The Fourteenth Amendment, Mexican-style

Stephen T. writes:

The 14th Amendment is less clear than it might have been probably because its authors never dreamed that it would need to be. Like many examples of beneficent European-American generosity and spirit, it was never foreseen that it would be so misused and distorted by multi-millions of persons from a culture so alien to those values, and which exists by rampant and shameless exploitation of such charity.

Let’s face it, the relatively small number of children of illegal immigrants who received 14th amendment citizenship during the previous century was a non-event. That is, until the Mexicans arrived. Squatter cultures like the Mestizos are highly opportunistic and thrive by skillfully taking advantage of weak spots (i.e., noble European impulses of generosity and inclusion), and by doing so in a force of numbers so acute as to swamp whatever self-protections may have been included in vague language like that of the 14th Amendment.

A good parallel is the benevolent—but, like the 14th, not stringently-defined—American policy of free emergency room treatment, no questions asked, for those who need it but can’t pay. My father can recall quiet weekends in the 1950s working charity cases in the county emergency room that is today County-USC hospital: The indigent childbirth, the injured manual laborer, skid row bums, etc. Just as 14th Amendment citizenship for the children of illegal aliens was once rarely availed by only a relative few, public emergency rooms were once the dispensary of last resort for citizens who, for the most part, gratefully accepted the one-time treatment they sought there, and then usually never returned. Then, the Mexicans came. The Mestizo culture’s interpretation of America’s lax medical largesse turned out to be quite different. Today, County-USC is forced to dispense free treatment—from emergency to routine preventative care—to literally millions of demanding Mexican nationals who pour in the door and back out without paying a cent and, more significantly, with a mentality that is devoid of any qualms of conscience or concern that the well-meaning system they are besieging, entirely a product of European-American values and organization, will eventually collapse under the weight of their chaotic third world numbers. And when it does fold, and the system degrades to the point that it no longer supports life (as their own country has) they simply turn their keen, exploitative eye towards the next state, and head there by the millions.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2007 09:17 PM | Send