MY PERSONAL PEEVE

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here it is straight. I don’t like the way the subject of immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular is being framed for political discussion or debate.

As most of my closest friends will tell you, I seldom walk away from an argument and sometimes I’m even accused of provoking one. However, I’ve seldom used these columns to complain. This week is an exception.

Some weeks ago, one of my readers sent me an email describing what took place at an “Immigration and Overpopulation Conference” held in Washington, D.C. back in 2004. Readers were assured that this conference was attended by some of the “finest minds and leaders in America”.

One of the attendees included Dr. Victor Davis Hanson who had authored a book entitled Mexifornia in which he wrote about the eventual domination of the Golden State by Hispanics who have little or no loyalty to our culture or our nation.

Another attendee was former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, a Democrat, who, after listening to Dr. Hanson’s presentation of an inevitable takeover of California by an “uneducated, criminal and disloyal class of Hispanics”, stood up and gave his own “stunning” speech entitled “I have a Plan to Destroy America”. His plan was composed of eight distinct parts. They were:

1. Remake America into a bilingual and bicultural country
2. Convince this minority that they are victims of the native majority
3. Celebrate diversity rather than unity by substituting “the melting pot” metaphor with “the salad bowl” metaphor
4. Insure the establishment and growth of an undereducated class
5. Create foundations to finance such minority victimhood
6. Establish duel citizenship and thus divided loyalty
7. Make any criticism of diversity taboo
8. And of course, ignore Dr. Hanson’s book.

Governor Lamm supported his contention that an influx of foreigners would destroy America by citing the history of Greece and Rome. The citizens of those two societies stopped thinking of themselves as part of a larger culture and reverted into city-states. Greece and Rome fell long before the advent of mass communication, something which can bring people together rather than isolating them. Modern America faces the challenge of increasing numbers of “citizens” rather than social isolation. Hence we have a conference of frightened men and women who devoutly believe that America’s future is threatened based on their fear of an influx of foreign-born “criminals” and “traitors”.

Any objective reader of American history knows that, along with our golden virtues of enterprise and generosity, we possess a seemingly inbred xenophobia especially when it comes to Catholics, southern and eastern Europeans, Jews, blacks and Hispanics. An objective reading of history also reveals that our ancestors established our own domination of this continent by poisoning, outtrading, betraying, and murdering the large Native American population who lived here before us.

Therein lies the irony. Politicians in 2008 insist that a government of laws is the greatest antidote against the seemingly inevitable “mongrelization” of American society. They tell us that Democrats are willing to import immigrants illegally to obtain likely voters and that Republicans encourage illegal immigration for cheap labor and both are willing violators of the law. Thus they insist we need better laws and law enforcement and perhaps a good fence.

I suggest that we go to the root of the matter. We’ve got to stop isolating ourselves from folks because they’re black or Hispanic. We imported the Irish to die during the civil war, we brought in the Chinese and Japanese to build our railroads and we brought southern and eastern Europeans to work in our factories and mines because it was to our national advantage. It’s clear that we possess a superiority complex. It’s pretty obvious that we regard ourselves as superior because we’re Americans and thus are “God’s favorites”.

I don't contend that one hundred years hence America will be the same as it is today. Remember that most of America’s “founding fathers” were rural land owners, owned slaves, and had a much narrower world experience than most high school students possess today. Our founders couldn’t even begin to comprehend either the best or the worst aspects of life in 2008. In short, we’re in no better position than our forefathers were to predict what people will prefer a century from now. Certainly we do our current constituency no favor by frightening them with our nagging worries and prejudices as to the real motives of immigrants—legal or illegal.

I’ll gladly put my love, pride and regard for America out for comparison with those who insist that Americans are superior to all other human beings because of our political system. I heartily agree that our political system is the greatest ever conceived and constructed before or since 1787, but history clearly demonstrates that our moral behavior has very often fallen short of the ideals on which our laws and political system are based.

Finally, I can assure anyone with whom I ever come in contact that when life is over, no one, absolutely no one, will enter Heaven just because he or she was born a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. I will also assert that if God grants humans in some distant time the capacity to establish a society even greater than America’s, only a fool would stand in His way!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY