Wednesday, May 03, 2006

You See? I Told You: Immigrant Rallies Dept.


After the amazingly large rally downtown a couple of weeks ago, where 10,000 folks showed up fairly spontaneously, the "big" rally Monday for illegal immigrants' rights was a bust. The school system reports few students left; no big crowds. It seems the main event was at a local Hispanic Church.

Of course, the big picture in the CA was the black skinned man wrapped in the American flag. And the paper repeatedly mentions that May Day is a huge holiday in Central and South American countries but doesn't tell you why. Nor explain why so few showed up if it's such a big holiday.

Money quote, from the very end of the article:
Dawn Shute, who runs the Foreign Language Immersion Childcare Center on Mud Island, said many of her workers -- all of them legal and documented -- asked three weeks ago to be off work on May 1. So FLICC organized volunteers from among its parents in order to make it happen.

"Some of them were going to participate in rallies," Shute said, "but some of them said they just wanted to be invisible for the day."
Again, for those of you who are late to the Half-Bakered party or who just react first without thought, I'm not at all opposed to immigration. I am the son of an immigrant; Quebecois, though my appearance is that of my paternal Irish great-grandparents.

I also think the US government does a piss-poor job of making it possible for resident aliens to become citizens. But the uncontrolled border to the south is a problem. The uncontrolled flood of people is a problem. The imbalance between Mexican attitudes to their emigrants and our immigrants vs. our de facto situation needs addressing and rebalancing.

In many parts of this country American culture (white, black, whatever) is being supplanted by a non-assimilating Hispanic one. That must be stopped and they must be assimilated. Or we will have problems.

Don't believe me? Look around the world at other nations with similar situations. England (Caribbean blacks), France (North African Muslims), Germany (Turks and East Germans and former Yugoslavians), Japan (Koreans, Chinese, Philippinos), southern Russian (Arab Muslims), Iraq (Kurds), Saudi Arabia (Philippinos), Mexico (Central Americans), Australia (Lebanese and West Pacific Asians). The list is long and instructive.

The lesson is clear. Slow down, absorb, assimilate, re-open. Repeat.

The consequences are clear. Ask yourself where would you like to live without moving: America or Mexico?

The coverage goes back to what I talked about in a post last week. The rallies Monday were supposed to be even huger than the ones previous. The country was supposed to be shut down, or at least annoyingly inconvenienced. That didn't happen. With few exceptions, the rallies were smaller. Rallies in Florida and the Northeast emphasised flexing the political muscle of the already established immigrant communities -- people who are working their way into American culture and political structures with an eye to finding their place. Not folks trying to set up their own parallel world on this land.

Media coverage was suspiciously light on making the follow-on connection. There's already evidence (witness the money quote above) that there's a backlash happening, which may be partly why the latest rallies made a point of waving American flags. I think the Instapundit had it right when he noted that some organisers aren't interested in anything more than creating an alienated group of immigrants and an angry group of Americans as a way to further discord. It's all about the revolution, he argues. It seems many immigrants (the legal, naturalised, assimilating kind) spotted that as well and decided not to play along.

Good for them.

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