At first I didn’t know why Glenn’s post from yesterday on immigration (in which he facetiously suggests annexing Mexico) ruffled my feathers since I agree with much of what he has to say. My first thought was the overgeneralization (for which I think he should be penalized ten yards):
The people there are smart and hardworking, after all, and they tend to do just fine when they get here. They’re leaving because being smart and hardworking is enough to get you ahead in the United States, but not in Mexico.
That’s very pious and all but, unfortunately, it’s a gross overgeneralization. Does every Mexican immigrant into the United States want a better way of life? Sure. So does every American, Argentine, Yemeni, Zambian, deer, muskrat, or planarium on the planet. That’s why flatworms move from Point A to Point B, for goodness sake: to go from a worse condition to a better one. It’s neither admirable nor despicable it just is. It’s a law of existence.
Do most Mexicans who come here come to work hard? We’d like to think so but the honest truth because of illegal immigration is that neither Glenn, nor I, nor anyone else really knows. The most we can say is that some come here to work hard while some come here to be career ciminals (the pay for that is better here, too) and others come here to do as little as possible hoping that America’s largesse will pay for their lifestyle, take care of their health, and educate their kids.
But after thinking a little more about it I realized that wasn’t what bugged me. It was the wishful thinking. I agree with Glenn that it would be wonderful if Mexico reformed politically and socially so that its economy would grow and prosper. But after 100 years of the same old song in Mexico it should be obvious to anyone that there’s absolutely no motivation for the Mexican government or Mexican society to reform and there won’t be as long as we have an open border with Mexico and we’re happy to let the Mexican government dictate terms to us. Remittances sent from the U. S. to Mexico are well on their way to being the biggest industry there and as long as the dough keeps flying in why change anything?
If you will the end, you must will the means. Anything else is just wishful thinking.
UPDATE: I don’t think that Dan Riehl quite gets it, either: Mexico is Mexico because the United States is the United States. We’re enabling Mexico’s dysfunction.
ANOTHER UPDATE:Â I see that Jay Tea is thinking in a somewhat similar vein over at Wizbang:
With the recent wave of protests for changing our immigration laws, there has been a great deal of conflation of all aliens within the United States. That’s wrong — they are not a monolithic group. Of the literally millions of non-Americans in our country, here for numerous reasons, and to lump all of them together under one big label is sheer intellectual laziness.
