Attention Hypocrites San Francisco and Los Angeles

Looking for a state to boycott? May want to look a little closer to home:

834b. (a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully
cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is
suspected of being present in the United States in violation of
federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected
of being present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the
following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen
of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent
resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time
or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of
immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not
be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and
place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding
documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien
who is present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal
justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or
leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal
status and provide any additional information that may be requested
by any other public entity.
(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city,
county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with
jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent
or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly
prohibited.

The key, of course, is the state Attorney General who doggedly refuses to enforce California law. Or, more accurately, enforces only those laws he supports. The rest of the Penal Code, being highly inconvenient to his viewpoint, is blithely ignored.

San Francisco, in particular, would have a huge problem with this law as it directly interferes with their standing policy of offering sanctuary to dangerous alien felons. Oh, well. It's not like they support our state constitution, either.

Sadness in the State of the Union

I am a product of Southern California. I was born here nearly fifty years ago. I have lived here, with one brief exception, for nearly that entire fifty years. I admittedly spent most of my early years living in what many would call a "white bread" suburb near (but not too near) Los Angeles. By the time I reached high school, however, I think it's safe to say that I lived in as culturally diverse a community as you could hope to find.

I have never had a skin-color prejudice. I have recognized cultural differences between skin colors, certainly; but whatever opinions I harbor of people do not generally begin with what color they happen to be.

With that in mind, I found myself driving past our community center this evening and assuming it was Bingo night. Then I saw a small bus parked near our mailboxes and realized it belonged to a mariachi band. Ah. A party.

Then the current state of the union kicked in and I caught myself wondering if someone should notify INS.

It never used to be this way. Not growing up, anyway. Sure there were times that the INS might raid one of the communities on the outskirts of town. They'd net 10, maybe 20 people and it would be big news in the next day's paper. We were never conscious of an "immigration problem" in those days. Back then, illegal aliens were talked about in whispers, or demonized in the press when speaking of Cesar Chavez and his workers' rights protests and boycotts. There would be some "extreme" events, and the issue would just as quickly subside.

Now, however, between the war on terror and the immigration issue (no matter on which side of those issues you may stand), I am no longer allowed to pass by what was very likely a huge family party — perhaps a wedding or a quinceañera — without having to think what some people apparently consider to be arrogantly superior thoughts. In the eyes of some that automatically lumps me in the same class as a white supremacist, and I hate it.

I lived for two years as a legal alien among the people of Guatemala many years ago. I was definitely in the minority in this country of multiple minorities. Being a gringo was bad enough; I was also working among the poorest class of people in their society, and was believed by many to be merely an exploiter. I was accused of being a spy for Jimmy Carter (one of the only charges that ever made me bristle with indignation), or working for the CIA. These were common problems for young men who wore white shirts and ties in an area of the world where such attire was patently absurd to most observers. Easier to take were the reactions of those same poor people who watched suspiciously as we walked down their dirt roads. Mothers would gather their children hurriedly around them and push them into their huts whenever we passed.

One incident that still brings a smile to my face even now: a mother and her two children saw us coming a good 100 yards or so down the road. She quickly gathered her children to her; two youngsters of between 3 and 5 years. As we passed by I heard her tell them in their Mayan dialect that we were monsters from another land who would steal children so we could eat them. At first I thought to merely ignore the comment. The actor in me, however, could never let such a great cue alone. I turned my face in their direction and gave them a very child-eating menacing grimace. The kids shrieked and hid behind their mother. To her I merely smiled and winked. She gave me a very guilty and sheepish grin in return, and I believe she fully understood that I had no intention of ever stealing her precious babies.

Thirty full years forward and things in this land have deteriorated. It's no longer a simple matter of false impressions or misguided beliefs. We are torn between two very competitive needs. On the one hand we desire to be friendly with our neighbors, both domestic and foreign. We want to be members of the international "community" and contribute to the common good of all people. On the other hand we fear for our national security and welfare. Our communities are overflowing with welfare families who place increasing burdens on our infrastructure, both economically and socially. Basically thirty years (probably only because these are the years that I've actually been aware of the problem) of nearly unchecked immigration, coupled with increasing levels of mutual suspicion and antagonism.

Shame on me for having even a fleeting thought of calling in INS on a party just because they happened to be playing mariachi music tonight. (For the record: Woody can only handle just so much mariachi music, thanks primarily to those very missionary experiences I mentioned above. Two years of "Aaaaah-haaaaaaaah!" in falsetto and accompanied by accordians have driven me to classify mariachi music right along with grunge, punk, and rap combined. About one "Aaaaah-haaaaaaah!" is enough to last me for at least five years nowadays. If that qualifies as a prejudice, then call me a bigot.)

