Los Niños

So let's say there's a group that makes up about 20% of the people in your country; and which happens to be the fastest-growing group.

You'd want to bend over backwards to get to know this group, right? I mean, they're likely to have significant power, which is only going to grow, right?

If nothing else, you'd conclude whatever such a sizable part of your country cares about is likely to be something the entire nation should care about too, right?

Which is why all this anti-immigrant sentiment is idiotic. Hispanics are that group; and even though the vast majority of them are here legally, the anti-illegal immigration 'outcry' is being used as a stick by racists to beat them all with (after all, you can't tell someone's immigration status by looking at them on the street, and most proponents of immigration 'reform' don't care).

Yeah, sure, for a while longer racist whites can probably form a working majority in some parts of the country to push through their fears; but that day is dwindling fast.

Which means whoever you think 'won' the 'debate' between Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera on FOX, I can tell you who's gonna win the war.



And whichever copy editor at the Washington Post who thinks Hispanics need to 'plead' for anything in this country has a pretty poor grasp of politics. You'll see how much pleading Hispanics are gonna do when you look out your window on May 1.

Pleading to Stay a Family

N.C. Aizenman in the Washington Post: As the government's crackdown on illegal immigrant workers has intensified in recent months, so have the consequences for a large subgroup of U.S. citizens: American-born children of illegal immigrants.

Numbering at least 3.1 million, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute and the Pew Hispanic Center, such children range from teenagers steeped in iTunes and MySpace to toddlers just learning their ABCs.

Until recently, their parents' illegal status had limited impact on these children's lives, because, although every year hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are detained attempting to cross the U.S. border, once they make it in, they are rarely caught.

But the increase in raids against companies employing illegal workers is beginning to change that. ...

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to limit immigration, said he has sympathy for children in Jessica's situation -- but no more so than for any other child victimized by a parent's mistakes.

"Kids often pay for the bad decisions of their parents. If you do something wrong that sends you to jail, well, your kids suffer for that. If you are careless with your mortgage and lose your house, your kids suffer along with you," he said. The parents "knew what they were doing when they had kids here, knowing that they were still illegal immigrants."

Krikorian applauded the new efforts against employers of illegal workers as a welcome departure from years of lax enforcement of immigration laws within U.S. territory.

In fiscal 2004, for instance, the government deported about 51,000 immigrants who had been in the United States for more than a year, accounting for just 3 percent of the number of immigrants expelled and less than 1 percent of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Krikorian said lawmakers would only make matters worse by granting judges more discretion to allow those now being arrested to remain in the United States if they have U.S. citizen children, as proposed in a bill recently introduced by Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.).

"You'd be making having a kid an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card," Krikorian said. "You'd basically be saying that every illegal alien gets to stay permanently just because they had a kid once they crossed the border."

Krikorian also cautioned that by pushing the issue, immigrant advocates will strengthen sentiment in favor of revoking the automatic citizenship granted to nearly anyone born on U.S. soil -- a right set forth in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. ...

Oh yes, listen to the wise white man, who cautions us how to proceed--language is so interesting in cases like this, where some still believe they're the lords in a feudal society. As Stephen Biko said, "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked."

This country was built on the simple premise that if you could make it here, you were free; and if you were lucky enough to be born here, you're an American; "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

It's a concept that for most of the world is still tricky--I'll tell you right now we will never amend our 14th Amendment to take away that right; you may as well white-out 'We the People'.

Krikorian and his ilk are the same people who set up and tried to maintain Jim Crow in the South; the Nietzschean outgrowth of that is likely to be repeated here, as the Post article concludes about one of the immigrant kids:

His mother, Consuelo Castellanos, watching from a pew nearby, dabbed at her own tears and admitted to mixed emotions.

"I'm really worried that this is going to traumatize him even more," she said in Spanish. "But I'm also amazed and proud. I don't know where he gets this bravery. Normally, he's so shy, but he's so determined to fight for us."