0 comment Wednesday, April 30, 2014 | admin
Lou Dobbs, on CNN, uses the phrase 'Broken Borders' in his reports on illegal immigration. It's an apt phrase, but it is not just the borders and our laws that are being broken, but families, as this Washington Times story relates:
Mexican wives want U.S. to return husbands
The women of Tecalpulco, Mexico, want the U.S. government to enforce its immigration laws because they want to force their husbands to come back home from working illegally in the United States.
They have created an English-language Web page where they identify themselves as the "wetback wives" and broadcast their pleas, both to their men and to the U.S. government.
"To the United States government -- close the border, send our men home to us, even if you must deport them (only treat them in a humane manner -- please do not hurt them)," it reads.
In poignant public messages to their husbands, the women talk about their children who feel abandoned, and worry that the men have forsaken their families for other women and for the American lifestyle.
[...]
Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs less immigration and a crackdown on illegal aliens, said the women's stories show that the huge migration flow is "very disruptive to the lives of those other countries."
He said it also proves that the men aren't fleeing poverty.
"These women would not be asking their husbands to come back if they themselves were starving," he said. "It's really more of people wanting more, a better life. It's perfectly understandable. But that's different than these people fleeing such desperation there's no way you could enforce the law."
[emphasis mine]
and from NRO's Larry Kudlow :
A Troubling Immigration Development
This is an interesting and important angle on the whole immigration question.
These Mexican wives seem to be saying that family breakup is a bad idea, even though their husbands are sending extra money back home.
As a free trader, I favor the Bush comprehensive immigration reform plan, which includes better border security, temporary worker cards, and ultimately, a path to citizenship.
However, family breakup is very troubling for a social conservative like myself.
Frankly, the extent of this family breakup problem is new information to me. I find it troubling.''
Larry Kudlow's reaction to the article about the 'wetback wives' is odd; is he really so naive or out of touch that he never considered the family breakup aspect of the illegal invasion? Kudlow must live a rather sheltered life, which would not surprise me; urban media folks tend to move in rather limited circles. No doubt Kudlow sees illegal (and legal) immigrants everywhere in New York, but New York City has been a 'multicultural' third-worldized city for some time, so I suspect these exotic illegals are simply colorful wallpaper or background noise to him. But has he never noticed the fact that there is a distinctly larger number of males among the illegals? That women are not proportionately represented? Many of these illegals who come to 'El Norte' leave their wives and children behind, and a certain number of them are probably coming here with the intention of escaping bad marriages, or burdensome responsibilities; they can disappear here, assume a new identity (or several new identities, in many cases) and shed all their past ties and responsibilities.
Allan Wall has written about this phenomenon at VDare for some time.
Emigration to the United States has been in many ways absolutely devastating for family life in Mexico. (See my article "Is Emigration Good For Mexico?") But you don�t hear much about this, because it doesn�t fit in with the rah-rah immigration stereotypes presented in the U.S. media.
But the devastation hasn�t been totally ignored by the Mexican media. One articulate Mexican woman who has spoken out on this subject is Adriana Cortés, the president of the Fundación Comunitaria de El Bajío (Community Foundation of The Bajío �a region of central Mexico). (Mujeres y familia, víctimas de la migración masculina, El Universal, May 19th, 2003)
According to Cortés: "One of the gravest problems confronting the population of the Bajío is migration, a social phenomenon that has left wives and grandmothers heading thousands of homes."
She points out that emigration results in these women being forced to bear the burden of raising the children. The children lose their father figure, which in turn helps to create more poverty.
For Adriana Cortés, the best solution is not to keep promoting emigration more and more, but to generate prosperity in the local community in Mexico!''
Wall then quotes from the letters which VDare.com has received from wives of illegals, begging for their men to be sent back home where they are needed.
Edwin S. Rubenstein says in this same piece that
The Census Bureau reported in 2002 there were 438,000 Mexican males in the U.S. whose wives were absent, another 190,000 who were divorced, and 113,000 who were separated from their wives. If twelve percent are deadbeat dads, that amounts to some 90,000.''
Actually this family abandonment phenomenon is not really new; I've read that a lot of the male immigrants in the Ellis Island days (the late 19th-early 20th centuries) came here without their wives, who stayed behind in Eastern Europe, expecting to be sent a ticket to America by their husbands, but often the wife was abandoned, as the husband made a new life with another woman or women here in America. I am sure many families were broken up via immigration.
But I suspect there is a cultural element to this particular phenomenon; Hispanic men, coming from a culture which emphasizes 'machismo' and fertility, are polyamorous to a greater extent.