That thought, as temporary as it was, made me feel somehow dirty. It gave me the sense of being someone whose outlook had become so polarized as to be unreasoning in nature. And that is not who I am. For all our rhetoric about immigration and national security, this is not who we as a nation are. We are a nation of immigrants. We always have been and we always will be. Somewhere along the line, however, we created an atmosphere where immigrants needed a voice to declare to them that it was somehow acceptable to be in this land without ever being of this land. We enabled those who claim that a cultural (read: non-American) identity is the only acceptable identity, and that automatically puts us on a war footing with those with whom we would otherwise be neighbors.

Such is the sadness of the state of our union. I pray we can somehow push through this conflict and return to idea of building America, rather than being mutually exclusive clusters of semi-American citizens.

Kill [the] Bill

McCain-Kennedy deserves the longest, slowest political death possible. As if the entire conversation held in this nation for the last year and a half never took place, the Senate "crafts" legislation that effectively widens the holes in our national sieve. Expect the next 12 million "immigrants" just as soon as the coyotes can scalp them the $2,000 each (or whatever the black market supports these days).

Hey, I'm no legal expert. I leave analysis of this stuff to people much smarter than I am. But I can and do have opinions as a regular voter, and here are mine for whatever they're worth (certainly not $2,000):

1. Like many other pundits and analysts, I'm not at all opposed to allowing many of the current immigrants to remain in the United States. For one thing, many of them have long since proven their desire and ability to be productive members of our society. Sure, there are those elements who make me want to rent a few hundred busses so we can haul their sorry hind-quarters out of the country, but there are more than a few legal life-long citizens that I wish would join them, too.

That said, there's also the tremendous expense (and you know who gets to foot the bill!) and extreme logistical nightmare involved in deportation of that many people. Taken altogether, I say keep the good guys, deport the bad guys, and make sure we can tell the difference. But this leads me to...

2. Border security. I don't know how or why the MSM continues to tout "stronger" border security in their reporting of this fiasco. This is the same tired old ambiguous reference to a "fence" that we've been hearing about for months now. Yet border patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen (apparently this doesn't include the administration) that fences alone are wholly inadequate to the task. A much larger border patrol presence is also required, as are other measures that make falsifying indentification (among other things) a tougher thing to do.

Here's what I think really happened: I think McCain and his buddies probably thought that one solid bi-partisan piece of compromise was just what the voters really wanted in this run-up to an election year. They probably counted on being hailed as conquering heroes across the country for tackling a problem in a fashion that made Republicans, Democrats, and even the President all very happy.

The problem, of course, is that none of those happy faces are seen outside of Capitol Hill.

It used to be easier, they sigh to themselves. Once upon a time, people would cheer bi-partisanship as a triumph of the American political system. Not anymore, though. With the advent of instantaneous information and data analysis being freely shared among common, ordinary voters like ourselves, politicians find their sheen being stripped thin far more rapidly than ever before in our history. They used to be able to take advantage of the time lag to get things pushed through to the president's desk before anyone really understood what was happening.

But the Internet proves itself to be a sort of instant opinion poll on steroids. We can amass public opinion so quickly now, that politicians are beginning to understand that they ignore that opinion at their peril. Want to know why John McCain is so cranky these days? He just asked if he could take his girl out in Dad's car tonight, and got told "No!" in no uncertain terms. He's having a temper tantrum, and it's likely to cost him the nomination.

So kill the bill. Please. It's useless legislation, filled with all the requisite loopholes and amendments that will ensure its impotence for generations to come. Put it out of our misery, and go draw up something that will work.

Otherwise, quit wasting our time.

Why Is Everyone Leaving?

My brother has been guest-blogging over at Junkyard Blog this week, and I've actually added the JB to my blogroll. Fond as I am of my brother, I'm never certain just where his editorial whims will take him next. In this post he comments on an article written by Michael Barone of the OpinionJournal.

Barone's basic premise is that people are leaving the major coastal cities by droves and moving to the less crowded areas of the so-called "fly over" zones of America. Meanwhile, immigrants surge into those coastal cities to replace those who have left. The overall effect is one of having precisely the sort of two-tiered society against which the Democrats continuously campaign. Unfortunately, those same cities are the ones that provide the largest support base for Democratic policy and power today. It's a delicate tightrope for pols like Feinstein and Pelosi to have to berate the very societies that gave them birth, so to speak.

