By Allan Wall
12/15/2008
I'd like to announce a big change in my life. I no longer reside in Mexico.
I have recently moved back to the United States of America.
The actual relocation came about rather quickly. While visiting the United States, I received an offer to teach in a public school, I accepted and was hired. My family and I went back to Mexico, tied up some loose ends, loaded what we could in our minivan, and moved to the U.S.A.
In the words of an old Chuck Berry song (see video here), I find myself "Back in the U.S.A".
It’s been a big change for me, and for my family as well, and we're still getting used to living in the U.S.A.
It’s my first time to teach in a U.S. public school. After fourteen years teaching English in Mexican private schools (video here ), it’s a big change, and I’m still adjusting to it.
I've also joined a teacher’s association. But I didn’t join the NEA [National Education Association], an organization so ably critiqued by Peter Brimelow in The Worm in the Apple. Instead, I joined a much smaller but independent state-based educators' organization specifically formed to provide an alternative to the NEA. It’s good that more such options are available to teachers nowadays. I don’t want my dues going to the NEA.
I resided in Mexico from 1991 to 2008 (interrupted by my Iraq deployment with the National Guard from mid-2004 to December of 2005). Mexico has been a great experience and it’s where I met Lilia, where we married and started our family.
The Book of Ecclesiastes says that "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven". I believe accepting this new job offer and moving here was a good move for me and family. It was time for us to move to the U.S.A.
I noticed too that my VDARE.COM colleague Joe Guzzardi has also relocated his residence this year, leaving California and moving to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. I have corresponded with Joe for years, and I wish him the best in his new location.
My wife Lilia and our children are doing well here in the U.S. Lilia has a legal permit to be here and my sons David and Raphael (photograph here ) are U.S. citizens. The boys are in school (fourth grade and first grade) and my wife is working as a housewife and school substitute. I plan to stay in touch with the Mexican scene, and to visit the country, probably twice a year.
In another step in the transition, I recently sent my Mexican work permit back to the immigration department in Mexico. I was the holder of an FM-3 work permit document, issued to me by the Mexican government. It granted me the right to live and work in Mexico. Before I moved, I went to the INM (Mexican immigration department office) told them what I was doing, and asked them what I should do about the document. I was informed that I could turn it in while exiting the country, or send it back to that particular office after returning. I opted to do the latter.
By the time I got around to sending it, the document had almost expired, which wasn’t a problem since this time I wasn’t renewing it. I sent the document back along with a letter explaining my change of residence. On the letter I signed my name (in the dual surname Spanish-style) "Allan Ephraim Wall Dunlavy."
It’s the end of an era for me, and I’m no longer authorized to work in Mexico. Next time I go there, as a visitor, it'll be necessary for me to apply for a visitor’s permit. (I don’t plan on sneaking in).
Living in Mexico was formative in my thinking on the National Question. It was my experience there, along with my observations in South Texas and my encounter with Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation that brought me firmly into the restrictionist (or immigration patriot) camp. (See my article Education of a Gringo in Mexico ).
I have seen how U.S. immigration, Mexican emigration to the U.S., and U.S. citizenship and assimilation are viewed in Mexico, and how Mexican politicians brazenly meddle in U.S. immigration policy. I also concluded that emigration does not really help Mexico in a constructive manner (see here, here and here.) So I wound up writing all these articles from Mexico for VDARE.COM for all these years.
Thanks to the opportunity of writing for this website, I have had the privilege of receiving many interesting, informative and encouraging letters from many readers, which have helped to expand my perspective.
I've received some flak over the years also. On the one hand I've been criticized by Americans who called me a traitor for living in Mexico and marrying a Mexican.
Most of the flak, though, was from open-borders promoters who were especially offended that I could actually live in Mexico and promote U.S. immigration control. I have responded to these arguments in articles here and here and in replies to letters here, here, here, here and here.
To experience another culture is like seeing the world through another set of spectacles. It’s a highly enriching experience, and I highly recommend it. It certainly helped to transform my thinking on the U.S. National Question (and on the Mexican National Question also).
I decided to move back due to economic and personal reasons. The job I had in Mexico was a well-paying one by Mexican standards, but the benefits and retirement weren’t much. (A previous job I had in Mexico had much better benefits, but I lost it when I was called up to go to Iraq. Unlike Guardsmen living in the United States, I wasn’t protected by a law which guaranteed my position. After I returned to Mexico from Iraq, I was unable to get hired at that school again.) We lived a middle-class lifestyle in Mexico, had accumulated a lot of debt, and Mexican interest rates are high.
I also moved back to the U.S. because I had the opportunity to live on a farm, in an area I know well and love very much. I thought it would be good for my sons to live on a farm, so that’s another advantage for me.
I realize however, that, by returning to the U.S., I’m losing the right to write a column entitled "Memo from Mexico". I still can however, and plan to, continue writing about Mexico for VDARE.COM. It’s a unique website, with a niche all its own.
VDARE.COM provides you with important information you won’t get from the Mainstream Media. VDARE.COM provides a true diversity of writers who, though we may disagree on various other issues, agree that the current mass immigration is harmful for our nation and must be drastically reduced.
I'd like to remind readers that VDARE.COM could use your help. If you're able, consider giving a donation here. This webzine provides a vital service for concerned Americans who wish to turn things around, in these dangerous and exciting times.
And, in these dangerous and exciting times, I’m glad to be back in the U.S.A.
American citizen Allan Wall resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here and his website is here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.