But I suppose if you are a neocon (or even a self-described 'social conservative' like Kudlow) who believes that Hispanics are 'family values' conservatives, you might just be 'shocked; shocked, I tell you' about these Hispanic men abandoning wife and family at home.
Illegal immigration, or indeed mass immigration of all kinds, legal or illegal, represents upheaval, disruption of normal family life and ties. It represents erosion of traditional values, as millions of people become semi-nomadic and rootless. Existing communities in the invaded countries (that's all of us in the Western world) have our lives disrupted by large and increasing numbers of newcomers with strange, incompatible, often hostile ways. Our neighborhoods are broken up; many people feel compelled to flee changing neighborhoods and towns in order to find a less chaotic, more familiar and comfortable environment. Mass immigration disrupts the lives of everyone involved.
Maybe Kudlow is really surprised by the news that illegal immigrant families are broken up, but he still stubbornly believes that immigration is a positive good. That's the true mark of an ideologue: the unwillingness to adjust one's beliefs based on reality and facts. The ideologue denies or reframes reality rather than adjusting his beliefs.
As for the oft-repeated claim that we cannot deport illegals because 'families would be torn apart', do the bleeding hearts who say this ever admit that the decision to tear families apart was made when the illegal took to the road heading North? If keeping the family together meant that much, they would never have made a choice to come here, especially illegally. And if, having come here and had a family here, illegally, should there be a necessity to go home, the whole family can stay together and leave as a family. Mexico deports people ruthlessly, yet they have the gall to demand that we not deport their illegal trespassers.
The cry 'but we can't break up families!' is often the rationale for legalizing everybody, allowing everybody to stay. But they can be together, with their extended families, back in their home countries. Of course, the liberal solution to that issue is the family reunification policy, under which grandma, grandpa, and so on can just come to America. Sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, eventually, the whole extended family.
And why, while we're at it, is sending people home treated as an act of heartless cruelty? Sending people home, back to their place of origin, is not tantamount to imprisoning them, and it's not 'ethnic cleansing' as some idiots say, and it's certainly not 'genocide' as the most hysterical liberals imply. There is nothing inherently cruel about sending people back where they came from. They are not being sent back to a country in which their lives may be in danger, or where they are starving to death. There is no famine or mass hunger or starvation in Mexico. There is no mass persecution. Why do we so often accept the idea that the illegals 'have to' come here to 'feed their families' or to find work? This is just not true.
So let's not assist in breaking up families by encouraging illegal immigration. Mexico should show its supposed 'family values' by keeping its citizens at home, not shooing them here, to loot America.
Mexican wives want U.S. to return husbands
The women of Tecalpulco, Mexico, want the U.S. government to enforce its immigration laws because they want to force their husbands to come back home from working illegally in the United States.
They have created an English-language Web page where they identify themselves as the "wetback wives" and broadcast their pleas, both to their men and to the U.S. government.
"To the United States government -- close the border, send our men home to us, even if you must deport them (only treat them in a humane manner -- please do not hurt them)," it reads.
In poignant public messages to their husbands, the women talk about their children who feel abandoned, and worry that the men have forsaken their families for other women and for the American lifestyle.
[...]
Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs less immigration and a crackdown on illegal aliens, said the women's stories show that the huge migration flow is "very disruptive to the lives of those other countries."
He said it also proves that the men aren't fleeing poverty.
"These women would not be asking their husbands to come back if they themselves were starving," he said. "It's really more of people wanting more, a better life. It's perfectly understandable. But that's different than these people fleeing such desperation there's no way you could enforce the law."
[emphasis mine]
and from NRO's Larry Kudlow :
A Troubling Immigration Development
This is an interesting and important angle on the whole immigration question.
These Mexican wives seem to be saying that family breakup is a bad idea, even though their husbands are sending extra money back home.
As a free trader, I favor the Bush comprehensive immigration reform plan, which includes better border security, temporary worker cards, and ultimately, a path to citizenship.
However, family breakup is very troubling for a social conservative like myself.
Frankly, the extent of this family breakup problem is new information to me. I find it troubling.''
Larry Kudlow's reaction to the article about the 'wetback wives' is odd; is he really so naive or out of touch that he never considered the family breakup aspect of the illegal invasion? Kudlow must live a rather sheltered life, which would not surprise me; urban media folks tend to move in rather limited circles. No doubt Kudlow sees illegal (and legal) immigrants everywhere in New York, but New York City has been a 'multicultural' third-worldized city for some time, so I suspect these exotic illegals are simply colorful wallpaper or background noise to him. But has he never noticed the fact that there is a distinctly larger number of males among the illegals? That women are not proportionately represented? Many of these illegals who come to 'El Norte' leave their wives and children behind, and a certain number of them are probably coming here with the intention of escaping bad marriages, or burdensome responsibilities; they can disappear here, assume a new identity (or several new identities, in many cases) and shed all their past ties and responsibilities.
