Thread: Ducking the ever swinging pendulum

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Ducking the ever swinging pendulum
Sunday, January 22, 2006

By ROGER HERNANDEZ


I am getting almost as much anti-immigrant mail as I got in the early and mid-1990s, the days of Proposition 187 in California and of Pat Buchanan beating Bob Dole in New Hampshire.

"Mount up everybody and ride to the sound of the guns," Buchanan said in his victory speech.

Some people listened. Today the border is full of vigilantes, Congress threatens to throw several million illegal immigrants in jail and anti-foreigner paranoia is bubbling over all across the country.

And that's even though we went through what might be called a feel-good era about immigrants during the Clinton years and into the first few months of the Bush administration, until a certain morning one September.

The end of that period on that day is understandable. Many other things also ended on Sept. 11, and it is perfectly justifiable for Americans to worry that terrorists might enter the country along with people who otherwise mean no harm. The problem is that nowadays, legitimate concerns about terrorism are being manipulated to advance other agendas, including that of immigration restrictionists.

So the pendulum has swung back. Maybe not quite to where it was 10 or 15 years ago, because for now, Pat Buchanan types like Congressman Tom Tancredo are further from the mainstream than the Pat Buchanan who actually won a presidential primary in 1996. Still, the pendulum is moving in the wrong direction. Nobody knows how big an arc it will take.

Such to-and-fro has been a constant of American history, beginning with the Irish fleeing the potato famine in the 1850s. After they became more accepted, the pendulum again turned against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe half a century later. Then they became "real Americans." Now it's the turn of Hispanics and Asians to ride the pendulum, or risk getting smashed in the face.

That's OK. I can duck. Besides, I know that sooner or later it will reach its peak and swing back the other way. Here, at least since the middle of the 19th century, the national creed has it that the United States is a nation of immigrants, a belief that has become an inseparable part of how the American nation defines itself. Membership in the tribe is a conscious decision, not an accident of birth. So you can be of Japanese ancestry and be American; you can be of French ancestry and be American.

"Let me make one thing clear from the get-go -- Mexico WILL NEVER get Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California back!" one reader kindly informed me in an e-mail. I guess the guy must think that columnists named Hernandez are secretly plotting with their fellow "brown-skin rabble," as he put it, to turn over the Southwest to Vicente Fox. Ah, that pendulum.

Roger Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Reach him at rogereh@optonline.net

That's OK. I can duck. Besides, I know that sooner or later it will reach its peak and swing back the other way. Here, at least since the middle of the 19th century, the national creed has it that the United States is a nation of immigrants, a belief that has become an inseparable part of how the American nation defines itself. Membership in the tribe is a conscious decision, not an accident of birth. So you can be of Japanese ancestry and be American; you can be of French ancestry and be American.

No Roger, that has never been the "creed" of the United States. What possibly ever gave you this erroneous if not silly notion? Ah, the pro-illegal immigrant "advocacies", the Open Border End the United States Lobby? Ah, yes, those people.

Well, let me tell you what the creed is of the Americans...it's "Give me Liberty or Give Me Death". Let me tell you what that means. It means:

1) the liberty to choose our government and run it without foreign interference or influence

2) the liberty to decide who comes here and who doesn't

3) the liberty to enforce our laws even when the government overtaken by foreign interests refuses to do it

4) the liberty to protect our fellow citizens and our future generations to ensure ample resources for their survival at the standard of living of our choice in a free sovereign defended and protected nation

5) the liberty to speak our minds; to express our opinions; to vent our feelings; to guard our borders; and to deport every illegal alien in the United States

6) the liberty to close our doors and our borders and keep them closed until we decide to open them again

Ah, that pendulum.

Ah, yes that pendulum.

By the way, you're with the New Jersey Insitute of Technology...how interesting that instead of working on the technology of pendulums you are preparing to "duck" the biggest pendulum swing in the history of the United States.

And guess what? Some of us study things like pendulums as well as illegal immigration and know how to stop "pendulums" once they start swinging....when that pendulum gets to US, we're going to grab it; fire up our Stihl Saw; and sever it permanently so this "pendulum" will never again "swing" in your direction.

I guess the guy must think that columnists named Hernandez are secretly plotting with their fellow "brown-skin rabble," as he put it, to turn over the Southwest to Vicente Fox. Ah, that pendulum.

AND, would THAT be an erroneous assumption, Mr. Hernandez??? Wonder if he's related to our INFAMOUS GILBERTO CRUZ HERNANDEZ of Winston-Salem CRIME FAME?? And, if I were you, Mr. HERNANDEZ, I would be laying REAL LOW because that pendulum has a bad habit of decapitating people who don't stay out of its way.