Address
to the San Diego World Affairs Council - San Diego, California
-- April 28, 2000
Trouble in the Neighborhood
Patrick J. Buchanan
Let me begin with a little history. Since Mexico won its independence
from Spain in 1821, our relations have often been troubled. In
1836, American settlers in Texas rebelled and that Mexican province
was soon lost to the United States. War ensued; and Mexico ceded
the entire Southwest and California to America.
However, when a Union Army helped Benito Juarez force the
French out of Mexico in 1867, the neighbors became friends. But
in 1910, the troubles began anew. After a revolution that was
both anti-church and anti-American, an impatient Woodrow Wilson
declared, "I am going to teach the South Americans to elect
good men." And, after a bloody assault on New Mexico by
Pancho Villa, Wilson sent General Pershing -- to do his tutoring.
In 1938, despite the Good Neighbor Policy of FDR, President
Cardenas nationalized the foreign oil companies. PEMEX was born.
Lately, PEMEX has colluded with OPEC to kept oil off the world
market to gouge the Americans who bailed out Mexico five years
ago. So much for gratitude.
Today, I fear America and Mexico may again be headed for a
time of troubles. Indeed, in his novel about future wars, Cap
Weinberger even had one of those wars feature a U.S. invasion
of Mexico. For the record, that is not what I have in mind.
Why do I believe U.S.-Mexican relations are headed downhill?
Because, despite the propaganda about NAFTA, despite some 4000
maquiladora plants employing over a million workers, real wages
in these plants have fallen below where they were when NAFTA
passed. Indeed, real wages in Mexico are now below where they
were in 1980.
Two catastrophic devaluations of the peso have robbed Mexico's
hard- working people of the fruits of their labor. Hence, the
great migration north of Mexico's poor has exploded. Senator
Adolfo Zinser openly admits: "The [Mexican] government's
economic policy is dependent on unlimited emigration to the United
States."
In 1993, Janet Reno boasted: "If NAFTA passes, my job
guarding the border will be easier." Well, Ms. Reno got
NAFTA; and despite a doubling of the Border Patrol and a new
security fence at San Diego, record numbers of illegal aliens
are being apprehended every year.
Let me tell you about a lady I visited: Theresa Murray, 82
years old, who lives in a ranch house right on the border in
Douglas, Arizona. Her house is surrounded by chain-link fence
on the top of which are masses of razor wire. Every door and
window has bars on it. She sleeps with a gun on her bed table
because she has been burglarized 30 times. Her two pet guard
dogs are dead, their stomachs torn open by shards of glass in
packets of meat that were thrown over the fence. This lady is
living inside a maximum security prison in her own home in her
own country because our government is too weak or cowardly to
do its duty to defend America's borders.
Politicians may gush over our warm relations, but there is
no peace on the frontier. Nightly, ranches are turned into bivouac
areas for armies of aliens that cut fences and leave poisoned
cattle and trails of human debris behind in their endless drive
north.
Lately, the Mexican army has begun to intrude. The State Department
reports 55 Mexican military incursions in five years. Last month,
two truckloads of Mexican soldiers barreled through a barbed
wire fence, pursued a Border Patrol vehicle and two officers
on horseback, and fired shots. Mexico City says the soldiers
were part of an anti-drug unit. But Border Patrol agents believe
some Mexican army units collaborate with the drug cartels, that
made Mexico their preferred crossing point into the U.S. when
NAFTA passed.
As for the millions of illegals who have already entered this
country, they have caused a demographic sea change. California
now has 34 million people and, if the border is not secured,
will have 50 million by 2010. One- third of California's population
is now Latino.
Such sudden changes in the ethnic character of a society can
mean everything. When Americans in Texas vastly out-numbered
Mexicans, they rebelled, and Mexico lost Texas. In 1893, U.S.
sugar planters in Hawaii rose up and deposed the Queen. Five
years later, we annexed Hawaii. Mass immigration, then insurrection,
independence, and annexation: This is how Europe's American empires
were expropriated, and America grew. We may choose to forget
this history, but Mexico remembers. And while we shudder at the
idea it could happen here, Mexican irredentism is alive and well.
In 1998, the Mexican consul general in California exclaimed:
"[E]ven though I am saying this part serious, part joking,
I think we are practicing La Reconquista in California."
In 1997, President Zedillo said: "I have proudly proclaimed
that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed
by its borders, and...Mexican migrants are...a very important
part of it."
Anti-Americanism is taking root in the barrios. In February
1998 the U.S. soccer team played Mexico in Los Angeles' Coliseum.
The crowd booed our national anthem. Fans who applauded the U.S.
team were pelted with fruit and cups of beer; the U.S. players
were showered with debris and spat upon as they left the field
- in their own country.
The Latino student organization
MechA openly demands return of the Southwest to Mexico.
Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University
of New Mexico, says the creation of a new "Aztlan,"
with its capital in Los Angeles is inevitable, and Mexicans should
seek it by any means necessary. Ricky Sierra of One Stop Immigration,
declares: "We're recolonizing America so they're afraid
of us. It's time to take back what is ours."