Allan Wall has written about this phenomenon at VDare for some time.
Emigration to the United States has been in many ways absolutely devastating for family life in Mexico. (See my article "Is Emigration Good For Mexico?") But you don�t hear much about this, because it doesn�t fit in with the rah-rah immigration stereotypes presented in the U.S. media.
But the devastation hasn�t been totally ignored by the Mexican media. One articulate Mexican woman who has spoken out on this subject is Adriana Cortés, the president of the Fundación Comunitaria de El Bajío (Community Foundation of The Bajío �a region of central Mexico). (Mujeres y familia, víctimas de la migración masculina, El Universal, May 19th, 2003)
According to Cortés: "One of the gravest problems confronting the population of the Bajío is migration, a social phenomenon that has left wives and grandmothers heading thousands of homes."
She points out that emigration results in these women being forced to bear the burden of raising the children. The children lose their father figure, which in turn helps to create more poverty.
For Adriana Cortés, the best solution is not to keep promoting emigration more and more, but to generate prosperity in the local community in Mexico!''
Wall then quotes from the letters which VDare.com has received from wives of illegals, begging for their men to be sent back home where they are needed.
Edwin S. Rubenstein says in this same piece that
The Census Bureau reported in 2002 there were 438,000 Mexican males in the U.S. whose wives were absent, another 190,000 who were divorced, and 113,000 who were separated from their wives. If twelve percent are deadbeat dads, that amounts to some 90,000.''
Actually this family abandonment phenomenon is not really new; I've read that a lot of the male immigrants in the Ellis Island days (the late 19th-early 20th centuries) came here without their wives, who stayed behind in Eastern Europe, expecting to be sent a ticket to America by their husbands, but often the wife was abandoned, as the husband made a new life with another woman or women here in America. I am sure many families were broken up via immigration.
But I suspect there is a cultural element to this particular phenomenon; Hispanic men, coming from a culture which emphasizes 'machismo' and fertility, are polyamorous to a greater extent.
But I suppose if you are a neocon (or even a self-described 'social conservative' like Kudlow) who believes that Hispanics are 'family values' conservatives, you might just be 'shocked; shocked, I tell you' about these Hispanic men abandoning wife and family at home.
Illegal immigration, or indeed mass immigration of all kinds, legal or illegal, represents upheaval, disruption of normal family life and ties. It represents erosion of traditional values, as millions of people become semi-nomadic and rootless. Existing communities in the invaded countries (that's all of us in the Western world) have our lives disrupted by large and increasing numbers of newcomers with strange, incompatible, often hostile ways. Our neighborhoods are broken up; many people feel compelled to flee changing neighborhoods and towns in order to find a less chaotic, more familiar and comfortable environment. Mass immigration disrupts the lives of everyone involved.
Maybe Kudlow is really surprised by the news that illegal immigrant families are broken up, but he still stubbornly believes that immigration is a positive good. That's the true mark of an ideologue: the unwillingness to adjust one's beliefs based on reality and facts. The ideologue denies or reframes reality rather than adjusting his beliefs.
As for the oft-repeated claim that we cannot deport illegals because 'families would be torn apart', do the bleeding hearts who say this ever admit that the decision to tear families apart was made when the illegal took to the road heading North? If keeping the family together meant that much, they would never have made a choice to come here, especially illegally. And if, having come here and had a family here, illegally, should there be a necessity to go home, the whole family can stay together and leave as a family. Mexico deports people ruthlessly, yet they have the gall to demand that we not deport their illegal trespassers.
The cry 'but we can't break up families!' is often the rationale for legalizing everybody, allowing everybody to stay. But they can be together, with their extended families, back in their home countries. Of course, the liberal solution to that issue is the family reunification policy, under which grandma, grandpa, and so on can just come to America. Sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, eventually, the whole extended family.
And why, while we're at it, is sending people home treated as an act of heartless cruelty? Sending people home, back to their place of origin, is not tantamount to imprisoning them, and it's not 'ethnic cleansing' as some idiots say, and it's certainly not 'genocide' as the most hysterical liberals imply. There is nothing inherently cruel about sending people back where they came from. They are not being sent back to a country in which their lives may be in danger, or where they are starving to death. There is no famine or mass hunger or starvation in Mexico. There is no mass persecution. Why do we so often accept the idea that the illegals 'have to' come here to 'feed their families' or to find work? This is just not true.
So let's not assist in breaking up families by encouraging illegal immigration. Mexico should show its supposed 'family values' by keeping its citizens at home, not shooing them here, to loot America.
Labels: Conservatism, Illegal Immigration, Open Borders