The results of 159 years of Hispanic assimilation in New Mexico: The commentariat is laughing at Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson for being humiliated by Tim Russert on Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to immigration. Last week this is what all the newspapers said. “The Senate’s compromise immigration bill is forcing the presidential candidates to confront a divisive issue. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson praised the bill. ‘This legislation makes a good start” towards “re-securing our Southern border.’” A few days later this headline appeared. “Hispanic presidential hopeful confronts immigration debate. On Wednesday Richardson said that after read[ing] the immigration bill in detail, he decided to oppose it, saying the measure placed too great a burden on immigrants, tearing apart families that wanted to settle in the U.S., creating a permanent tier of second-class immigrant workers and financing a border fence. This is fundamentally flawed in its current form and I would oppose it. We need bipartisanship, we also need legislation that’s compassionate. I’m not sure this is it.’” How can you be for it and 72 hours later against it?
GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, no, this is what happened. I was announcing for president, and the day before, I saw a summary of a bill that had been proposed in the Senate. ... The bill is then presented, and I read it the next day, and it contained some problems.
He realized after reading the the 300+ page bill that his initial reaction had been wrong? What a flip-flopper!
(Of course, I don't actually believe Richardson read the bill. I'm sure he just heard more about it. And the reasons he says he changed his mind -- e.g., the bill cuts back on extended family reunification for legal immigrants -- are mostly bad ones. But, this controversy over a politician changing his mind on an incredibly complex piece of proposed legislation after 72 hours of reflection illustrates the jaw-dropping irresponsibility of the prestige press when it comes to immigration. You aren't supposed to think about immigration -- that's the mark of a yahoo. You are just supposed to instantaneously react emotionally in order to show whether your are a Good Person or a Bad Person.)
MR. RUSSERT: But let’s go through the resume a little bit. First, there’s governor of New Mexico. As you well know, they rank states in a whole variety of categories from one being the best, 50th being the worst. This is New Mexico’s scorecard, and you are the governor. Percent of people living below the poverty line, you’re 48. Percent of children below, 48. Median family income, 47. People without health insurance, 49. Children without health insurance, 46. Teen high school dropouts, 47. Death rate due to firearms, 48. Violent crime rate, 46. You’re the very bottom of all those statistics of all 50 states, and you’re the governor for five years.
GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, Tim, let me just say that we’ve made enormous progress in all of those areas. [More]
He's been governor for five whole years and he hasn't yet turned turn New Mexicans into Minnesotans? What a loser!
The press is obsessed with political horse races and bored with long-term realities. Yet, the pervasive, unchanging mediocrity of New Mexico sheds important light on the issue of the day, immigration.
Despite being one of the four border states, there is remarkably little immigration from Old Mexico into New Mexico. Why not? In large part, because it's already filled with Latinos, many of who trace their ancestry in New Mexico back before the U.S. seized it in the Mexican-American war. After 159 years in the United States of America, they still haven't much assimilated to American standards. What does that say about the prospects for assimilation of newcomers from Mexico?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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25 comments:
Damn!
Now if we could only get idiots like Fred Barnes to stop comparing the next wave of Mexicans to previous waves of Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants: it's not as if there isn't a long history of Mexicans in the U.S. we can draw on for comparison.
Russert Cites the Following Rankings:
Median Family Income: #47
People Below the Poverty Line : #48
Children Below the Poverty Line: #48
People without Health Insurance: #49
Children without Health Insurance: #46
Teen High School Dropouts: #47
Death Rate Due to Firearms: #48
Violent Crime Rate: #46
Richardson has been governor since 2003 and says he has made "enormous progress." Lets take a look at what those figures were in 2002
Median Family Income: #46 (2002)
People Below the Poverty Line (excluding 51st "state" of DC), #49 (2002)
Children Below the Poverty Line (excluding 51st "state" of DC), #47 (2002)
Death Rate Due to Firearms (excluding 51st "state" of DC), #43 (2002)
I haven't yet found the violent crime rate in New Mexico for 2002, but the ranking in 2004 was #45 in the nation, so it certainly hasn't moved up in the last few years of Richardson-Lopez' reign.
Okay, that's all I can take....somebody else can dig up the rest of the stats. Depressing.
Excellent point, Steve.
An even more to-the-point observation would be, ever since 1810, Mexico seems not to have assimilated into "civilized existence" as understood in countries like the US.
