Huddled Masses Yearning Elsewhere
by Jim Washburn
I should start reading palms. Back in April 2006 I wrote a column in the formerly fun OC Weekly about the backlash over the huge immigrants' rights rallies then taking place in the US. Rather than bitch about people who were standing up for human dignity (and whose crossing a porous border to find work was far less a transgression than what many prominent Americans had done to get ahead, such as a couple of George W. Bush's forbears dealings with Nazi Germany), I wrote that the rest of us could be learning a few things about participatory democracy from the protesters.
I also said the US should be pursuing policies that posed a genuine solution to illegal immigration, such as helping to make life more tolerable in the immigrants' home countries, or at least not rewarding the oligarchs making things worse.
I also wrote then: "Today you'd swear that the Bush administration is striving to do it in reverse, making the U.S. so corrupt, stratified and bereft of opportunity that no one will want to come here."
Now this from last Thursday's New York Times: "Census data from the Mexican government indicate an extraordinary decline in the number of Mexican immigrants going to the United States."
Some 226,000 fewer people emigrated from Mexico in 2008. The vast majority immigrants traditionally head to the US. Researchers report the decline is "largely a result of Mexicans' deciding to delay illegal crossings because of the lack of jobs in the ailing American economy."
Mission accomplished, George. Even the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, don't yearn to come here any more.
