I actually have some empathy for several of the points made by the author. Mr. Navarrette has outlined why it is important for immigrants to assimilate. It’s “bad civics” and “bad manners” to flaunt allegiance to a “home” country and demand rights from the resident one.
Bare cupboards at home offered them nothing, so why would that command patriotism, he asks.
I’m not sure that patriotism comes at the end of a fork or a bayonette. An attachment to the motherland survives hard times, or it is nothing more than mercenary, transient and artificial. The statistics on the amount of money sent back to the motherland, is quite impressive…at times, staggering. Money earned here, is not necessarily being spent here.
Mr. Navarrette also seems to blur a couple of issues…and backhands anyone who might raise it, with a preemptory strike of harmful, hateful and half-baked accusations. This doesn’t help shed light on the subject, but it creates a protective bubble around some difficult issues that would more easily be swept under the rug.
Some people are genuinely concerned that we don’t conflate the interests of the motherland with persons here, fully, completely and honestly…supporting a political issue or an economic one is within their rights.
Folks who crash the Bar Mitzvah in the ballroom of the Four Seasons…and complain bitterly when they ran out of shrimp cocktail, somehow registers a different validity than the same complaint from an invited guest or family member. It may be bad manners in each instance, but it’s a matter of degree.
There are millions of people who are in this country illegally. To try to hide that fact, retards the discussion. To gloss over it, shines a light on the elephant in the room. They snuck in, they hide out, they are under the radar and outside the system.
It is true that many came for the “opportunity”, and yes…to fill those empty stomachs and bare cupboards at home. There is a certain nobility in seeking to take care of your family and willingness to take risks to do so.
Anyone, from ANY country…who is here legally…deserves every right, privilege, honor, respect, opportunity as any other person. And it should NOT be assumed that a person of Mexican heritage is not a full fledged citizen.
But to ignore the issue of the millions and millions and millions who do not fit that description…and to suggest that talking about it rationally, honestly and openly is somehow harmful, hateful or half-baked…is to protest too much.
When the Mexican community is willing to discuss openly, honestly, without pointing a finger of blame elsewhere…at the negatives associated with an uncontrolled “invisible” society hiding out in their midst, then they are enablers of that society, not assimilators in this society. If one wishes to eliminate “double standards”, it would help to distinguish from those living “double lives”. The best communities to address this problem are the ones with the deepest contacts within it. On that note, the silence has been deafening.
