced out in an ethics scandal), answers people's political questions. One question was whether recent legal immigrants resent illegals. Martinez said, basically, no, they just love 'em. Here's the answer I posted:

Of course American citizens of Latino heritage generally support a future replete with more and people of the same race and culture--especially if that includes Uncle Hidalgo and Aunt Dolores. This is simple tribalism, and all humans share this trait. That's a far simpler explanation than your spin-stuffed exegesis. And as Einstein observed, explanations should be as simple as possible (but no simpler).

You are also correct (to a point) that the Latino voting bloc is now so large--courtesy of two previous amnesties--that neither party leadership dares ignore it. OTOH that's hardly a moral argument.

But our southern border has several other virtual signs you failed to notice-- "Safety valve for Mexico's kleptocracy" being the most significant. Mexico's ruling class keeps half of the country's populace in dire poverty, due to their hogging so much of Mexico's rich natural resources. Meanwhile the Catholic Church's opposition to all forms of birth control has resulted in Mexico's populaton exploding from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million now--far more people than Mexico's economy can absorb.

So according to you, America has to take the fall for the problems Mexico created all on its own. And that "help wanted" sign you allude to was posted there by America's ruling class--the prime beneficiaries of this mostly unarmed invasion. I don't need my lawn mowed by illegals. And I'm happy to pay a dime more for a head of lettuce--which is about what it would cost.

We force skilled workers with advanced degrees and a good command of English to wait a decade to come here while you advocate on behalf of unskilled workers who speak no English, and whose children are less likely to learn fluent English than any other immigrant cohort in American history.

Meanwhile American unskilled workers with a high school diploma or less have seen their real wages cut by a quarter because their bosses use illegals' labor as a club to cut wages and bust unions.

But you don't know any Americans with just a high school diploma, do you?

Your selective focus bespeaks an ethnocentric orientation all too common in today's Democratic Party and the academic sector. Mexican peasants are the new Negroes, taking on the mantle of the noble Rousseauian savage at one with nature. At the same time you dismiss the complaints of Anglos as simple racism, nativism, and other namecalling epithets.

But when you correctly observe that our exploding Mexican and Mesoamerican population is a potent voting bloc, you fail to couple that observation with the fact that you can only pander to this group by alienating the vast majority of America's indigenous--that is, born here--population. And calling us names will only silence a few of us.

Remember when Bush and our "Democratic" Congress conspired to jam what your side propagandizes as "comprehensive immigration reform" down our throats?

It didn't fly because those Congressmen heard from their constituents. What you insult as "nativist" is simply our love of our own culture.

I've been to 14 foreign countries, mixed with the locals, eaten the food, learned some of the language, gone scuba diving and done other forms of adventuring across four continents. In fact I speak Spanish, have studied at the University of Mexico, and am quite comfortable in Mexican society. This invasion doesn't gore my own ox particularly. Who gets hurt is Joe Lunchbox. But I come from Scots-Irish peasant stock myself--including a father with a 7th grade education--and I understand how these folks feel when their TV station turns into a Telemundo branch and their corner market becomes a Carniceria and their grundge rock station starts blasting Tejano. In large swaths across the American Southwest it isn't multiculturalism we're getting. It's ethnic cleansing, with a kind of American Quebec coalescing under our noses.

Your side is likely to win, since your side represents a Devil's bargain between Big Business, Latino racialists, the Catholic Church, and the Democratic Party leadership. Along with various far-left organizations.

All we've got is 80% or so of the American people and Republican pols awkwardly trying to balance their Big Business donor's demands for more illegals against their consitutents' demands for less.

So that's tough odds, I realize. But we'll do what we can.

BTW when you do take the Southwest back from us...will you return it to the Indians you stole it from? When I hear Mexican advocacy groups talking about how the Southwest is really theirs, I never hear them mention this. Ask a Navaho what HE thinks of such claims sometime.

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You can see the whole thing here.
(http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/2007/12/can_bush_hatred_end_a_friendsh.html)