New York Times columnist criticizes Arizona's anti-illegal immigrant law!

Big shock, huh? This time it's Timothy Egan, their guy in the West (Seattle, apparently), who spent many words heaping scorn on those knuckle-dragging angry racist xenophobic nativist restrictionist old white guys there, all of whom are stupid idiots because all of them have stereotyped views about other peoples and talk about them in epithets (unless it's people like Mr. Egan talking about everyone who disagrees with him, in which case doing all those things is apparently justified). His column was titled "Desert derangement syndrome."

My reply (which is #83 in the response thread):

This is a well-written example of associative thinking--that is, assigning guilt to an idea by associating it with other ideas that the author presumes readers will find wanting.

His most telling phrase was this: "...young people, business owners and retirees who are not afraid of the demographic change washing over America."

That's such a delicate way of putting it. What he means, of course, is the displacement of American culture, language and people with Mexican culture, their language, and people.

Nor, in his literary evocations of places and people, did he reference these dry facts:

1. In 1940, according the the United States Census, Latinos of every sort accounted for 0.5% of the United States population.

2. Today that's around 14% and rapidly growing.

3. The vast majority of these are people with a high school education or less, are practising Roman Catholics, and have a much higher birthrate than the general population (along with a much higher teenage unwed mother birthrate).

4. In 1900 Mexico's population was 13.1 million.

5. In 1940 Mexico's population was 20 million.

6. Today Mexico's population is 111 million--eight times what it was in 1900--almost entirely through high rates of reproduction. Mexican law and practice regarding family planning generally conforms to Catholic Church proscriptions against abortion, and the use of any form of birth control device including condoms. Right now a 10 year old girl in Quintana Roo who'd been raped by her stepfather is being forced to carry her fetus to term, as local Catholic Church authorities demanded.

7. The United States general population has quadrupled since 1900--much through immigration, both legal and illegal, with a number of amnesties (each promised to be the last one ever).

8. In 1986 Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for illegal aliens (that's the official, legal term for citizens of other countries residing here illegally. It granted 1.7 million people--mainly Mexicans--legal status in this country. Reagan promised that this would be the last amnesty, because new enforcement provisions would stop future illegal immigration.

9. Today most sources say there are at least 12 million illegal aliens here--mostly Mexican, secondarily other Mesoamericans. There could be many more, because America lacks a universal ID system, so no one knows for sure.

10. Current proposals for another amnesty promise that this will be the last amnesty, because new enforcement provisions will stop future illegal immigration.

11. American voters have never had the chance to vote in a referendum on how they feel about any of this. However, anti-illegal-immigrant measures in many states--even strongly Blue ones like California--have nearly always passed with large majorities--large enough so that many Democrats had to have voted for them--and even about a quarter of Americans of Latino origin/descent (based on exit polls concerning anti-illegal immigrant initiatives on California ballots).

12. Unemployment among Americans who are unskilled laborers (including many Blacks and Latinos) is currently much higher than unemployment in general--probably around 20%.

13. During the time period of much higher illegal immigration (corresponding to the Reagan amnesty of 1986 and forward), real wages of American unskilled laborers have declined 5-25%, depending on region (corroborated by liberal economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman).

You may or may not like these facts, but they're all just that--facts, all of which can be independently corroborated through multiple sources.

The only question is what to make of them.

My suggestion:

1. America needs immigrants who have skills and/or assets America needs.

2. America does not need immigrants who lack such skills and/or assets.

3. Illegal immigrants as a group overwhelmingly lack such skills and/or assets.

4. America isn't luring Mexicans here; Mexican overpopulation is pushing them here, due to Mexico's incompetent and destructive social policies, dominated by a religion that doesn't care about the consequences of its policies here on Earth.

5. Mexican overpopulation is Mexico's fault. We didn't do it. They did it to themselves.

6. There is no moral justification for demanding that ordinary Americans accept the radical demographic changes Mr. Egan demands that they accept. America has a rich, diverse culture influenced by many nations and cultures. In the Southwest all that is being displaced by monolithic Mexican culture, Religion, language and practices. They call it La Reconquista, and they're correct.

7. On the contrary, it is immoral for Mr. Egan to honor Mexican culture while dishonoring American culture. Every nation has a culture. It changes over time, usually. Ours certainly has. But this isn't change--it's replacement. That's what happens when such a huge number of people from one culture move somewhere else.

The Southwest is becoming America's Quebec.