05/18/2008
The New York Times is known for standing strongly on the side of open borders and supporting nonexistent "rights" of foreigners residing here illegally. But the paper has certainly broken new ground with this interview of a one-time illegal Mexican farmworker who is now a Brain Surgeon (!), Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. The article is thick with inferred praise for the man’s professional success, but has zero condemnation for his illegal acts.
The implication is that we better keep borders open because America wouldn’t want to miss out on a potential neurosurgeon lurking among the grade-school dropouts picking tomatoes: A Surgeon’s Path From Migrant Fields to Operating Room (March 13, 2008).
Q. WHERE DID YOU GROW UP?This illegal alien (who later became a citizen) occupied student slots at UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School that should have gone to law-abiding citizens, whose parents' taxes pay for state schools like the University of California system. No mention of that by the Times, however; only a wrap-up question calling for a typical liberal response. Senor Doctor Hinojosa complies:A. Mexicali. My father had a small gas station. The family’s stability vanished when there was a devaluation of the Mexican peso in the 1980s. My father lost the gas station, and we had no money for food. For a while, I sold hot dogs on the corner to help.
As the economic crisis deepened, there seemed no possibility for any future in Mexico. I had big dreams and I wanted more education. So in 1987, when I was 19, I went up to the border between Mexicali and the United States and hopped the fence.
Some years later, I was sitting at a lunch table with colleagues at Harvard Medical School. Someone asked how I’d come to Harvard. “I hopped the fence,” I said. Everyone laughed. They thought I was joking.
Q. WHEN YOU HEAR ANTI-IMMIGRANT EXPRESSIONS ON TALK RADIO AND CABLE TELEVISION, HOW DO YOU FEEL?It’s the old "force of nature" argument, resoundingly disproved by the recent success of law enforcement in places like Arizona and Oklahoma. Perhaps Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa has not yet heard the good news that America as a nation of laws has not been completely obliterated. You can contact him at .A. It bothers me. Because I know what it was that drove me to jump the fence. It was poverty and frustration with a system that would have never allowed me to be who I am today.
As long as there is poverty in the rest of the world and we export our culture through movies and television, people who are hungry are going to come here. There’s no way to stop it.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.