Why millions must "immigrate" (actually "colonize") others' countries "to breathe free" or "to become civilized" is the greatest mystery of all. Is there a specific genetic/biochemical process that happens while immigrating that transforms those individuals to potential-civilized-men?
No wait. I get it. The West (as a short clip from Michael Moore's recent documentary showing the "health system" in the UK was saying subtextually) is now supposed to be a giant Red Cross tent, because it has a huge "surplus" and we're living the age of "post-scarcity" (pseudo-technical phrases by lefties to avoid the predictability of envious resentment). And Westerners are the supposed to be the invisible Santa Clauses to feed the ever-hungry, clothe and shelter the chronically-poor, to employ the unemployable... sorry, unemployed.
JD
Out of curiousity, do people living in the South West view Hispanics whose families have been in the US for a couple of generations differently than the riff raff that have been pouring across since the 1980's?
How do these older Hispanics view the newer arrivals?
I've read that in Texas the older families (Tejanos?) are better assimilated, but I've never lived in the South West so I don't know what the dynamic is down there.
Old Right
richardson won't be electable if he keeps up the naked identity politics he used to kick off his campaign. i would expect him to tone that down, in other words, lie to white and black americans that he cares about them as much as mexicans.
it's a shame the government is giving the southwest back to the mexicans. it is beautiful terrain. i notice that in the great rust belt-to-sun belt migration of the 21st century, people avoid new mexico, even though property and houses are cheap there. move to california, arizona, or nevada, avoid new mexico.
the national labs in new mexico are really the only thing that whites have developed down there, and those hold no interest to a mexican. nothing in science or technology does. they would rather follow the whites to their big cities with infrastructure and lots of available low paying jobs.
Hey, here's a possible solution to the whole immigration mess: let's just give the entire state of New Mexico to the Mexican government!
Of course, we'd then have to insist on the immediate relocation of all Mexican nationals currently residing in the US without our permission to our (former) 48th state - and, just for good measure, also demand that any naturalized Mexican who insists on holding dual citizenship to give up their US ties and take that 'left turn at Albequerque' as well. . .
Sounds like a 'win-win' for the forces of reconquista to me. . .and if they find the name "Neuva Mexico" too patronizing, they can always rename it 'Aztlan'. . .
This is a tough one. I think most Mexicans are hardworking and good natured so Ican't get too riled up. Can't we concentrate on eradicating the muslim plague? Dan
This is a tough one. I think most Mexicans are hardworking and good natured so Ican't get too riled up. Can't we concentrate on eradicating the muslim plague?
An example of how Mexican mestizos behave when they live in an almost wholly Hispanic-Mexican environment:
80% Hispanic Santa Ana, CA (pop. 363,000) led the nation in mail carrier dog bites last year with 96. All of NYC(pop 8,000,000+) had ZERO. Sanat Ana is the most heavily Hispanic of the nation's fifty largest cities and has an all-Hispanic City Council.
http://www.ksby.com/global/story.asp?s=6525435
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-mailmay17,1,1654702.story?track=rss
Traveling to and from Louisiana to California on both I-40 and I-10, you know immediately when you are in Arizona. The roads are pretty damn good. And when you're in Texas. Again, the roads are pretty damn good. In New Mexico and Louisiana, the roads are terrible. Worse in Louisiana (which is on pretty much every scale imaginable worse than New Mexico, but not by a lot, which is a damning comment on New Mexico if you've seen Louisiana).
What stood out to me in seeing those states is that New Mexico lacks pretty much an urban infrastructure. Arizona has Phoenix and Tuscon. Which aren't bad in December. Texas has decent cities as far East as Fort Stockton and Amarillo. Amarillo is nicer though. El Paso is a pit but it's always been a pit, even in the Old West.
But New Mexico lacks even the minimal urban infrastructure of Louisiana, which has Baton Rouge and "had" New Orleans. Albuquerque is not even Baton Rouge. Instead in New Mexico you have grinding rural poverty. People see the ills of urban poverty and forget that rural poverty is some ways even worse. There is a reason people leave the farm for the city.
Louisiana is far more corrupt than New Mexico, but at least has Baton Rouge. Other than tourist-trap Santa Fe, there is really only one city in New Mexico.
