Sacramento's Immigration Demonstration

Today, a group organized a demonstration ringing the Capitol to protest the federal immigration bill that would crimminalize illegal immigration (that is what one protester's sign read). This is an area where I am generally (although not exclusively) in sympathy with the protesters. But there were a couple of things that struck me. First, the demonstration was organized in a week that the state legislature is not in session. Ultimately that may not be where their intended audience is - but it seemed strange for me to see a group marching around a mostly empty building. Second, it was raining pretty hard - so all of the families who were down there with their kids were getting pretty wet. Third, someone explained to them that an over abundance of Mexican flags was probably not going to help the cause.

The immigration issue has grown to white hot intensity. I have been disappointed generally in the level and quality of rhetoric. The best posts I have seen about it come from a blog called Aysmmetrical Information - the author Jane Galt said the following on March 29 -

"The three-quarters of my forebears who were Irish probably didn't speak English when they got here, and showed no particular interest in learning how to do so. Cramming themselves into tenements ten or more to a room, they were willing to work longer hours for lower pay than native-born Americans. Having brought a rich, and very foreign, culture with them, they clustered in urban areas so that they could preserve it, including a drinking culture that horrified the Protestants then flocking to temperance reform. None of them showed much propensity for assimilating; they established their own churches, schools, social organizations, and businesses, allowing their descendants to live in a little parallel Irish world that kept them out of the mainstream. More than 100 years after they landed in North America, my father's family was still living in an Irish neighbourhood in Boston (though by then they had learned how to speak English). Then, as soon as there were enough of them, they took over the political apparatus of the cities they lived in, and began running it for the benefit of the immigrant communities swelling the tenements, instead of the native-born. This separatism was so complete, so pervasive, so stubborn that America is still riven by the threat of . . . gay Irishmen marching in the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

This makes Pat Buchanan's anti-immigrant ranting look just a tiny bit thick. And frankly, if the main contributions your ancestors made to the great American melting pot are bleary renditions of "Danny Boy" and the fine old tradition of getting blind drunk and sleeping in the gutter every March 17th, you should think thrice before complaining that "our culture" is under assault. If American culture could be assaulted, Irish-Americans would be doing 5-10 at Sing-Sing for attempted murder.

Most of the rest of my ancestors fled England so that they could puritanize in peace, and distinguished themselves largely by squatting on the same hunks of farmland for the next four hundred years. Somehow this is supposed to be more illustrious than walking the thousand or so miles from Honduras to pick fruit so you can afford to feed and educate your kids."

You should read the whole post - her thoughts are balanced and reflect some interesting nuances.