By Paul Nachman
06/26/2007
There was a sensation last summer — at least among us old-timers on this subject — over a man-bites-dog article on illegal aliens in the Los Angeles Times. The astonishing aspect of the article ("6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence," by Sam Quinones, July 28, 2006; recently moved to the Times’s pay archive but freely available, with some annotations and highlightings, here, ) was its depiction — in a human-interest story — of mass illegal immigration’s baleful burdens on American society.By Steve Sailer promptly and enthusiastically quoted the Times article’s juiciest passages here, adding plenty of background material and commentary. I won’t duplicate his effort.
But I will bring back for VDARE readers five paragraphs from the Times article’s secondary story (Read it to see what I mean!) that I've been using in talking with audiences of immigration naifs, including Congressional staff people.
"My" part of the Times article (The quoted paragraphs are from about 2/3 of the way to the end.) describes the experience of a woman who came to California illegally from Mexico but then somehow attained legal status later, probably from the 1986 IRCA law.
"[S]ister Alejandra was the first to leave. In Los Angeles, she and her husband were barely able to make ends meet. As in Mexico, 'there was little work and it’s poorly paid,' she said."Eight years ago, she and her family moved to Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs.
[snip, omitting one paragraph]
"Today, the Magdalenos in Lexington earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico.
"'What we weren’t able to do in many years in California,' Alejandra said, 'we've done quickly here.
"'We're in a state where there’s nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It’s clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California’s broken.'"
I read aloud that final, juicy paragraph with loving deliberateness, sometimes rubbing it in a bit with my listeners: "And you want this coming to Ohio (or Tennessee, or North Dakota, etc.)??"It’s a tool for our side, folks! Please use it.
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