Immigration

Miami blogger Robert comments on a thoughtful Miami Herald column by Fred Grimm:

Grimm suggests the reason may be because many immigrants here are content with their special status, particularly Cubans and Central Americans. He has a point, although I wouldn’t say all Cubans are content with the wet foot/dry foot policy. Haitians certainly aren’t happy with their status, but you still didn’t see them protest en masse.

It’s certainly not because there are a lack of illegals here.

I suspect the main reason is something Grimm didn’t address: lack of resentment for the United States of America.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds says, “PHOTOS LIKE THESE aren’t likely to stir sympathy for illegal immigrants.”

That’s putting it mildly. How do the Mexican irredentist wannabes think Jacksonian America is going to respond to their political argument?

Comment become post: Two audios demonstrate differing perspectives. The Blogosphere one gives broader context: near the beginning of the Helen/Glen podcast interview with Austin Bay/Jim Dunnigan the factors of contemporary immigration versus that of the century before are discussed. The MSM (well, NPR) take is more politicized; Melissa Block interviews former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda on All Things Considered.

When I was a kid in the middle of the last century, we felt the centrality of immigration to our sense of who we were as Nebraskans. My father talked of walking down main street in the thirties, when he could hear three or four languages. (Main street was only about three blocks long.) Towns nearby were known as Danish (Minden), Irish Catholic (Heartwell), German Catholic (Roseland), German Lutheran (Kenesaw), Swedish (Oakland), Czech (Wilber) etc. etc. The Cuban immigration after Castro influenced some of our culture as did the Lithuanian and Latvians in post-WWII movements. This was who we were – we were all these but all these were us, no more & no less than those whose ancesters had come west during reconstruction or followed the trains as they connected east & west. Out of the many came America. Now, Asian & Hispanic ethnicities add their culture & foods & voices.

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