sends this account of how he “perceived, as a new immigrant, dirt-poor and a neighbor of Mexicans in Los Angeles in 1971, that the country was headed for disaster, immigration-wise.”
I am not a Mexican hater or immigrant basher per se. I am an America basher. One cannot blame impoverished, semi-literate people for wanting to improve their lot in life by moving to the U.S. But one must condemn the selfish, greedy American elite (Dems greedy for votes, GOP greedy for profits) that has made it possible; ridicule the naive dogoodnicks who are their amen choir; and censure the soccer mom and her Dagwood Bumstead who stumble through life from 2nd SUV to 2nd mortgage on a Mac Mansion, oblivious that the very land under their feet is slowly slipping away into a demographic sinkhole.
The stupidity goes back to the 1910s, not just the 1970s. Let me give you a small example.
My mother was born in a town called Lwów. Though it had been a major Polish city and a center of Polish culture for 700 years, within hours of their attacking and taking it over in 1939, the Soviets renamed it Lvov. Within weeks of their entrance, the Russians had removed all Polish street signs, store signs etc. and replaced them with Russian ones —in the Cyryllic alphabet, which the population could not read! When the Germans pushed out the Russians in 1941, they renamed the city Lemberg, and replaced all the Russian signs with German ones. Barely four years later, when the Allies’ betrayal at Yalta had delivered Lwów into the hands of Stalin, he unloaded it onto the Ukrainians, who renamed it in their language, Lviv. And, as the Ukrainian city of Lviv it continues to this day.
If you think that this is just East-European jingoism, think again, for it is the very basis of nationhood. That’s why Lothringen became Lorraine when French jurisdiction supplanted the German one. That’s why the Celtic town Medelhan became Mediolnum in 222 CE, and since then, at various times, Mailand, Milan, and finally Milano. That’s why English supplanted Gaelic and Welsh. Now imagine that with this sort of knowledge, and a determination to master English so that you can become a productive member of your adopted country, you move in 1971 from Europe to a United States city called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula, between San Diego and Santa Barbara, and close to Santa Monica, Santa Paula, La Jolla and Santa Ana.
Right from the outset you realize brokenheartedly that Americans are too naive, too sheltered, too ignorant of what it takes to survive—as an individual or as a nation—and that reality cannot but exact the price of foolishness. But the flip side is that the basic American goodness, the enormous decency, can win friends among those who are winnable. You are won over, for nobody owes you, a foreigner with no kith or kin or pull, anything. Yet, major universities grant you scholarships. When you hurt, the county hospital treats you for free. When you need a root canal, you can get it for $12 by allowing your bicuspid to serve as the test page for the superb work of a graduating dental student. The benevolence cannot but fill you with benevolence—or does it?
I lived in one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles, in the vicinity of USC. Ironically, there were several frats on my street and, if truth be told, I felt no closer to the handsome, athletic WASP airheads than I felt to the Mexicans who were all around us. But I hated neither. And I could palpably feel that whereas to the scions of Pasadena bluebloods I was unnoticeable, to the Mexicans I, and other non-Latinos in the neighborhood, were the “other,” to be overcome, bested, or exploited somehow. There was no benevolence or gratitude there that I could discern, though the Mexican immigrants benefited from much more public largesse than I did, particularly as related to their children.
I don’t even know if these people were legal or illegal, though perhaps those who had a hard look in their eyes were the former and those with a shifty look the latter. No other look availed. They behaved with no recognition at all that they had left Mexico and were now living in another country. That they spoke Spanish is no big deal: all immigrants speak their native language within family or circle of ethnic friends. But not in public, in the presence of native citizens to whom that foreign language is unfamiliar; or, if in public, not loud. In contrast, the Mexicans, even in 1971, behaved as though they owned the place and we, the “other,” were the interlopers.
Much of Central Los Angeles, even 35 years ago, was Mexican. But one cannot blame people who speak only Spanish, fraternize only with other Mexicans, jeer the American soccer side, and shop only at Mexican establishments where the very store signs offer no clue as to the national lingua franca, if all that takes place within a nation that does not wish to survive. For the tableau for such alien and alienating conduct unfolds on Spanish-named streets, in a city that inherited its name from its predecessor Mexican pueblo, in a state that has misspent billions on suicidal bilingual education and comical foreign language ballots, in a country that—then as now—considers its international borders an embarrassing inconvenience, and prosecutes employers who enjoin their employees to speak only English on the job.
Then there is the behavior, the code of conduct. Even a European immigrant is considerably different from a native American, but he strives to adapt. I served occasionally as a facilitator for Polish or French-speaking immigrants. Both came off the boat laden with the prejudices of their native countries. But within one year of arrival, one could no longer hear homophobic or anti-Semitic comments from the former, or put-downs of America from the latter. The very wardrobe, the hairstyle, would change. But not so with Mexicans.
In my mixed residential neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, there could be no doubt as to which house was occupied by Mexicans. Goats tied to fence posts were being fattened for slaughter. My next-door neighbor had one. Dogs were sicced on each other. The decibel level of Mexican social interaction did not attenuate even in one degree to reflect the acceptable norms of the host country. Nor did the residential density-per-abode, or the number of children per household, or the number of automotive wrecks propped on bricks in the front yards. In general, it was obvious that these people did not think of their houses as their homes, and of their country as a locus of any tender feelings. It was in striking contrast to other immigrant groups.
We were not a gang activity area, but a drive two miles East or North would take one into truly foreign territory, as dangerous and ugly as many a Third World cesspool. Crime reports in the L.A. Times in 1971 differed only in quantity, but not in quality, from those you will find now. What has changed is that in 1971 the L.A. Times still knew its compass points. By 2006 it had lost its North and has become, among others, a prime enabler of Mexican reconquista. And, by now, Mexican gangs in the greater Los Angeles area number probably close to 200,000, i.e. a fifth column of 20 armed divisions, many of them with professional military training; and that’s not counting the Central American crime organizations.
The burden has been growing daily, for at least 35 years now. I witness it now from a higher socio-economic perch, and, as a California taxpayer and homeowner, a driver on California’s highways, and a visitor in what used to be California’s groves and estuaries, from a different perspective. Our home was robbed by itinerant Mexicans. I know a man—a 12th generation American—who was fired from his job as a public school janitor because he did not speak Spanish. His job went to an illegal immigrant. His small town has been overrun by Mexicans: legal and illegal but across the board loud, arrogant, and disrespectful of the laws and customs of their country. His Anglo daughters are ridiculed in school, and local law enforcement, minding who the voters are, fails to enforce the law not only with respect to immigration but relative to most areas that make life in a civil society possible.
It is beyond belief that a country has done this to itself, voluntarily, though, of course, England and much of Western Europe are in the same basket, with a different mix of willful unassimilables. And it’s not the Mexicans’ fault that we have lost the distinction between smarts and wisdom, and have no longer any recourse to the latter in guiding our affairs.
Best wishes,
Julian Niemcewicz-Cohn
Somewhere in Mexifornia