Immigrants, it's time to consider going home

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Your going to have a hard time believing who wrote this opinion piece.

Opinion: Ruben Navarrette Jr.: Immigrants, it's time to consider going home
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Posted: 11/21/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
SAN DIEGO — In the past, I've advised undocumented immigrants from Mexico to learn English, become legal, value education, refuse handouts, resist entitlement, and culturally assimilate. Now, given a disturbing trend tied to the wobbly U.S. economy — one that turns the immigration equation upside down — I have one more piece of advice: Consider going home.
Let me explain. It's not because they shouldn't be here in the first place. That's a given. Regular readers know that I don't support illegal immigration. In fact, I support speedy deportations, workplace raids, and tighter borders. I also support comprehensive immigration reform that gives illegal immigrants already here a pathway to earned legal status. There's no contradiction. You can't have conditional reform without enforcement. How would you handle those who didn't meet the conditions?
But don't expect me to sign on to the idealistic rhetoric from immigration restrictionists who think that all people in the country illegally should voluntarily return to where they came from because it's the right thing to do. Why should they? They have accomplices, after all — they came here because employers were willing to hire them. I would never be so naive as to make the argument that illegal immigrants should self-deport for moral reasons, any more than I would suggest employers turn themselves in to get right with the law.
Yet, given recent events, I am willing
to contemplate a completely different argument: that illegal immigrants should self-deport because of family reasons or, more precisely, because of family responsibility. They should leave not to please Americans but to alleviate some of the pressure that has come to weigh on relatives back home.
After all, in large part, Mexican migration is an expression of family values. The main reason that most Mexicans are here in the first place isn't for freedom or a fresh start, but simply to make enough money to send home to their relatives so that their lives in Mexico might be a little easier.
And guess what's happening now? According to the New York Times, there's a kind of reverse remittance going on where, instead of illegal immigrants sending money to Mexico, more and more poor people in Mexico are scraping together whatever they can to send funds to unemployed sons and daughters in the United States. Reporters interviewed Mexican government officials, bankers, money-transfer operators, immigration experts and Mexicans with out-of-work relatives in the United States. What they found was that, more and more often, these binational transfers of wealth are headed north instead of south.
This trend sounds counterintuitive, but it makes perfect sense in human terms. The parents quoted in the article want to do what most parents do when their kids are struggling financially — send money, at least enough for them to get a bite to eat. It doesn't matter whether those kids are under the same roof or 1,000 miles to the north.
But, as the article points out, the trouble is that most Mexicans are not in a position to be anyone's fairy godmother. Poised to lose as many as 735,000 jobs this year and with an economy that could decline as much as 7.5 percent, Mexico could be one of the countries hardest hit by the global recession. Remittances from relatives in the United States, while still a leading source of foreign revenue, have also suffered a steep decline.
In many Mexican villages, all you find are older people — many of them now working harder to earn a few extra pesos to send to children in the United States. This is, at best, a temporary solution. Folks on both sides of the border are treading water and trying to buy enough time for the U.S. economy to bounce back and for the jobs to return. At that point, they hope things will go back to the way they used to be — money flowing south.
But until that happens, why remain here? For pride? For hubris? To avoid accepting failure? For that, they're allowing their elderly parents — many of whom have worked their entire lives — to continue to work long hours, perhaps putting their own health in jeopardy? What if something happens to them in the process? It's not worth it. Life is short enough as it is.
If the immigrants who are in the United States can't afford to live here, then remaining is a luxury they also can't afford. They might not be better off at home. But their families might be. If so, time to go.


RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. is a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/c...nclick_check=1

[Twoller]

Yeah, sure. "Think about it." Because they have all the time in the world to think about it. Just sit around, think about it, soak up them US dollars and puke out a bunch of anchor babies. Because nobody is going to do anything about them being here.

[DerailAmnesty.com]

I have one more piece of advice: Consider going home. Let me explain. It's not because they shouldn't be here in the first place.

Yes, it is. In fact, that's the best reason I can think of.


... don't expect me to sign on to the idealistic rhetoric from immigration restrictionists who think that all people in the country illegally should voluntarily return to where they came from because it's the right thing to do. Why should they?

Oh, I don't know. Engaging in lawful activity might be a pleasant change of pace?

[LAPhil]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

Your going to have a hard time believing who wrote this opinion piece.

Opinion: Ruben Navarrette Jr.: Immigrants, it's time to consider going home
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Posted: 11/21/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
SAN DIEGO — Regular readers know that I don't support illegal immigration. In fact, I support speedy deportations, workplace raids, and tighter borders. I also support comprehensive immigration reform that gives illegal immigrants already here a pathway to earned legal status. There's no contradiction.

There isn't? Sure sounds like it to me.

[retiredat44]

hipocrites, the illegals are,, The Mexicans claim religious upbringing from when Spanish raped and pillaged the Americas.. when the Spanish turned all the natives into Spanish slaves,,, and Catholic religion,, then they continue of this path of theft, breaking into our country and stealing every service in reach.. they don't have an honest bone their bodies.. if they did they would not have broken into the USA to begin with,, it's the Spanish who raped and pillaged Mexico... Spain should have all the illegals shipped their,, since they love each other so much..

and maybe they should stop pumping out so many babys and anchors,, maybe some birth control... even retroactive.. like rats,, and rabbits..

[Commander Bunny]

The main problem I've found, even as far north as Oregon/Washington, is that They think that They ARE "Home" through the past few decades of reconquista propaganda taught to Them in schools in Mexico.

CB.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Originally Posted by Commander Bunny

The main problem I've found, even as far north as Oregon/Washington, is that They think that They ARE "Home" through the past few decades of reconquista propaganda taught to Them in schools in Mexico.

CB.

Sadly it is also being taught in our schools here. That's what MEChA teaches, and our tax dollars pay for it.

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

Sadly it is also being taught in our schools here. That's what MEChA teaches, and our tax dollars pay for it.

This is the main problem.

I have thought over the last few days about what it means to be American, and that our evolving culture with regional expression which, 'till the assault over the last forty years or so, has a central theme, idea, or precept to it. The idea is something like, while imperfect as all things human, moving from an ancestral newcomer who cannot pretend to be anything else than what he has been all his life to his grandchildren being melded with everyone else into "us".

However, kids with Mexican ancestry in America are told by Mexicans that they aren't Mexican, not by any means. White Americans and Brown Aztlanistas insist on calling them Mexican. Then they are indoctrinated into erroneously believing themselves to be Mexican, separate from the rest of America, by the school system. Additionally, many of them hear on a daily basis that the "white man" is out to get them.

As well, Brown separatists have been financed in their "education" by the white man since the 1960's, otherwise all those racist "Latino" professors would now be changing tires or mowing lawns while talking to themselves rather than infecting college kids with politically correct racist apartheid disguised as "diversity" and "my culture". Funding "educational" racism needs to end, yesterday.

While everyone is different, Mexicans come here being what they are, and generally conduct themselves within the context of how they might survive and prosper within the background of their home culture. Figuratively, don't leave anything laying on the ground you can pick up and use.

While it is my conviction everyone who has ever illegally entered this country of his own free will as an adult needs to be deported, I believe the real villains by virtue of exploitation to whatever end are American employers, American politicians, and so called American "educators".

All need to be taken to task (as in figuratively "beaten profusely about the head and shoulders"), and the education system needs to be taken apart and rebuilt to circumvent "educator's" political and racial beliefs and biases which are foisted on the kids. The present system seems to me to be based on much propaganda and little education.

No more propaganda. Teach kids what they need to know.