Most Americans see first-hand the disastrous impact of illegal immigration on our wallets, wages and culture. The annual entry of over one million illegal aliens from around the world, over 30 percent of them Mexicans sneaking across our southern border, obviously undercut homeland security efforts. Yet more Americans must understand that Mexico?s government, far from being a friend, is actively working to subvert our country?s laws and political institutions.
Not since the heyday of expansionist Soviet communism has there been such an organized effort to undermine our nation.
If our borders are not controlled and immigration law enforced, will we truly be a ?United States? in another 10 years or a completely balkanized, multicultural society with English downgraded as the common tongue?
The Mexican government promotes reconquista in the Southwest. Isn?t it obvious in many areas that Mexicans are pushing out Americans, refusing to speak English and establishing de facto Mexican enclaves? On March 24, 2006, when over a half million mostly illegal Mexicans were told to flood Los Angeles streets to protest the prospect of tougher immigration laws, it was hard to miss all those Mexican flags being waved. And, incredibly, the Los Angeles Daily News quotes one Martin Paik, a Korean immigrant to Los Angeles: ?In California, Spanish is more important than English. I haven?t found any inconvenience because I don?t speak English,? said Paik.
A growing number of Mexicans also despise their northern neighbor. American soccer fans, to cite just one example, have repeatedly witnessed the outrageous behavior of Mexican crowds during the playing of The Star Spangled Banner, including cheers of ?Osama, Osama?? a reference to the murder of 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (?Institute of Mexicans Abroad?) has no respect for the internal affairs of our country. The Institute was created by decree of Mexican President Vicente Fox and reports to a shadowy clique within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its vast computer database is used to deploy illegal and legal Mexicans to lobby state legislatures, city councils and county commissions to recognize worthless matricula consular ?identification? cards, support granting driver?s licenses to illegals, promote multilingualism at the expense of English and help Mexicans and their children sponge off U.S. services ranging from schools to medical care.
California Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy remembers the floor debate over a measure granting driver?s licenses to illegal immigrants. Referring to the former name of the territory ceded to the U.S, by Mexico in 1848, Mountjoy warned, ?This bill paves the road to Aztlan.? ?Everyone in the gallery stood up and applauded,? Mountjoy recalls.
In Michigan, a Mexican consul repeatedly traveled to the city of Holland to urge its city council to support police and bank recognition of consulate-issued matricula consular cards ? often with ?what can only be described as a mob in tow,? according to author Matt Hayes. Holland finally demurred because the consul was so disruptive.
Former Mexican consul Teodoro Maus, now a legal resident, is a leading agitator in Georgia for granting services to any immigrant ?regardless of status.? Such agitation, often fostered from Mexico?s 49 consulates, is repeated in every other state.
In 2006, amid reports of border incursions by either Mexican troops or rogue off-duty soldiers, the Mexican government announced that its military forces were ordered not to go within three kilometers of the border. Of course, that begs the big question: Who?s policing the border on the Mexican side? Don?t count on the local police departments of border towns, because even Mexican officials admit they are riddled with corruption.
Former Mexican Interior Secretary Santiago Creel actually said his country would never help to secure the southern border. ?We are not going to do that,? Creel told Jerry Kammer of the Copley News Service. Creel claimed Mexico?s constitution provides for ?complete freedom of movement? for Mexicans inside Mexico. ?We can?t put up a checkpoint or a customs station inside our territory,? Creel said.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, emphasizes it is widely understood by local law enforcement agencies and the Border Patrol, as well as by the FBI and DEA, that high-ranking members of the Mexican military in the border regions are often bribed to cooperate in the drug cartel?s smuggling operations. With regard to the border near the Mexican city of Tijuana, Tancredo notes, ?It is hard to understand how 800-yard tunnels such as the one discovered (in January 2006) can be excavated, equipped and operated without the knowledge of Tijuana law enforcement.. How many hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens of various nationalities are being smuggled into California through such tunnels??