JD: No wait. I get it. The West (as a short clip from Michael Moore's recent documentary showing the "health system" in the UK was saying subtextually) is now supposed to be a giant Red Cross tent, because it has a huge "surplus" and we're living the age of "post-scarcity" (pseudo-technical phrases by lefties to avoid the predictability of envious resentment). And Westerners are the supposed to be the invisible Santa Clauses to feed the ever-hungry, clothe and shelter the chronically-poor, to employ the unemployable... sorry, unemployed.
Don't fall for that crap.
It's just rhetoric - leftists no more believe in any of that nonsense than they believed in the historical imperative 100 years ago.
Leftists will deploy whatever rhetoric they think will be expedient for furthering their goals.
They'll even develop multiple, competing, internally inconsistent sets of rhetoric, and employ the one that most appeals to the audience who's listening to them at that very moment, then turn right around and use an entirely different & utterly contradictory line on a different crowd.
In the case of decriminalization of the illegals, it's all about re-introducing de facto chattel slavery to supply free labor for the elites.
Nothing less.
That's the real taboo today. Not that "white" civilization is on a higher level. But that it was really only one strain of white civilization that blazed the path, the Anglo-Saxons. That is what is most galling. To the non-whites and to all the other white ethnics.
I disagree. The English-speaking world's preeminence in anything is pretty recent. I look back at France's phenomenal intellects around the time of the French Revolution and wonder what happened. The French went from producing Galois, Lavoisier, Comte, Carnot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Descartes, and so many other great minds to producing charlatans like Derrida, Althusser, Baudrillard, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault and a horde of others taken seriously as "great thinkers" by the French people and more gullible minds in English lit and social science departments. As for the Germans, they have plenty of accomplishment in the scientific arena. For instance, they practically invented mathematics as we know it today. Early on, there was the prolific Euler (a Swiss-German). A little later came the most fantastic set of mathematicians ever to assemble in one place: the University of Gottingen group with Gauss, Riemann, Dedekind, Gudermann, Möbius, Bessel, and a slew of others. The Germans can also claim Weierstrass, Frobenius, Hilbert, Kummer, Schottky, Schönflies, Lambert, Grassmann, Klein, Bieberbach, Leibniz, and Jacobi. Three German Jews stand out in my mind also: Noether, Cantor and Landau. Unfortunatley, the German world also gave us Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, and Marx.
Where the English world really got it right was in formulating a rational approach to political philosophy and economics. The Anglo has never had much use for Derrida-esque obscurantism. We've generally favored more realistic, down-to-earth, pragmatic approaches than the Continentals. The libertarian tendency so evident in the Anglosphere seem to be nearly absent among Continental Europeans and non-whites. (Of course, our open-borders libertarian friends don't seem to realize this.) The political spectrum for the rest of the world just isn't one that English-speakers would readily recognize. We have the endless debates among left-wingers and right-wingers about whether the Nazis were more like America's conservatives or liberals as though such a distinction really made much sense in the English-speaking world. Of course, I'm sure Bush and Chertoff have sided with the liberals on this one: any Republican who opposes their "non-amnesty without animosity" is a Nazi.
Remember, folks: we're just preaching to the choir here. Tell it to your senators. Again.
And don't bring up race or IQ. Talk about how unskilled immigration is depressing wages for the poorest Americans, and -- especially if the Senator is a Democrat -- tar him by association with President Bush. Why is he so enthusiastic about Bush's immigration scheme? That sort of thing. Bush is like electoral kryptonite now; Senators should realize they're playing with his glowing green rocks if they vote for this awful bill.
Tommy,
Ann Coulter's point wasn't about the brilliance of any particular famous residents of Anglo-Saxon countries versus those of other countries, but of the beneficent efficacy of the Anglo Saxon political culture itself.
There are countries with brilliant mathematicians, etc. and shitty political cultures (e.g., Russia).
After 159 years in the United States of America, they still haven't much assimilated to American standards. What does that say about the prospects for assimilation of newcomers from Mexico?
The iSteve has asked us another vexing question.
I say that we barely assimiliated the white ethnics from Europe...and that the process is still ongoing. And all of that history has all been swept under the carpet.