(Yes, yes... sweeping generalizations. That's what we do, here at the Woundup.)

Cam argues that it's not necessarily a cause and effect sort of situation, and I agree with him. I'm not altogether sure that's where Barone was heading with his numbers game, but I'll stick to Cam's extrapolation. The main reason why people leave cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco and move to Fuhgedabahdit, Colorado is... money.

I live in Orange County, California. Orange County has, for decades, been touted as one of the richest plums in a state full of plum trees, if you get my drift. I happen to live in an area right smack between two of the snootiest-per-capita areas of the county, Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills. When I say there's gold in them thar hills, I'm not really kidding. There is a lot of money here, old and new, which is why Yorba Linda's self-absorbed statement is "Land of Gracious Living." I don't think Anaheim Hills has any such statement, but they don't really need one. You don't find a dwelling under $1.5 million unless it's a condo. Maybe only $1.1 mil for a condo. At those prices I couldn't afford to rent one of their bathrooms, let alone a room with kitchen privileges.

But Cam also got me to thinking about our own situation and why we're still here in California, and why we won't be as soon as we're able to retire. Money is part of it, yes. But we also have some health considerations that will deeply narrow the choices of retirement communities when we're ready to make that plunge in about 15 years. Give or take.

Mrs. Woody and I both have arthritis. Actually, not to alarm those who happen to be my mother (not that this would come as any real shock to said mother), but my own arthritis is still only suspected, not diagnosed. And, of course, it's nowhere near as bad as Mrs. Woody's. But all this joint trouble means that we're probably going to be looking for places with nice, moderate temps for as much of the year as we can get away with. So, nice, moderate temperatures at nice, moderate prices. Any ideas out there in Woundupland? (Hands down, Mom and Bob. You, too, Matt and Amy. You'd be at the top of the list if it weren't for all those doggoned TORNADOS you keep running into.)

Therein lies the rub, alas. You see, we've basically grown up here in Southern California. We know what this weather is like from year to year and from El Niño to La Niña. We know all about earthquakes. Pound for pound, we tend to prefer temblors to tornados. Call us biased, but we don't care. If not for the fact that our biggest customers at work are various agencies of the United States government, I could honestly say that I'd much rather not have to deal with that much wind.

Believe it or not, the immigration "problem" (regular readers of this blog know what I mean by that) is nowhere on the list of reasons why we feel compelled to leave Southern California at some point. Immigrants don't generally bother me, unless they refuse to control their kids in public. In this part of the world, if my home were to be burglarized, it's about even money whether the perp would be an illegal, or dark-skinned, or some bored brat kid of some local politician.

Cam mentions the skyrocketing crime rates in places I used to live (Lancaster and Quartz Hill among 'em) and he's absolutely correct: I don't miss them. Not one iota. Housing was much cheaper "up there" than "down below," which meant that poor families were settling in those places and bringing their gang-indoctrinated kids with them. By the time I left, I was living just outside the boundaries of what was quickly becoming just another South Central LA slum, only about 75 miles to the north. We began calling our neighborhoods "Bloods and Crips, North."

So crime is a constant worry here. But I don't worry about (or fear) immigrants largely because I know quite a bit about where they come from. I lived in Guatemala for nearly two years, speaking their language and living in the same conditions they lived in, only with more money to spend in a month than they would see in a whole year of work. I can tell you what circumstances south of the border compel these people to risk everything to try for a better life in the hated United States. Politics may make for stange bedfellows, as the saying goes, but scrabbling for an existence can make them even stranger.

I dunno... maybe I'm over-simplifying the situation. I refuse to live too close to areas where illegal immigration causes the most trouble, so I'm removed from that dynamic. The people I know who are not native to this country are, for the most part, genuine people. I have them for neighbors. I count some of them as friends. I work with many of them. I find them to be honorable, hard working, decent people. They are not among the reasons why I need to leave this place. Eventually.

No, I leave because I won't be able to afford to stay here. I'm a middle-class guy living in an area that requires us to be either one strata up, or two strata down. I can't afford the one, and I really don't want the other. So we'll leave. We will move to a place where the cost of living will hopefully stay within our means until we pass into the next life, and hope the weather won't cause our inflamed joints to throb painfully for too many weeks out of the year. It will need to have relatively easy access to wherever our children are living by that time with their own families so we can do the Grandma-and-Grandpa-come-for-(SHORT)-visits routine. It will, if Michael Barone is correct, likely have immigrant families living there.