One demonstration leader in Westwood was heard to say, "We
are here...to show white Protestant Los Angeles that we're the
majority...and we claim this land as ours. It's always been ours
and we're still hereif anybody is going to be deported it's going
to be you." Now, in 1845, Californians did not consider
themselves Mexicans, but Spaniards. So this is myth. But in such
matters myth trumps truth.
Proposition 187, passed by a 3-2 margin in 1994, was the last
serious effort by Californians to confront a crisis state and
federal governments refuse to grapple with. It would have denied
social benefits and free schooling to illegal aliens. It may
have been too harsh; but, after Californians voted it into law,
pro-illegal groups tied it up in court, and Governor Gray Davis
refused to pursue it to the Supreme Court. Prop 187, mocks California
legislator Art Torres, was "the last gasp of white America."
Why did Californians support it? One reason is that the L.A.
school system is in crisis. At a cost of $10,500 per student,
more than half the students cannot do grade-level work. Children
are promoted automatically, whether failing or not. The new L.A.
also has a thriving gang culture, where Hispanic gangs account
for far more killings than those by any other group.
Taxpayer services was another reason for Prop 187. Here, I
want to repeat a story by Roger McGrath, an historian of the
American West who was born in L.A. "Not so long ago,"
writes McGrath, "my daughter had split her eyebrow open
in an accident and my wife and I rushed her to our local hospital.
Although our community is not more than 8% Hispanic, a third
or more in the emergency room clearly were recent arrivals from
south of the border...they were speaking only Spanish. While
my wife held an ice pack on my daughter's eyebrow, I filled out
a stack of insurance forms for the hospital, and watched illegal
alien after illegal alien go ahead of us....Most of them seemed
to be there for problems that were not of an emergency nature.
Controlling my temper as best I could I asked one of the nurses
what was going on. She looked at me sympathetically, nodded in
the direction of the illegals and said 'If they don't pay, the
county and the state cover our expenses. If you don't pay, we're
stuck with it.' Illegal aliens to the front of the line, American
citizens to the rear."
No one is supposed to talk about this. Republicans head for
the hills and wall themselves off in gated communities, terrified
to speak their minds lest they be branded "xenophobic"
by the thought police of Political Correctness. Democrats see
a new base in illegal immigration. The more poor people, the
larger the constituency for social programs. The speaker of California's
assembly has called on the state to issue drivers licenses to
illegal aliens. And Democrats are moving at flank speed to turn
illegals into voters.
President Clinton, whose INS created 800,000 new citizens
just in time to vote in 1996, is talking about another amnesty
for all illegal aliens. The AFL- CIO, with visions of millions
of new union members, is all for it. Meanwhile, in California,
plans are being explored to declare Cinco de Mayo a state holiday.
"In the near future," says Gray Davis, "people
will look at California and Mexico as one magnificent region."
Perhaps we can call it Aztlan.
George W. Bush goes further. He wants a NAFTA free trade zone
extended to all of South America to Cape Horn. But just as in
Europe, where such a Common Market led to a European political
union, a hemispheric NAFTA must mean an eventual end of America's
separate identity and national sovereignty. Mr. Clinton understands
this. I doubt if Mr. Bush has a clue.
My friends, Mexico's people are good people, who have been
robbed repeatedly of the just rewards of their labor. While any
American President must be ready to help Mexico, we cannot permit
any regime to use America as a spillway for the excess population
it cannot employ. And we cannot allow to rise within our country
a nation within a nation where Spanish is the language and anti-Americanism
the ideology, while U.S. taxpayers pay for its schools and services
as it swells inexorably towards the Nuevo Aztlan of the Chicano
activists' imagination.
In a Buchanan presidency, the Border Patrol will get the tools
it needs, and be backed up by the Armed Forces if necessary;
and that border will be closed tight to illegal immigration,
and I will ask no one's permission to do it. As Ronald Reagan
reminded us: A country that doesn't control its borders isn't
really a country anymore. Good fences make good neighbors.
As for U.S. businesses that repeatedly hire illegals to avoid
the wages, benefits, and protections accorded our workers, they
will be prosecuted. And I will use every presidential power to
ensure that immigrant children are immersed in the English language
from the moment they enter an American classroom.
My friends, you in the West know that Mexico is inseparably
entwined with the culture and history of this region. But for
all that we share, we remain separate, distinct nations. And
the nation, said General DeGaulle, is the building block of international
society. As he could not see a Europe without her France, her
Italy, her Germany, so, to me, the world will suffer an incomparable
and irreparable loss without a fully sovereign and forever independent
United States, with defined frontiers, confident of its history
and identity, ready always to extend Mexico a helping hand, but
prepared to enforce its own laws, and formulate trade and immigration
policies in the interests of Americans first. When all our leaders
are clear about that, we will be on the way to peace on the border
once again.
