Our Brave New World of Immigration

Our Brave New World of Immigration
By Victor Davis Hanson

In the dark of these rural spring mornings, I see full vans of Mexican laborers speeding by my farmhouse on their way to the western side of California's San Joaquin Valley to do the backbreaking work of weeding cotton, thinning tree fruit and picking strawberries.

In the other direction, even earlier morning crews drive into town - industrious roofers, cement layers and framers heading to a nearby new housing tract. While most of us are still asleep, thousands of these hardworking young men and women in the American Southwest rise with the sun to provide the sort of unmatched labor at the sort of wages that their eager employers insist they cannot find among citizens.

But just when one thinks that illegal immigration is an efficient win-win way of providing excellent workers to needy businesses, there are also daily warnings that there is something terribly wrong with a system predicated on a cynical violation of the law.

Three days ago, as I watched the daily early-morning caravan go by, I heard a horrendous explosion. Not far my home, one of these vans had crossed the white line down the middle of the road and hit a pickup truck head-on. Perhaps the van had blown a bald tire. Perhaps the driver was intoxicated. Or perhaps he had no experience driving an overloaded minivan at high speed in the dark of early morning.

We will probably never know - since the driver ran away from the carnage of the accident. That often happens when an illegal alien who survives an accident has no insurance or driver's license. But he did leave in his wake his three dead passengers. Eight more people were injured. Both cars were totaled. Traffic was rerouted around the wreckage for hours.

Ambulances, fire trucks and patrol cars lined the nearby intersection. That accident alone must have imparted untold suffering for dozens of family members, as well as cost the state thousands of dollars.

Such mayhem is no longer an uncommon occurrence here. I have had four cars slam into our roadside property, with the drivers running off, leaving behind damaged vines and trees, and wrecked cars with phony licenses and no record of insurance. I have been broadsided by an undocumented driver, who ran a stop sign and then tried to run from our collision.

These are the inevitable but usually unmentioned symptoms of illegal immigration. After all, the unexpected can often happen when tens of thousands of young males from Mexico arrive in a strange country, mostly alone, without English or legality - an estimated 60 percent of them without a high-school degree and most obligated to send nearly half of their hard-won checks back to kin in Mexico.

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MONEY SONG
I've got Ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas,
I've got forty thousand French francs in my fridge,
I've got lots of lire,
Now the Deutschmark's getting dearer,
And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Chorus: There is nothing quite as wonderful as money,
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash,
Some people say it's folly,
But I'd rather have the lolly,
With money you can ma-ake a splash!
Finale: There is nothing quite as wonderful as money
(Chorus sings money, money, money)
There is nothing like a newly minted pound
(money money money)
All: Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker
It's accountancy that makes the the world go round
(round round round)
You can keep your Marxist ways
For it's only just a phase
For it's money makes the world go round
(money money money money money money money money money)


Composer: John Gould
Authors: Eric Idle/John Gould
Arranger: Fred Tomlinson http://tinyurl.com/s54hw darkstar