Thread: Immigration Backlash

what garbage is this!!!!!!!!???????


http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/editorial/ci_4648131

Sunday View
by MARK SCARAMELLA
Ukiah Daily Journal
Article Last Updated:11/12/2006 03:15:03 PM PST

Immigration Backlash

Not many people noticed that outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox's two-hour "Informe" (a sort of Mexican state of the Union speech) couldn't be delivered in the Mexican congress last September because leftist members of the PRD (Mexico's most liberal mainstream party) disrupted the speech by holding up signs that read "fraude" and shouted denunciations of Fox and his hand-picked right-wing successor Felipe Calderon. As a result, Fox's two-hour long speech had to be delivered at Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, and not many people paid attention to its content.

Decent translations of the speech are hard to come by in the U.S. so I asked a local high school student who's just learning Spanish to give it a try. According to this admittedly suspicious translation, Fox's Informe contained a little noticed segment about something Fox called "immigration backlash."

Apparently a group of Mexican border vigilantes loyal to Fox have noticed that more and more white American 20-somethings are illegally crossing the border into Mexico and ending up at Mexican vacation resort destinations on short-term tourist visas typically wearing baggy pants and backward baseball caps, speaking very little Spanish. Then, after their visas run out, these young Americans don't come back to the US. Instead, they invite their friends and siblings to the expanding party.

After the fun of bumming around Mexican beaches wears off, these young former tourists realize they might get in trouble upon their return after having overstayed their visas. Having no means of support, they takeadvantage of famous Mexican hospitality by befriending young Mexican women whose boyfriends or husbands are in the U.S. and end up being taken in by Mexican households.

But as their numbers have increased, more and more Mexicans are starting to resent their presence there.

"Hey, dude. Chill. We're only here because this is one of the few countries in the world where there are no jobs. It's great!" one was quoted as having said.

Many of these expatriate American slackers apply for meager Mexican welfare but are unable to qualify because of their refusal to learn to speak Spanish. Left to their own devices, they congregate at Mexican city squares and beg for food from Mexican street vendors.

A group of Mexican patriots calling themselves the "MinutoHombres" have organized to do something about the problem by stationing themselves at border crossings and airports watching for white, 20-something hitchhikers and stoned tourists in the signature baggy pants and backward hats. Armed with job applications and carpentry tools left behind by Mexican men who previously quit their jobs to come to the United States for employment, the MinutoHombres try to convince the American slackers to take low-paying jobs in Mexico -- but, again, with little success.

Over time these American slackers have started marrying Mexican women whose husbands are no longer around. But they make bad stepfathers, as they refuse to work and seem to spend most of their time skateboarding, listening to hip-hop music on iPods, smoking marijuana and spare-changing Mexican shoppers.

The American slackers also tend to fill up Mexican gymnasiums and soccer fields which are abandoned by Mexican men who have come to the United States.

As the number of slackers entering Mexico has increased, a new breed of underground American immigration assistants known as "zorros" (foxes) have sprung up. These zorros are made up mostly of the first wave of slackers who arrived back in the 90s and have survived in Mexico for a number of years.

They wear capes and classic old-style Zorro masks and charge up to $200 to help other American slackers get across the border into Mexico and blend into tourists areas like Acapulco, Taxco, the Yucatan, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, etc.

However the zorros haven't been very successful either because 1. The slackers they are trying to help across don't have much money to begin with (although sometimes they will offer marijuana instead of money). 2. The zorros don't know the way to Mexico and don't speak Spanish and seem stoned all the time. And 3. Their costumes make it difficult for them to avoid detection.

A rift has developed in Mexican politics because many young Mexican women seem strangely attracted to the slackers, saying they are "muy frio." Once a Mexican woman has become attracted to an American slacker they lose respect for their families and are increasingly reluctant to take housekeeping jobs for rich Mexican housewives.

At first Mexican law enforcement authorities thought they could handle the problem by arresting the slackers and deporting them. But when Mexican authorities tried to turn the slackers over to American law enforcement, the U.S. refused to take them back, saying they were unproductive citizens the U.S. didn't want back. A tense diplomatic situation has developed with no solution in sight.

Lately, the American slackers have begun to congregate at Mexican Day-Slacker Centers carrying signs that read, "Won't Work For Food," and "Siestas, Not War."

Some liberal Mexican lawmakers have introduced guest slacker legislation but have run up against hardliners in the Mexican Congress who want them deported to Guatemala, further south. A pilot amnesty program which would have granted the American slackers Mexican citizenship was unsuccessfulbecause very few of the young slackers could read and write Spanish and flunked Mexico's basic citizenship test.

"America should assume its responsibility and take concrete steps to develop a series of programs in health, employment and housing in the United States in order to guarantee that American slackers return to their own country," demanded deputy Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Ortega Garcia Vega Gonzalez Diego Obregon de Madrigal y Pollo. "And if America doesn't want them, they can send them to Canada."

But I'm still not sure about that kid's translation.

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