Mark Fisher is an opinion columnist for the Washington Post, so he’s not required to be objective or keep his personal feelings out of his work. But that’s no excuse for playing the grandmother card. After discussing white flight, and local government attempts to deal with illegals and blight, he writes:

Stirrup says this time is different. “In previous waves of immigration, you had a vast majority of the immigrants who wanted to assimilate and embrace the American dream,” he says. “These individuals have no desire to embrace American culture. Their motivation is a purely economic one — to make money and ship it home.”

I thought back on my grandmother’s stories of hoarding the dollars she earned in a hat factory in New York’s Lower East Side and sending what she could back to her family in her native Russia. Yet sending money back in no way diminished her determination to be a hard-core, flag-waving U.S. citizen who embraced the United States, right down to watching Lawrence Welk on TV every Saturday night.

What is different about the recent spurt in immigration is that our country has changed: Jobs and cheaper housing are no longer in city neighborhoods where immigrants live in isolated ghettos. Instead, immigrants–legal or not –live smack dab in the middle of the rest of us. That confronts us with the culture clash that has always been part of the glorious process of becoming American.Marc Fisher - The Melting Pot Boils Over

Actually, the difference is that the immigrants now are Mexicans. They have a perfectly good country of their own, to which they remain loyal. As I explained in a previous blog item, [Age Of Disloyalty] earlier generations of immigrants had no homes to go back to. For example, it’s not likely that Fisher’s grandmother would have felt any loyalty to the Czar of All The Russias, because she would have been a member of an oppressed minority. [See Appendix B to The Melting Pot. ] But modern immigrants are, as Steve Sailer wrote yesterday

don’t care much about citizenship (or America either, for that matter.) They are, in the most part, patriotic Mexican nationals here merely for the money.

And as Samuel Huntington pointed out, the Ellis Island generation didn’t come from a country right next door with irredentist claims on the Southwestern United States.

How does it happen that an illegal alien can drive something as dangerous as an 18-wheel tractor trailer on America’s highways? Particularly when he does not speak English and has a poor safety record…

Portuguese trucker Milson Sabino Oliveira Filho was sentenced July 24 to 4-24 years in prison for killing three adults and a child and injuring six in a horrific tractor trailer crash near Las Vegas last year.

Oliveira plowed his rig into 13 vehicles that had slowed for a well marked road construction project. The car that contained Arturo and Estrellita Cortez and their 8-year-old granddaughter Kayla was dragged for 100 feet. All within were killed, as was Robert Allen Newsted Jr. in another car, whose infant son survived in a carseat.

Kayla’s father, Arturo Cortez Jr., was in the courtroom for Oliveira’s sentencing.

“I have lost both my parents and my only child,” he said through tears. “They were the three most important people in my life. I was never given a chance to say goodbye to them.

“The truck he was driving became a weapon. Because of that I will never see my parents or my child ever again.”

Cortez and his sister asked for the maximum sentence, which would have put Oliveira behind bars for 14 to 35 years. Cortez said he believed Oliveira chose to violate safety laws.
Four to 24 Years: Trucker gets sent to prison, Las Vegas Review-Journal 7/25/07]

A tougher sentence certainly seems indicated. Oliveira blamed brake failure, but a post-accident inspection by an expert with the Nevada Highway Patrol found the brakes to be “essentially fine.” Oliveira had falsified his driving records. He had been cited several times for safety violations. He did not speak English. Yet the illegal alien apparently was licensed in California and allowed to continue driving.