[ilbegone]

Patriots need to visit Congressional offices this August.

August is a crucial time in our efforts to fight the nation crushing amnesty that is being pushed by the political elite in Washington...

The above is the topic of this thread, the quote is from the first post. Please read the first post.

Below is a continuation of the side discussion.

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I also got the impression that in the early 1950's American farmers in California did their own work, and a plenty full supply of Mexican labor wasn't allowed.

I believe that WWII was largely the advent of overwhelming Mexican farm labor in California. The boys went to war, Mexicans filled in and when the veterans came back, with the exception of a few like Ira Hayes, they had other things to do than weed fields with short handled hoes. There may have been some small family farms hanging on by the skins of their teeth, but I believe the trend was towards accumulative agribusiness - stock holders and corporate officers don't pick strawberries.

(An interesting character named Antonio Franco in Banning Ca. was still farming on a micro scale and selling vegetables at his stand until he died a few years ago, he was over 90 years old)

Most immigrants to the United States over the centuries have come because it was better than staying where they were. I believe the Armenians came after the Ottoman genocide. The 1910 Mexican Revolution created the first large scale Mexican exodus to the U.S., the Cristero war of the late 1920's likewise drove hundreds of thousands of Mexicans across the border, which created the first significantly large Mexican population in California (The Californios originated as a 1769 military expedition ordered by the King of Spain to colonize unexplored territory in order to counter Russian expansionism - they were a different people and a different discussion). The 1982 devaluation of the peso created a human tsunami from Mexico, the 1986 amnesty farce made it worse. The Mexican cartel killing fields are a current pressure.

Elena's father came as an orphan teenager from the Bajio (by the legal standards of his time), I'm not sure if he was a refugee. In any case he never had any desire to return to Mexico. If Ruiz's parents had complained about their life in the U.S. to Elena's father, he would have softly asked them why they didn't simply return to Mexico. Which would have shut them up because they would have to admit that Mother Mexico failed them and threw them out of the house. However, from across the border Mother Mexico scolds her children for neglecting her in their exile, and a loyal child never badmouths his mother.

Ruiz himself is another story. He probably never could have achieved what he has professionally and as an "activist" if he were not Americanized. Mexicanidad scorns Chicano bullshit, very few - if any - Mexican nationals would be inclined to feather up in purported Aztec costume to denounce Plymouth Rock in person. If Ruiz were entirely and typically lower class Mexican in his outlook (as most failed by Mexico are), he'd either be working a menial job or trying to make a fast, easy buck rather than becoming a physician and politician. In short, Ruiz is what is called a "University Mexican", an American pretender to "Mexican-ness".

Therefore, it is he and those of his mindset in partnership with exploitative employers who keep people like his parents in poverty. Being open borders he and his buddies create the Durovilles with an oversize foreign labor pool (drives down wages to rock bottom), then make themselves heroes by funding subsidized housing for farm workers, welfare subsidization (the kids may be the purported reason, but the money goes to the parents), other subsidization like utility discounts and free school meals while blaming victimization on the white boogeyman - and propagating the myth that nothing was ever accomplished in the U.S. without a Mexican doing the work.