The Bosque Boys

Farmer;

My comment is tangential at best , but short.

The notion of rapid assimilation seems to me to be a myth that plays a significant role in forming attituds and platitudes about imigrants legal ant otherwise.
Why do I say myth? Granted thoste wer different times and a different pace, but, my family tree planted itself in rural Missouri in late 1870s. They did not fully accept English as the language of the home until 1930s. As i understand the history this change was brought about by economic realities of the Great Depression - That those of my Father's generation would have to branch out from the 8 mile or so radius of German Catholics in order to earn a living. My father grew up speakng English but hs parents and grandparents grew up as German speaking American citizens who knew enough English to get by but stuck to German as the language of the home. Our National history is more diverse that our myths sometimes allow.

I appreciate the helpful anecdotal history, Photognome.

You bring up an important point concerning assimilation: it will not happen overnight--nor must it.

Who can argue that over the long haul, the United States will not absorb today's immigrants? I say absorb rather than "assimilate," for as we have traditionally understood the word, assimilation will require some intention and a change in direction of American education and political culture.

I am not sure there is a problem. While I grant that breaking the law is wrong, I would put illegal immigration in the same category as speeding on the freeway. Yes, there can be dire consequences for driving too fast, but it is so prevalent that the solution (say driving the speed limit in the fast lane) will most likely create more problems than it solves.

Another factor that contributes to the need for immigrant labor is the increased value placed on education in the workplace and by society. American workers who are most likely to be displaced by cheap labor (whether it be immigrant or overseas) tend to have jobs that don't require much training. Up to 30 years ago, a worker with only a high school education would have been able to live a modest, middle-class lifestyle. That is no longer the case and hence, bitter feelings. About 4 years ago, the grocery workers in Southern California went on strike. My father-in-law, who retired from construction, asked me why I crossed the picket line. I responded that it is hard to support an increase in wages (I recall that they wanted over $20 an hour, more hours, and more benefits) when their job could be done by the average 10th grader with a couple of weeks training.

While it is true that teenagers do not mow lawns, wash cars, and work on the farm in the same numbers as past generations, the parents of this generation have not let them idle. Instead, they involve there kids in club sports, dance lessons, and SAT/ACT prep classes.

I would be careful what you ask for when it comes to immigration reform - you may get it and not be happy with the results. Is it better to leave it alone?

Thanks, Coach.

There are actually a couple of brilliant points here worth considering in your comment:

1. Breaking the immigration laws (at least for the law breakers) must seem a lot like driving faster the 55 MPH back during the 1970s. It was a law most of us did not respect, and many of us went to all kinds of lengths (CBs, radar dectectors, etc.) to circumvent it. Eventually, the state relented and raised the limit to 70 MPH, and the law breaking dropped precipitously.

2. For all those who are happy with the current system, the GOP squabble and conservative tantrum works to their benefit. The hardliners, and this is what makes me angry, have never come to the table to deal honestly with immigration. Instead, they begin the discussion with non-negotiable, non-starter positions. Inaction means status quo. I hope you are right that that is okay--but I worry...

3. One other thing: Coach is a Southern Californian. I was at lunch today in Waco with a friend, and this topic came up. My lunch companion averred that the rest of the nation seems much more anti-immigration than the Southwest. I wonder if that is true. I can tell you this: immigration went nowhere as a campaign issue in the last Texas 17 race. And it was not for the want of trying on the part of the Republican candidate.

Photognome. Appreciate the anecdote. Two points: your ancestors knew they had moved to an English-speaking country and did not agitate to have German recognized as a language of government, to the best of my knowledge. Secondly, while German was kept as the household language (and I suppose the language of the Church), the community members learned enough English to "get by" in the outside world.

Gardener:

One quibble: the current Hispanic immigrants are not "agitating" to have Spanish "recognized as a language of the government." This is one of my biggest pet peaves (and, hopefully the subject of "Our House is On Fire.II): you are conflating the problem of immigration with our collective surrender of American distinctiveness and exceptionalism.

The pressure for multiculturalism is a wholly separate problem (coming from wholly separate sources) than immigration.

One other thing: Germans didn't need to petition for German-language accommodations because they lived in fairly insular and self-sufficient communities (in many cases). Another subject, but I think fairly similar to the current situation for many Hispanics.

And, again, not necessarily problematical for cultural conservatives.

Roger Scruton on Immigration, Multiculturalism, and the Nation State:

Someone who is in a state of denial regarding his mortal illness, his wife’s infidelity or his child’s delinquency will turn angrily on the one who refers to the forbidden truth. Likewise, a political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it, and try its best to silence them. For a long time now the [American] political class has been in denial about the problems posed by the large-scale immigration of people who do not enter into our [American] way of life. It has turned angrily on those who have warned against the disruption that might follow, or who have affirmed the right of [American] communities to refuse admission to people who cannot or will not assimilate. And one of the weapons that the élite has used, in order to ensure that it is never troubled by the truths that it denies, is to accuse those who wish to discuss the problem of ‘racism and xenophobia’. People of my generation have been brought up in fear of this charge, just as the people of Salem were brought up in the fear of being denounced as witches.
....

