[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Rim05

I have to say that a lot of Americans do not seem to remember the beginning of this madness. It actually started in the 70s but it was so gradual most did not notice or maybe did not care.
Most of the Hispanic community are ok with it because, now grandpa and grandma, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles...........you get the picture, The whole community is here.

Do you think they, the new comers care, I don't think so?

Not everyone is ok with it, it has to do with different experiences.

The ones first generation born in America of Mexican parents who remember the forties and fifties are getting old and with increasing frequency are mentioned in the obituary. They are the ones who had it hard with their in between-ness, and they and their descendants are not the same people who come here now, and they never were. There is a huge difference with time and former distance.

I first saw illegals come to my semi isolated town in the middle seventies, when I first worked with them. I don't believe that even they were the same people who come here now, it seems there was a different attitude.

In my experience, the flood gate opened just after the n1981 recession, when devaluation of the peso wiped out whatever incremental gains to a Mexican middle class since the revolution, and whatever money the poor managed to bury in jars became worthless.

The failing of the American people in regards to illegal immigration lay not in those Mexicans, but in the business interest in bargain basement labor and politicians who refused to enforce the 1986 immigration law they themselves legislated.

I believe that the collusion between business, government, and the co-opted educational system combined with what I believe to generally be a lower class of people immigrating than before - and in such volume since the 1986 amnesty - has resulted in such a wellspring of expectant entitlement and extended family ties which just weren't here before. The separateness for many born in America and those of extended generations is now pushed by both real ties and artificial means as well as persistent and contrived racial consciousness, but they aren't fully Mexican in the sense of culture or language, and they never will be.

However illegal immigration is going to be resolved, no one on either side will be satisfied with the outcome, and there will be lingering pain and resentment.

You can take that one to the bank.