Mexifornia+5

Since Mexifornia appeared, the

debate also no longer splits along liberal/conservative,

Republican/Democrat, or even white/brown fault lines. Instead, class

considerations more often divide Americans on the issue. The majority

of middle-class and poor whites, Asians, African-Americans, and

Hispanics wish to close the borders. They see few advantages to cheap

service labor, since they are not so likely to need it to mow their

lawns, watch their kids, or clean their houses. Because the less

well-off eat out less often, use hotels infrequently, and don’t

periodically remodel their homes, the advantages to the economy of

inexpensive, off-the-books illegal-alien labor again are not so

apparent.

But the downside surely is apparent. Truck drivers, carpenters,

janitors, and gardeners—

unlike lawyers, doctors, actors, writers, and professors—correctly feel

that their jobs are threatened, or at least their wages lowered, by

cheaper rival workers from Oaxaca or Jalisco. And Americans who live in

communities where thousands of illegal aliens have arrived en masse

more likely lack the money to move when Spanish-speaking students flood

the schools and gangs proliferate. Poorer Americans of all ethnic

backgrounds take for granted that poverty provides no exemption from

mastering English, so they wonder why the same is not true for incoming

Mexican nationals.
….
These class divisions cut both ways, and they help explain the anomaly of the Wall Street Journal

op-ed page mandarins echoing the arguments of the elite Chicano studies

professors. Both tend to ridicule the far less affluent Minutemen and

English-only activists, in part because they do not experience

firsthand the problems associated with illegal immigration but instead

find millions of aliens grist for their own contrasting agendas.

Indeed, every time an alien crosses the border legally, fluent in

English and with a high school diploma, the La Raza industry and the

corporate farm or construction company alike most likely lose a

constituent.

I’m beginning to get really tired of the rich.  And the technical elite need to get a clue, too.  At least one technology-intensive employer here in San Antonio preferentially hires H-1B-visa Chinese technoids to replace American labor. It seems management prefers workers who keep their heads down and code (or get deported) over people who keep having ideas.

Tip from the Corner.

Update (30 April).  Over at the Gates of Vienna, Fjordman has an even gloomier outlook:

Left-wingers support this for the same reasons as left-wingers in

Europe: They desire Third World immigrants because they tend to vote

for left-wing parties and support expanded welfare states. Some

left-wingers also see it as a goal to erase the Western cultural

heritage and the white majority, again, just like in Europe. Some Big

Business supporters tend to see immigrants as cheap labor and a new

servant class. Of course, unlike some other countries, they get

citizenship in the US, which means that the “servants” will eventually

end up owning the country.