By denying a problem you prevent its discussion, until discussion is too late. Throughout the thirties the European political élite lived in denial over German re-armament. By the time the truth could no longer be hidden, it was impossible to deter Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia. Reflecting on such examples it is surely reasonable to conclude that we have a duty now to brave the charge of ‘racism and xenophobia’, and to discuss every aspect of immigration. We owe this not just to the [American people], but to the immigrants themselves, who have just as great an interest in peaceful coexistence as the rest of us. Here is how I see the matter:

Every society depends on an experience of membership: a sense of who ‘we’ are, why we belong together, and what we share. This experience is pre-political: it precedes all political institutions, and provides our reason for accepting them. It unites left and right, blue-collar and white-collar, man and woman, parent and child. To threaten this ‘first-person plural’ is to open the way to atomisation, as people cease to recognize any general duty to their neighbours, and set out to pillage the accumulated resources while they can. Without membership we risk a new ‘tragedy of the commons’, as our inherited social assets are seized for present use.

Membership is defined in different ways at different times and places. For many societies, religion is an important part of it, so that the infidel is cast out or marginalized, as in traditional Islamic society. Although religion has been an important part of [American] identity, it was gradually, under the influence of the Enlightenment, pushed into the background by nationality, and subsequently by the rise of the nation state. And it is thanks to the nation state that we enjoy the freedoms and secular jurisdictions that are so attractive to immigrants – and especially to those immigrants who define their pre-political membership in religious, rather than national, terms. For national loyalty is a form of neighbourliness: it is loyalty to a shared home and to the people who have built it. It makes no specific demands of a religious or ideological nature, and is content with a common obedience to a secular rule of law, and a common sense of belonging to the land, its customs and its habits of peaceful coexistence. Communities founded on a national rather than a religious conception of membership are inherently open to newcomers, in the way that religious communities are not. An immigrant to a religious community must be prepared to convert; an immigrant to a national community need only obey the law.

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE:
http://www.brusselsjournal....

I commend this very thoughtful post to everyone:

http://www.theconservativev...

Farmer,

In re #3 above, if your bathtub is overflowing and consequently flooding your entire house, doesn't urgency require you to first turn off the spicket before you start to mop up?? Otherwise, aren't you simply wasting your time? Isn't this a matter of first things first?

Tocqueville:

What if your bath tub is not full and the water is getting cold? Doesn't it make sense to turn on the hot water and warm things up a bit?

If the bathtub is not overflowing then why are my feet soaking wet and why is the floor rotting from water damage and mold? Perhaps your bathtub is magically infinite and bottomless and can hold endless gallons of water, but I think the numbers speak for themselves that our capacity has long been exceeded:

http://video.google.com/vid...

For anyone who cares to honestly confront the data, Bob Samuelson explains that assimilation will only take place if the porous borders are soundly secured:

Being brutally candid means recognizing that the huge and largely uncontrolled flow of unskilled Latino workers into the United States is increasingly sabotaging the assimilation process.

Americans rightly glorify our heritage of absorbing immigrants. Over time, they move into the economic, political and social mainstream; over time, they become American rather than whatever they were -- even though immigrants themselves constantly refashion the American identity. But no society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many are poor and unskilled. There are now an estimated 34 million immigrants in the United States, about a third of them illegal. About 35 percent of all immigrants lack health insurance and 26 percent receive some sort of federal benefit, reports Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. To make immigration succeed, we need (paradoxically) to control immigration

http://www.washingtonpost.c...

The bath tub again:

Is the floor rotting or is there merely water on the tile that needs to be wiped up with a towel? Simply the cost of doing business? The price of taking a bath?

On the other hand, the real problem is that we are having an argument (in which reasonable people will disagree) over the status of the bathroom floor while the HOUSE IS ON FIRE!

Again, the immigration challenge (serious problem? disaster?) is not our central problem; it is, in fact, merely a symptom of our disease.

Hispanics are not killing the traditional process of assimilation; the traditional process of assimilation and American inculcation is dead; therefore, new immigrants are not being assimilated properly.

The real solution: FIX THE PROBLEM REGARDING ASSIMILATION, which means educating young people to be good Americans (and by that I don't just mean patriotic and loyal--but functional citizens, who understand the essence of our national inheritance and our collective responsibility to posterity).

Farmer,

http://article.nationalrevi...

Thanks, Tocqueville. Good point. Well said.