Sam B. has sent the following letter to Linda Chavez about her
. (I myself have not yet read the article; I’ll have to “get in the mood” for such an unpleasant task.)
Sam B. wrote:
Dear Ms. Chavez:
With regard to your article “The Realities of Immigration” in the July-August issue of Commentary Magazine, I decided to send this letter to you rather than to the Letters column, thus saving valuable column inches for those whose responses will be far more telling than mine. But I’d like to offer an inventory of home truths. (For those interested in Ms. Chavez’ article, log on to the current issue of commentarymagazine.com):
I have been a reader of Commentary ever since 1948, when I was three years out of the army and Commentary itself was some three years old. So, as you can see, I go back a way. (A narrative of the magazine from its liberal to its neoconservative days would be a bit of a bore.)
I have resided most of my life in the Los Angeles area, that is to say from approximately my early teens (the 1930’s) to the present, long enough not only to have seen changes, but, alas, to have experienced them. Little has been for the better—and this, largely due to illegal immigration.
I must compliment you. Your article in Commentary is a virtuoso performance of statistics and artful sophistry. Intended to disarm the opponents of open borders, it carries the force of the (Bush) administration’s position more effectively than the administration itself does. Its problem, however, is that it’s a view not from Arthur Miller’s “View from the Bridge,” but from the Potomac.
In Ernest Hemingway’s one-act playlet “Today is Friday,” set in first century Judea at the scene of the crucifixion, three Roman soldiers share their thoughts about the event in which they have been not unimportant players. At the end of that long day, one of the soldiers says to the other, “I feel like hell [about what happened]”; the other responds: “You been out here too long. That’s all.” I don’t wish to compare your stay in the Washington DC area—and quite a long stay it has been!—to those “long-suffering” Roman legionnaires. But if President Bush’s position on immigration has put you “on the spot,” I might suggest that perhaps you have “been out [there (DC)] too long.”
Long enough, indeed, that you have lost all sense of the “realities” you so scholarly and abstractly discuss. Below I have itemized some of these realities, realities which have affected the lives of those of us who have lived a lifetime in Southern California:
Higher taxes. The closing of emergency rooms and community hospitals, my own community hospital, Brea Community, closed since 2003, thus forcing those who need (rush) emergency services to be driven or ambulance-ridden to the next ER down the road, a delay that may cost a patient’s life. Clogged freeway traffic. An increase of hit-and-runs. Freeway car chases. Gangs. The gradual replacement (in many areas of the city) of English signs with Spanish. The large number of high power kilowatt a.m. Spanish language radio stations that overwhelm the dial, to the detriment of English language radio stations (fewer of them). Unscreened contagious illnesses (TB on the rise).
My late wife’s maiden name was Martinez. Unlike yours, both my wife’s parents were Mexican, having migrated during the Villa-ista troubles, not economic “refugees”, but war refugees.
My wife was born and grew up in Los Angeles. Three of her four brothers served in the armed forces of the US. One served in the Navy during World War II, another, also in World War II in what was then the Army Air Corps. (He was killed when his plane went down during training.) Another served in Korea just prior to the outbreak of the Korean War. All in her family, though they deeply loved their Mexican heritage, always, and without exception, saw themselves as Americans, graduates of Garfield High School in East Los Angeles and later of USC and California State University L.A. respectively. To them, (if I dare speak for the dead) insidious organizations like La Raza would have been anathema (that same racist organization that your and the President’s good friend—I understand—Karl Rove is to address at their national convention).
So, as you see, Ms. Chavez, this is not a “race”—or “restrictionist” (your word)—issue. Rather, I, and many who think as I do, see it as a cultural-economic issue; even more importantly, an issue of national security and our very sovereignty. (Reports of Al Qa’eda cells forming cross border and entering as “Hispanics,” replete with “ethnic” names are rife.)
You mention “the daily drumbeat coming from radio talk show hosts.” How airily—and arrogantly?—you dismiss a media that’s proved an antidote to the general liberal mainstream media! Those talk shows are driven by calls from the People, Ms. Chavez, if you hadn’t heard, including concerned Hispanic Americans. They do so because they have been impacted by their realities [sic], not the abstract view of them from your ivory tower above the Potomac.
But you refer to those talk-show hosts and/or anyone opposed to President Bush’s aspirations (open borders/thinly-veiled amnesty) as “restrictionists.”—mentioned some eight times. Perhaps you were tempted to use the word nativists, except that would be too obviously a case of ad hominem
You used the term comprehensive twice, a term that the open borders crowd is only too fond of—actually a cover term for legalizing what we have for long considered illegal, a sanctioning of the invasion. (I don’t place that word in quotes as you should have placed “guest workers”).
The final paragraph of your article:
“As jarring as many found the recent pictures of a million illegal aliens [!!] marching in our cities, the fact remains that many of the immigrants were carrying the American flag, and waving it proudly. [Only the day earlier they were waving a virtual sea of Mexican flags—until their “leaders” advised them to “cool it“.] They and their leaders under- stand what most restrictionists [sic!] do not and what some Americans [Some? How many?] have forgotten or choose to deny: that the price of admission to America is, and must be, the willingness to become American.”
(How quickly you elided the term “illegal aliens” into “immigrants!” a common practice of open-borders advocates)
“The willingness to become American”? In your learned article that phrase is mocked by the present reality. Where East Los Angeles was once the home of proud Mexican-Americans (How my wife hated the hyphenation and scorned even more the neologism Chicana—pace the very real discrimination of the “zoot suit years”!) today, a walk down Whittier Boulevard in the vicinity of Indiana Street, not far from the (formerly named) Ruben Salazar Senior Center, you won’t notice many American flags, but you will, the occasional Mexican flag.
In spite of your thorough background in immigration, Ms. Chavez—and it’s impressive!—it can hardly compensate for living here, working here, and seeing the changes this over-burdened state is suffering through—clogged freeways, crime, closed hospitals. But then how can someone, “out of the barreo” (for how many years?) know of such matters when she’s “been out there” (Washington D.C) for so long? You have permitted your ethnicity to override your first priority—the safety, welfare, and integrity of this country!
(Signed)