So long as I have Mrs. Woody there with me, it will be perfect.

While We Stay Wrapped Around the Immigration Axle...

...the realities of everyday business dictate a course of action.

I'm all for this plan. Yeah, okay, there's probably a hit to the taxpayer. Sure, there's still a question about whether non-residents who are here illegally should even be offered this opportunity. But while we continue burning Rome to cinders, at least someone is hedging their bets.

Keep in mind that many Latinos who are here legally still can't communicate in English effectively. I talk to people like that from time to time. I'd much rather see them able to communicate effectively in their adopted country than remain silent in their suffering. Helps to avoid certain problems downstream.

It's a start.

"Flag" "Montebello" "Hoax"

(This was NOT a hoax. I know many of you who visit this article were searching on "Montebello hoax" or some similar string. Hence the title. Sorry if I misled you, but this was not a hoax. I'm sure you were hoping to find proof that we poor, silly conservatives were merely overreacting to a collosal joke, but it happened. If you still want to read about it, forge ahead. If not, sorry I wasted your time. - Woody)

When this incident took place last year, I wrote a post concerning the whole anti-America sentiment currently being tolerated by so many politicians in this country. What disturbs me most, however, is that deniers are already spreading the idea that this very recent history was, somehow, a hoax. Never happened. Just more overreaction by right-wing conspiracy nuts. This is indicated by the frequent appearance of those words in a search string that leads people to the post I wrote last May.

How I wish it was a hoax.

But the unfortunate fact is that it happened. High school students exercised their rights to free speech by deliberately placing our flag underneath the Mexican flag, and compounded the insult by hanging it upside down; a clear violation of flag etiquette, and a sure indicator of the political allegiances held by this coming generation of youth in this country. A slap in the faces of those who pledge allegiance to this country willingly and with meaning.

Setting aside for a moment the idea that these kids may or may not be in this country legally, I feel a little background may be useful in examining their protest. Most of these kids are probably third or fourth generation latinos whose roots lie in Mexico or any of the Central American nations. Statistically, their families probably entered this country illegally. Legal immigration has always been difficult, and one must generally be at least somewhat affluent before even attempting the process to enter the United States with our blessing. So their ancestors entered this country at a risk, willing to make whatever sacrifices may have been necessary in order to provde a better life for their families and their descendants.

Even today, most who risk everything to enter this country do so because anything - even living here illegally and risking deportation (or worse) - has to be better than whatever awaits them back "home." Sure, there are always opportunists and gamblers, but of the people I've come to know over the years they represent a relative minority. I still believe these protestors do not represent the vast majority of latinos who live, work, raise their families, and contribute to society in this part of the country.

Over time, having lived here for at least a couple of generations, the children and grandchildren of those pioneers become naturalized by default. These second and third (or fourth, or fifth) generation youngsters are in little, if any, danger of ever being deported. Most of them have birth certificates and social security numbers declaring them to be citizens of the United States. That their citizenship came to them through the extreme sacrifices of their ancestors seems to be lost on them. Because they feel that we're not somehow making their lives carefree and easy, they feel the need to strike back. We'll show 'em! We'll take "our" country back, and declare ourselves to be Mexicans. Not Americans.

It is, I suspect, an attitude that would embarrass their ancestors. As it is, it brings no honor to their cause today.

And so they protest. We (and I suspect my white skin places me permanently in that classification) are discriminating against latino peoples in this country. (I guess discrimination is a full time occupation for a white male in America; I apparently discriminate against latinos, blacks, gays, women, and liberals. How I ever find time to work, raise my family, attend to my church responsibilities, and sing in a chorale is quite beyond my ability to comprehend. I just do it.) We are somehow refusing to make life better for latino people by wanting our borders to be more secure than they are today. We discriminate by only allowing them to work in jobs that no one else - certainly not us! - wants. (Someone better tell that to my niece, the newly-hired burger-flipper!) (Although, to be fair, she's only working the register at the moment, according to her Mom.)

But the protest is a bankrupt one, morally. These protests have nothing to do with discrimination in America. This is about anarchy and their desire to live ungoverned lives of freedom and entitlement. Give us the money, no strings attached, and no one gets hurt! When you set foot in East Los Angeles, bro, you're on our turf. You play by our rules. That's the message these kids really wanted us to hear.

The flag flew upside-down. It was no hoax, and neither was the sentiment behind it.