COMMENTARY

Mexico's Political Agenda Behind Migration Talks: Americans Should Heed Warnings to Preserve National Unity

By Yeh Ling-Ling
June 2, 2005

Last December, the Mexican government published a guide advising illegal Mexican nationals on how to cross the U.S. border safely. In 2001, Ernesto Ruffo Appel, who was then Mexico’s Commissioner for Northern Border Affairs, reportedly told would-be illegal Mexican migrants: "If the Border Patrol agent finds you, try again."

Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and a self-described "old-fashioned Democrat," warned in his April 2004 article, "The Hispanic Challenge": "Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway.… No other immigrant group in U.S. history has asserted or could assert a historical claim to U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americans can and do make that claim…." Huntington also said that "Mexican immigration differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration due to a combination of six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration [in the American Southwest], persistence, and historical presence .... "

Indeed, here is what other government officials in Mexico have said:

"I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important -- a very important -- part of it."
--1997, Ernest Zedillo, former President of Mexico, in Chicago.

"We are practicing La Reconquista in California."
--1998, Jose Pescador Osuna, then-Consul General of Mexico, in California.

"We are Mexicans that live in our territories and we are Mexicans that live in other territories. In reality, we are 120 million people that live together and are working together to construct a nation."
--2004, Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, in Chicago.

And leaders of Mexican descent in the United States have made similar statements:

"As goes the Latino population will go the state of California, and as goes the State of California will go the United States of America. My friends, the stakes are big. This is a fight worth making."
--1995, Henry Cisneros, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, at a Hispanic conference at UC-Riverside.

"Eventually, we are going to take over all the political institutions of California."
--1998, Mario Obledo, co-founder of MALDEF and California Secretary of Health &
Welfare under Gov. Jerry Brown. (He added that California will soon become
an "Hispanic state" and that anyone who does not like Mexicans "should go back to
Europe.")

"Mexico is recovering the territories yielded to the United States by means of migratory tactics."
-- 2001, Elena Poniatowska, a prize-winning Mexican novelist who has taught at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

"A secessionist movement is not something that you can put away and say it is never going to happen in the United States. Time and history change."
--2002, Armando Navarro, professor at the University of California-Riverside.

"The U.S. Southwest will secede and may rejoin Mexico... No nation's borders have been permanent. Throughout history, nations and empires rise and fall."
--2002, Charles Truxillo. professor at the University of New Mexico. (He also said secession of the U.S. Southwest is an "inevitability" because of continued high Hispanic immigration.)

Once naturalized, amnestied immigrants could vote in future U.S. elections. They could also petition for their extended family members to immigrate who also could become future voters in the U.S. Also, children born in the U.S. even of illegal migrants and guest workers are also U.S. citizens and future U.S. voters.

In light of the above remarks, Americans should wonder why numerous Mexican and Mexican American leaders have vigorously lobbied Congress and scores of state legislatures for:

Acceptance of Mexican ID cards;
Amnesty and benefits for millions of illegal Mexican immigrants, such as driver's
licenses and in-state tuition; and
More guest worker visas.
Many Mexican-Americans are patriotic and most Mexican immigrants have no political agenda, but they and their U.S.-born children can be mobilized by Mexico to vote according to Mexico’s interests. As Juan Hernandez, U.S.-born member of Vicente Fox’s cabinet, has stated: "We are betting that the Mexican American population in the United States... will think Mexico first."

Indeed, a number of Mexican Americans have successfully run for political office in Mexico. Manuel de la Cruz, the first American citizen elected to Mexico's Congress, reportedly wanted to make the United States of America a Mexican electoral district.

"Instead of pushing for a defacto amnesty for illegal immigrants whose number was recently estimated to be 18 to 20 million by Bear Sterns economist Robert Justich, President Bush and Congress should take a close look at Mexico’s political agenda. It is clear that Mexico’s immediate goal is to use migration to control American policies," says third-generation Texan of Mexican descent J.C. Hernandez, Vietnam veteran and founder of Americans for Zero Immigration.

Yeh Ling-Ling is the Executive Director of Diversity for a Sustainable America (DASA). DASA is a national non-profit organization whose leaders and supporters are racially and politically diverse, including Hispanic and Asian immigrants. She recently published a scholarly piece titled, "Mexican Immigration and Its Potential Impact on the Political Future of the United States."
http://www.americonservative.com/Yeh_Borders.htm