George Rebane

[This the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 June 2012.]

Our imperial President has announced another scheme to end-run the Congress and the Constitution with what some are calling Dream Act Jr – the senior version ran into a hornets’ nest of anti-amnesty sentiment in Congress.  In case you haven’t heard, the junior version would “suspend the deportation of some young undocumented immigrants” and provide a legal means for their staying in the country.

This end-run initiative is well coordinated with the left-leaning media which provided both prequels and sequels to the President’s announcement.  The flagship softening up barrage was launched in the 25jun12 issue of Time magazine with its cover story ‘We are Americans – just not legally’ written by Antonio Vargas, a Phillipine-born illegal alien and self-declared homosexual who was brought here as a child.

Anticipating the President’s thrust, the article goes on to detail the plight of such young people, who, through the criminal act of their parents, came to grow up in the United States, and in the process didn’t think much about their legal status.  That the mis-labeled and confusing ‘immigration problem’ has garnered so much national attention, has allowed such soft transformations of logic and semantics to take place, so that Time’s claim of two flavors of Americans – legal and illegal – now goes down unnoticed, and is tacitly accepted by many of our citizens.

Time’s choice of Vargas as an educated Asian and homosexual journalist is an intended double bulwark against any critique of his one-sided presentation.  In such arguments the reader is regaled with anecdotal recounting of the good character, productive lives, and shared American dreams of these illegals.  In fact, the point is made to no longer call them ‘illegal immigrants’, for as Vargas educates us, “… I’m an undocumented immigrant or, put more rudely, an ‘illegal.’”  Forget about the now politically pejorative yet correct ‘illegal alien’, these individuals are just immigrants in America, the land of immigrants, who somehow don’t have some arcane piece of paper with their name on it.

Nowhere in these plaintive pieces or in the President’s populist panderings do we hear of the obvious impact of passing such preambles to amnesty for illegal entrants into the United States.  Nowhere in these appeals and remonstrations are we asked to consider the state of our porous borders, that, with such leniencies, invite more illegal aliens who are a far cry from the showcased young educated dreamers of an easy path to American citizenship.  Nowhere are we told of the numbers of criminals, narcotics traffickers, contraband smugglers, welfare recipients, terrorists, and cheap labor workers who impact the full spectrum of America’s social costs from crime, through commerce, to culture.

There is no question of our deporting the entire cohort of twelve million illegal aliens already in our midst.   But any solution to deciding how and who should stay or go cannot be reasonably developed independently of a border that is first sealed, so that the solution does not invite further fugitive entry into the United States.  But those who seek immediate gain from pandering to illegals, whether for commerce or political power, have no such concerns.

Obama’s introducing this executive order is a clear election year tactic to garner the Hispanic vote.  And it further goes along the progressive policy of lacing the land with fraudulent voters because they overwhelmingly vote for the party and candidates that discount United States citizenship as the ultimate criterion for being an American.

Instead, the sea change sought by those who wish to ‘realign’ America in the world community is to simply let the country be overwhelmed by illegals until their hoped for change becomes an existential reality.  ‘Not Legal, Not Leaving’ is the new rallying cry that Vargas and Time magazine have introduced for our newly outed illegal aliens.

Full Disclosure:  I am a legal immigrant to these shores and a naturalized citizen.  And therefore along with millions of others like me, I bring a special appreciation of America and for the privilege of being an American.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  The above commentary should be considered in light of the geo-political future between the United States and Mexico which has long been a subject on RR (here, here, and here).  As such, and especially in light of the 25jun12 SCOTUS decision to strike down Arizona’s effort to enforce fallow federal laws, it is appropriate for completeness to append to this commentary a review of the aspirations of many (most?) Mexicans regarding the future disposition of southwestern America.  It all comes under the general heading of Reconquista (q.v.).  No matter how progressive our Left seeks to become, they cannot quite convince their liberal Latino brethren that likes liking likes is a racist and politically incorrect preference.

For decades the Latino leadership has loudly called for Aztlan to be returned to Mexico.  Today organizations like MALDEF, La Raza, and others are keeping alive the dream of a greater Mexico that rights the outcome of the American conquests of Mexican lands during the first half of the 19th century.  Latino studies departments at major universities have lent the mantle academic legitimacy to the subject.  So that the dream will not die with the younger Latino generation, my own alma mater UCLA publishes from its Chicano Studies Research Center the journal Aztlan http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/journals/default.asp

For those who wish to know the real meaning of the Dream Act, they need look no further than seeing it as the next strategic step toward Reconquista – the critical element of the act’s passing is that it not contain any provision to secure the border.  Mexican and Mexican-American leaders have made ample public statements to support Reconquista.   Some samples –

•    Richard Alatorre, as member of the Los Angeles City Council. “They’re afraid we’re going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They’re right. We will take them over . . . We are here to stay.”
•    Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico , “The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot.”
•    Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas ; “We have an aging white America . They are not making babies. They are dying. The explosion is in our population . . . I love it. They are shitting in their pants with fear. I love it.”
•    Art Torres, then Chairman of the California Democratic Party, “Remember 187 – the proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens – was the last gasp of white America in California .”
•    Gloria Molina, then Los Angeles County Supervisor, “We are politicizing every single one of these new citizens that are becoming citizens of this country … . I gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, “I’m going to go out there and vote because I want to pay them back.”
•    Mario Obledo, then California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Governor Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, ” California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn’t like it should leave.”
•    Jose Pescador Osuna, then Mexican Consul General, “We are practicing ‘La Reconquista’ in California …”

In one form or another, there is a heartfelt desire by people of Mexican descent living in the United States to set things right.  One way is through a reannexation that will bring back to Mexico a major part of the North American continent that is now one of the most productive areas of the world.