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Default Deconstructing the Outrage

Deconstructing the Outrage [Victor Davis Hanson]

"I have been trying to collate all the furor over the Arizona law, much of it written by those who do not live in locales that have been transformed by illegal immigration. These writers are more likely to show solidarity from a distance than to visit or live in the areas that have been so radically changed by the phenomenon.


On the unfortunate matter of "presenting papers": I have done that
numerous times this year — boarding airplanes, purchasing things on a
credit card, checking into a hotel, showing a doorman an I.D. when
locked out, going to the DMV, and, in one case, pulling off a rural
road to use my cell phone in a way that alarmed a chance highway
patrolman. An I.D. check to allay "reasonable suspicion" or "probable
cause" is very American.

On the matter of racial profiling: No one wishes to harass citizens by
race or gender, but, again unfortunately, we already profile
constantly. When I had top classics students, I quite bluntly
explained to graduating seniors that those who were Mexican American
and African American had very good chances of entering Ivy League or
other top graduate schools from Fresno, those who were women and
Asians so-so chances, and those who were white males with CSUF BAs
very little chance, despite straight A's and top GRE scores. The
students themselves knew all that better than I — and, except the
latter category, had packaged and self-profiled themselves for years
in applying for grants, admissions, fellowships, and awards. I can
remember being told by a dean in 1989 exactly the gender and racial
profile of the person I was to hire before the search had even
started, and not even to "waste my time" by interviewing a white male
candidate. Again, the modern university works on the principle that
faculty, staff, and students are constantly identified by racial and
gender status. These were not minor matters, but questions that
affected hundreds of lives for many decades to come. (As a postscript
I can also remember calling frantically to an Ivy League chair to
explain that our top student that he had accepted had just confessed
to me that in fact he was an illegal alien, and remember him "being
delighted" at the news, as if it were an added bonus.)

On the matter of equality, fairness, and compassion, it is even more
problematic. Literally thousands of highly skilled would-be legal
immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe wait patiently
while others cut in front and illegally obtain what others legally
wait for — residence in the U.S. Meanwhile, millions of Mexican-
American, African-American, and poor white citizens have seen their
wages fall because of competition from illegal aliens who will work
for far less compensation. It is a bit strange that those of the upper
classes are outraged over Arizona without empathy for entry-level U.S.
workers or lower-middle-class taxpayers who end up paying the most for
illegal immigration. But then, those who express the most moral
outrage often are the least sensitive to the moral questions involved
(see next).

On matters of Mexico's outrage: The Mexican government has a
deliberate policy of exporting human capital on a win/win/win/win
logic: Dissidents leave central Mexico in a safety-valve fashion;
Mexico saves on social services; remittances come back as the second
largest source of foreign exchange; and a growing expatriate, lobbying
community becomes nostalgic and fonder of Mexico the longer it is
absent from it. To hide all this, the Mexican government usually plays
the racial prejudice card, although most arrivals from Oaxaca will
tell you that racism is more perncious in Mexican society than north
of the border. This is a government, after all, that cannot provide
the security, legal framework, or social services for indigenous
peoples in its central interior but has no such problems when it is a
question of attracting affluent North Americans to live in second
homes along its picturesque coasts.

There is plenty of cynicism involved — not on the part of the
exasperated voters of Arizona, but rather from domestic political,
religious, ideological, and ethnic interests that in patronizing
fashion seek new dependent constituents; from Mexico that in amoral
fashion censures others for the sins it commits; and from a strange
nexus between corporate employers and ethnic lobbyists who see their
own particular profit and influence enhanced through the ordeal of
millions of poor aliens, and the subsidies of the strapped and now to
be demonized taxpayer."

http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...dhNDg5YWMwYWU=
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