California, Here they Come : E Pluribus unum is losing to La Raza

National Review, August 11, 2003 by VIctor Davis Hanson

Californians are especially restive on these issues-and we have much to be restive about. California today extends in-state university-tuition discounts to its resident unlawful immigrants, even as we charge over double that amount for American citizens from out of state. Our legislature has passed laws providing the unlawful with California driver's licenses. We may soon discover that an age-old rite of passage, in which citizens produce their birth certificates as proof of age at the Department of Motor Vehicles, has been rendered absurd: Americans will need government documentation, but foreigners here illegally will not-for the same services. We ponder honoring ID cards from Mexico (alone among foreign countries) as legal American identification-even as we read of endemic corruption among police and bureaucrats across the border, and cries from other South American countries for the same exemption.

Because elected state representatives are understandably risk-averse, ballot propositions-championed by unelected partisans, and enacted through popular vote rather than legislative debate-are the most common forum for expressions of the growing discontent. The word "racist" is thrown around promiscuously, to foreclose debate; in response, embittered Californians give approval to therapeutic measures in their schools and state agencies-and then quietly vent their rage at the polls, by voting against what they see as special favors to immigrants who broke the law in coming here. It is not a very healthy thing to have a voting population of millions thinking privately what they would never express publicly; in such a climate, demagogues on left and right gird for action.

Meanwhile, illegal immigration continues unabated-protected by the strange alliance of the power and influence of employers with the rhetoric and threats of the race industry. Yet we have to face the question honestly: What kind of future do we really want? We know that measured, legal immigration, in a system combining the old-fashioned assimilation of the past with the new power of popular culture and intermarriage, would eventually do wonders for everyone involved. Some of California's finest and most successful citizens are second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans whose parents were legal citizens and insisted upon integration and assimilation for their children rather than separatism. With properly monitored borders, the Mexican government could no longer export potential dissidents-many of them Indians from the hinterland subject to abject racism and exploitation- but would be forced to embrace real political and economic reform. Our own underclass in poorly paid jobs would begin to gain some clout with employers, and perhaps the minimum wage could rise to restore its eroding buying power. With a strong-and enforced-immigration policy, we could ensure that our post-9/11 borders are secure. And other immigrant groups clamoring for similar dispensations could appreciate at last that legality and following the rules are appreciated rather than punished.