It was prudent to have an immigration timeout in the 1920s to stop the flood. The Germans had to be aggressively detached from the Fatherland. The Irish set up the revolting and poisonous patronage machines in most eastern cities. The Italian mafia has done incalculable harm over the past 100 years. The Jews thanked us with the Frankfurt School and the Hart-Cellar 1965 Immigration Act (and the 2007 Immigration Act). Of course, all of these tribes also have made enormous contributions to the nation.
But I say we only made it this far because we demanded assimiliation and also the previous newcomers were mostly close cousins. These modern newcomers are distant cousins at best and there is no aggressive assimiliation program. So the answer to the iSteve's question is that there will be a La Raza separatist movement in the American Southwest. Fairly soon. How could there not be at this point?
I went to a conference in Albuquerque for a week and I saw almost no nonwhites the whole time I was there. The landscape even in the city was as beautiful as anything I knew from back home (and I live in a pretty naturey area) and the streets were amazingly clean. We walked around the streets unarmed and unafraid and everyone we talked to was friendly. I left the city determined to find a way to move there someday. I couldnt contain my amazement when I later heard from the host that New Mexico was one of the poorest states in the Union and that Albuquerque's white people, even liberals like herself (a Gore campaign worker), were afraid to go into parts of the city where Mexican and Asian gangs were dominant and that whites in general were rapidly fleeing to more homogeneous areas even when it meant a big drop in salary and property values.
Mexicans are genetically a mixture of Indian, Spanish and black African.Anyone who thinks living for three generations in America will turn them into Irish or Poles must subscribe to the magic realist school of biology.
Dave,
Ann Coulter's point wasn't about the brilliance of any particular famous residents of Anglo-Saxon countries versus those of other countries, but of the beneficent efficacy of the Anglo Saxon political culture itself.
I realize that. I was just taking issue with the single comment about only Anglo-Saxons "blazing the path." I believe Anglo-Saxon ascendancy, even in terms of political thinking, has been a relatively recent phenomenon.
There are countries with brilliant mathematicians, etc. and shitty political cultures (e.g., Russia).
Yeah, well France and Germany aren't that bad! Neither is Italy, the leading nation of the Renaissance. Russia and Eastern Europe seem to be a more difficult case.
Speaking of Russia and its intractable political problems, here is an interesting blog:
http://russophobe.blogspot.com/index.html
Peewee: I left the city determined to find a way to move there someday. I couldnt contain my amazement when I later heard from the host that New Mexico was one of the poorest states in the Union and that Albuquerque's white people, even liberals like herself (a Gore campaign worker), were afraid to go into parts of the city where Mexican and Asian gangs were dominant and that whites in general were rapidly fleeing to more homogeneous areas even when it meant a big drop in salary and property values.
Welcome to third-world banana republic oligarchy.
During the "White Mischief" phase, it's a never-ending party at the poolside bar, behind the seemingly insurmountable gates and walls of the plantation compound, but it's not so fun when the locals grab the old Goodyears & the gasoline, storm the compound, and start necklacing you & yours.
It was prudent to have an immigration timeout in the 1920s to stop the flood. The Germans had to be aggressively detached from the Fatherland. The Irish set up the revolting and poisonous patronage machines in most eastern cities. The Italian mafia has done incalculable harm over the past 100 years. The Jews thanked us with the Frankfurt School and the Hart-Cellar 1965 Immigration Act (and the 2007 Immigration Act). Of course, all of these tribes also have made enormous contributions to the nation.
This is one of the great untold stories of the last wave of of European immigrants. We are still paying the price for them with today's broken immigration policies. All of these organizations, Jewish, Italian, and Irish alike, favor unrestricted immigration. The Germans might also be in the ethnic lobby game today if it were not for two world wars.
Why do San Jose CA, Corpus Christi TX, Austin TX and El Paso TX have such low rates of homicide despite high Mexican populations?
Does anybody know?
Mr. Bodio:
My post was made with tongue firmly in cheek. I will admit to being uninformed about NM, in that my only visit there was a brief stop at a national park in the upper NE corner about 15 summers ago. If I offended you in anyway, my apologies.
One of the popular arguments amongst the pro-amnesty crowd relies upon the 'we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us' rationale, which I assume refers to those tribes who settled in what is now NM many decades ago. Which makes the near-total avoidance of the state by current immigrants in favor of bordering states AZ and TX rather remarkable.
