Immigration shows Mexico's need to change
http://www.charlotte.com/409/story/191237.html
by MIKE DEVINE

"A nation without borders is not a nation."
---President Ronald Reagan

Two months ago roughly one out of 10 Mexican citizens celebrated their nation's signature Cinco de Mayo holiday while residing in the United States. On last week's Independence Day, the American people celebrated the revolution that has made our nation the envy of the world.

Last month, we exercised the power of government by the consent of the governed, given to us by our Founding Fathers, to kill an immigration "reform" bill that could, among other things, have granted legal status, i.e. amnesty, to as many as 20 million illegal aliens living in the United States.

Fresh in the minds of the governed, but decidedly absent from the minds of too many of the political class in Washington, was the last amnesty of 3 million illegals in 1986 that mushroomed into that 20 million in just 20 years.

Polls showed that over two-thirds of voters of both political parties opposed the bill and flooded their members of Congress with e-mails, letters and telephone calls. They shouted Deputy Barney Fife's famous refrain from the old "Andy Griffith Show": "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

With that in mind, just last November Congress passed a "good fences make good neighbors" bill, insisting that we see visible evidence of Washington's so-far invisible will to enforce the border.

Encouraged to leave

Do any of our leaders realize that Mexico's corrupt government encourages its disgruntled citizens (who might lead a revolution against them) to go north? The 90 percent of Mexicans still living in Mexico might have experienced more compassionate results if the disaffected who left had been required to solve their problems at home. Instead, they came to the U.S., encouraged by the desire of Big Business for cheap labor and the desire of the Democrats for a steady flow of victim voters.

America's future does not depend on cheap labor. It was only after we ended chattel slavery that we became the nation that could defeat fascism, communism and any other evil form of totalitarianism that dared to rear its ugly head against liberty.

Meanwhile, country-club Republicans would trash the indispensable rule of law in fear of forever losing the Latino vote that they have never owned. Do they so lack the courage of their convictions that they refuse to even try to persuade new voters that conservative principles and policies are the way?

American citizens repeatedly fill jobs after raids of plants employing scores of illegals. This betrays the claim that illegals were doing jobs that Americans won't do.

False accusations of racism

The ugliest part of the immigration debate has been the suggestion by many Democrats, not a few prominent Republicans and even the president himself that opposition to the poorly drafted bill was led by racists. The greatest of all ironies occurred when South Carolina's senior senator compared opponents of the bill to those in decades past who declared that "Blacks, Jews and the Irish need not apply." GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham made that assertion to a Hispanic group named "La Raza," which means "The Race."

No amount of e-mails from kooks can erase the reality that today's America is the most racially tolerant nation the world has ever seen. We know that immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere have been a part of our great Melting Pot since before 1776, but that for the ingredients of the pot to melt, there had to be the Great Lull in the 1920s and a crackdown at the Rio Grande in the 1950s.

Maybe more importantly, past immigrants didn't encounter essentially unassimilated native cultural elites in academia, entertainment and the press, nor an ambition-sapping welfare state.

Americans understand that the Shining City on a Hill cannot retain its luster if all the huddled masses of Planet Earth move here. They know that the city won't shine unless one can marvel like the Psalmist and exclaim: "Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

Our nation's motto is E Pluribus Unum -- out of many, one.
What Mexico needs is a new revolution that would inspire their many to want to be one within their own borders.

Observer community columnist Mike DeVine is vice president of Intequity Inc., a Charlotte-based marketing firm, and blogs as "Gamecock" at gamecock.townhall.com and race42008.com. Write him c/o The Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308