A Zogby International poll in 2003 found 57 percent of Mexicans believe they have the right to enter the U.S. without permission. Fifty-eight percent said the southwestern states properly belong to Mexico. In light of such sentiments, no wonder the Mexican government printed and openly distributed a comic book-style ?guide? to ?migrants? instructing them where to cross the northern border, melt into U.S. society and how to take advantage of medical, educational and other services.
California has become an economic and multicultural basketcase because of a 25-year influx of Third World illegal immigration. The state?s lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, belonged to a racist group called MEChA. Its overriding theme is that California is going to be an Hispanic state? and anyone who doesn?t like it can leave. Art Torres, chairman of the California Democrat Party, once told a cheering crowd: ?Remember, (Proposition) 187 is the last gasp of white America in California. And people say to me on the Senate floor when I was in the (California) Senate, ?Why do you fight so hard for affirmative action programs?? ?And I say, ?Because you?re going to need them?? when whites become a minority.
The near-poverty status of Mexicans who sneak into our country guarantees high levels of welfare use, according to 2002 research by the Center for Immigration Studies. Researcher Steven Camarata found that Census Bureau data revealed 33.9 percent of households headed by a legal Mexican immigrant and 24.9 percent headed by an illegal Mexican immigrant received at least one major welfare program. By contrast, 14.9 percent of native households receive welfare. Even more troublesome, Camarata found, is the persistence of dependency among immigrant households. Years after they come to the U.S., Mexican immigrants remain far more dependent on welfare than natives.
Of course, leave it to the Mexican government to meddle in U.S. internal affairs when welfare for its people is threatened. U.S. courts have upheld Arizona’s Proposition 200 which passed in 2004 and, among other things, outlawed welfare for illegal aliens. Mexican diplomat Luis Ernesto Derbez openly said in a radio interview that his country would help activists in America fight the Arizona law in federal court and, if this ultimately fails, Mexico would even appeal to the so-called United Nations “Human Rights Tribunal.”
Also in a reaction to Arizona’s Proposition 200, a group of seven Mexican senators traveled to Phoenix and called that state a hotbed of “xenophobia and discrimination.” Their report labeled Arizonans “anti-Mexican” and called for the Mexican government to lobby against similar bills. They wrote: “What is really dangerous is that similar initiatives are beginning to be seen in other states like Arkansas, Ohio, Nevada, Georgia and Colorado.” Robert Goldsborough, president of Americans for Immigration Control, aptly responded that “those senators in their own way are as potentially dangerous to America’s sovereignty as are the Islamic imams. Our elected officials were silent and spineless when faced with the aggressive arrogance of those Mexican senators.”
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., also had some stinging words in a letter to Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. “I would remind you,” the lawmaker said in part, “that our border security plan is a direct result of the Mexican government’s failure to commit to securing its side of the border, and is also a result of the Mexican government’s failure to address inadequacies in its own domestic and border security policies.”
Ironically, in February 2006, the Mexican government hired a Dallas-based public relations firm to belatedly try to polish its image. Allyn & Co., whose founder Rob Allyn worked for both George W. Bush and Fox in their election campaigns during the 1990s, was reportedly being paid $720,000 to stop what the Mexican embassy in Washington constantly complains is “Mexico bashing”.
That PR launch, though, came the same time that the U.S. Homeland Security Department reported that Mexican crime syndicates were stepping up their attacks on American agents patrolling the border. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2005, there were 778 attacks on agents, up from 374 the previous year. “This is what we’re facing,” Border Patrol chief David Aguilar told The New York Times, as he played a videotape featuring a patrol car riddled with bullets and agents scrambling for cover as stones rained down on them.
No wonder the governors of Arizona and New Mexico declared states of emergency in their border counties because of rising border lawlessness and the destruction of private property.
Mexico has an obligation to respect our laws, encourage its citizens to do the same and commit to securing its side of the border. Since it has not done so, isn’t it time to downgrade diplomatic relations by kicking Mexico’s ambassador out of the United States and recalling ours? President George W. Bush would never do this, but it is an action that candidates running for the 2008 presidential nomination ought to consider. It would be a timely wake-up call to protest that country’s insolent policies which are so damaging to our nation and its border security.
Phil Kent is an Atlanta-based author and president of the American Research Foundation.