I hate to tell you but
1. the Hispanics and native Americans in new Mexico were there first. Just because someone signed a bit of paper doesn't mean they are going to change the culture that quickly. heck there are areas in NYC that are italian, or polish etc.. and no ones mad at them for not "assimilating"
Also If you think Hispanics only have low paying unskilled labor jobs, well your just ignorant.
Mike,
1. the Hispanics and native Americans in new Mexico were there first.
Almost right. The Native Americans were there first. The Hispanics were invaders like everyone else. These tawdry attempts at confusing a bunch of Aztec and Mayan mestizos from central and southern Mexico with the Navajos, Hopis, Utes, Apaches, Zunis, Mojaves, and Comanches have got to stop. Mexico, like countless other nations throughout history, lost wars, signed treaties, and relinquished territory. They have no more right to demand land back than Germany does to demand of its neighbors the return of East Prussia or Alsace. For the record, the French had prior claim on the heart of Texas before the Spanish, but the Spanish simply chose to ignore them and settle there anyway. I eagerly await Mexican demands that Texas be returned to the French!
Also, the Hispanic population north of the Rio Grande was tiny prior to annexation. Huge areas of Texas and the Southwest were marked off as uninhabitable "Comancheria" and "Apacheria." North of Apacheria, there were the Pueblos. Many of the Pueblo Indians, like the Zuni, were none too happy with their treatment at the hands of Spanish speakers. The brutal treatment (and frequent extermination) of Indians in southern Texas and California in the mission system is well known. And why do you think the Mexicans were so anxious to attract American settlers to Texas? To deal with those troublesome Comanches, of course. Mexico didn't even fully subdue its own Yaqui Indians in the Sonoran Desert until their last major rebellion in the early 1900s.
heck there are areas in NYC that are italian, or polish etc.. and no ones mad at them for not "assimilating"
But they do assimilate to white middle class economic and educational norms with time (unlike Mexicans), almost all can speak English, and they certainly are not modifying the greater culture or cropping up in enclaves across the country. Italians and Poles have certainly never taken 150+ years to assimilate. Oh, and most of them came here legally.
Also If you think Hispanics only have low paying unskilled labor jobs, well your just ignorant.
Of course not. It is well known that Hispanics dominate the scientific, engineering, business and entertainment communities in the United States.
Just kidding!
They do make a strong showing in prison populations, menial jobs, and welfare rolls on the other hand...
One of the popular arguments amongst the pro-amnesty crowd relies upon the 'we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us'
Emilio Estevez used this "joke" in his flop of a movie "Bobby." It was on all of the TV commercials.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo explicitly allowed Mexicans in the ceded territories to remain in the US and to retain their property. If they left the U.S. that was their choice. So who did "the border cross?" Not much of anyone, really. There were scarce few Mexican settlements in the land they claimed. The 1850 census, 1 year after the gold rush began en masse, reported a grand total of 90,000 people in California. There were no Mexican settlements in Utah, so far as I know - even though they formally claimed it.
We DID still the land from various Indian tribes, but those tribes bore no particular loyalty to Mexico, didn't speak its language, and, for the most part, weren't closely related to the native tribes of Mexico.
Brent: no offense taken. There are plenty of differences between New Mexico Hispanic culture and Anglo culture, and some can drive you crazy ( youth gangs, corrupt political patronage, nepotism, blind loyalty to the Democratic party -- though it was not always so and there are still honorable exceptions). What I mean to point out is that they are not Mexicans, are very different from Mexicans, and are (except for national politicians who are trying to appeal to other audiences) not particularly fond of Mexicans, who they do not consider brothers.
Remember, as Steve has eloquently pointed out, Bill R is a Mexican and a WASP before he is New Mexican-- and even he, before his recent bid for he presidency, was relatively reasonable as a governor, at least for a Democrat.
The other thing that I wanted to emphasize is that many of our societal problems here are functions of our enormous tribal population, most of whom are wards of the Federal government, and many of whom are on welfare, alcoholic, and products of utterly dysfunctional homes and schools. They are not populations that the state of NM can easily affect, and skew statistics even more than Hispanics.
By the way-- more a matter for anthropologists-- the Latinately corrupt system seems to function pretty well in rural areas and remote villages like the one I have lived in for nearly 30 years. It just doesn't work so well in the modern world...
We certainly don't need to import Central American peasants. But then WE won't, at least not like Mexifornia.
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