Well known Mexican singer Valentin Elizalde was chased down and shot dead after a concert Saturday in Reynosa by two carloads of men armed with automatic weapons. He was blown away in front of dozens of witnesses, since drug gangs do as they please in Mexico. Elizalde sang narcocorridos, songs praising the exploits of drug criminals — think gangsta rap with sombreros.

Such musical stylings sell well in Mexico (and in areas of high Mexican density in the US), where criminality is admired. A fellow emphasizing a macho swagger with his narco-ditties can make a good living by appealing to the worst in Mexican culture, pretending that drug smuggling is a romantic enterprise rather than lowlife thuggery.

But becoming associated with drug cartels has serious health-related drawbacks. The same people Elizalde celebrated in song are stone-cold killers. And when you honor one drug kingpin, you insult his enemies, not a wise strategy for a long life [Mexican singer dead, ambushed after concert, San Francisco Chronicle 11/26/06].

This month, Elizalde received the “Soloist of the Year” prize at Los Premios de la Radio awards for regional Mexican music held at the Gibson Amphitheater in Hollywood. He was depicted in a mural in Pico Rivera, a Southern California hotbed of norteño music, last December.

He also wrote lyrics honoring one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Last year, he sang one of his narcocorridos, ballads honoring the exploits of drug dealers, to a crowd of more than 3,000 convicts at the Puente Grande prison in the central state of Jalisco.

Guzman escaped from a neighboring prison in 2001 and remains at large.

Notice that USA connection? Southern California has no shortage of Mexican musical diversity – and all that goes with it.

The Wichita Eagle’s blog writes:
about longshot GOP presidential hopeful Gov Mike Huckabee of Arkasas:

When a person tells him that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, he asks him to name someone “who cannot get a job because a Mexican illegally here has taken the job they want.” Huckabee goes on: “If that’s the case, if you can get me their name and phone number by 5 this afternoon, I can have them making a bed, plucking a chicken, tarring a roof or picking a tomato by the morning at 8 o’clock.” He’s still waiting for a name.

Now, this is of course a fundamentally bad model. Illegal immigration forces US citizens to get skills –and move to locations-they wouldn’t otherwise. A huge share of the White and black population citizen population have moved-and I don’t think it was because they didn’t like the climate. As George Borjas has pointed out, the jobs that are open to illegal immigrants become lower paid compared to whatever jobs are left to US citizens–who must earn even more to pay heavy taxes to subsidize the wealthy interests that profit from mass immigration. If immigration laws were enforced “making a bed, plucking a chicken, tarring a roof” would all pay substantially more–or be automated and become extensions of de facto professional jobs.

Anyhow, the GOP has no serious contender that is moderate-let alone realistic on the issue of immigration. Those folks just cannot restrain themselve from being the lapdogs of the wealthy interests that fund them-even when it is political suicide.

Now, Sen. John McCain spuriously offered Americans $50.00/hour to pick lettuce-and got over 3700 applications(so far as I know he gave no one a job). I suspect Huckabee has lower wages in mind and he’ll also expect these folks to be suitably submissive–and respectful of the property rights of the kinds of wealthy interests that bankroll the GOP. Somehow I doubt he’s get what he wants.

Sean Scallion writes at Etherzone:

Last weekend 43 delegates from a variety of local secessionists, independence and decentralizing movements from across North America descended upon Burlington, Vermont for the first-ever North American Secessionist Convention hosted by the Middlebury Institute, the intellectual force behind the Second Vermont Republic movement.

The fact that states have little control over immigration hasn’t been lost on these folks.

Browsing their website I see comments like:

Immigration wasn’t discussed in this election yet it is the second most crucial issue facing this country, with the exception of the slaughter of unborn children.

…..

In New York, arguably one of the most dangerous towns in the US, we are required to walk around unarmed. Presumably, this is acceptable to New Yorkers or they would not tolerate it. Yet homosexuals dressed as nuns caper in the streets and no perversity is too vile to tolerate except the outmoded desire for political freedom. Do I wish to be ruled over by such people? Is it worth it? Let them have their way, but only with each other. And make them apply for visas to come here!

The basic problem that I see here is that a growing number of Americans feel like they have virtually no voice in either Congress, academe, the media or the financial/corporate world. That is inherently and unstable situation.

What I think is worth noting is that most US immigration is now concentrated among a few states at the periphery of the US (i.e. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida,New York and New Jersey). I can imagine a situation in which most or some of those states are expelled.