Several months ago, Hispanics got offended and angry when they learned that Ken Burns’ upcoming PBS docu-epic about WWII did not include special treatment of Latino veterans. He quickly caved to their demands (this is PBS, remember) and assembled additional material to describe the Hispanic “experience” in the war.

This situation is yet another skirmish in the long-term effort of Mexicans to exaggerate their importance in American history and pave the way for a bilingual, Hispanicized America. (See author Jorge Ramos’ brag that “Latinos are not only the largest minority right now, but eventually we will be the majority in the United States, and the process is well underway.”)

Call it a guilt trip or a cultural awakening, but some Latino filmmakers feel that the controversy over Ken Burns’ upcoming World War II documentary has unexpectedly opened doors for their work at PBS.

The maker of “Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream,” which airs Sept. 12, said he believed PBS was anxious to air his film before Burns’ because “they had egg on their face.” [BW: Actually, the date falls within the Hispanic Heritage Month of programming.]

The Lopez film is one of five Latino projects that PBS is airing in the weeks before the start of Burns’ “The War” on Sept. 23. Advocates were angered that the Burns epic did not feature the contributions of Latino soldiers, and their protest this spring forced PBS’ best-known documentarian to add such material to the film.
[A Ken Burns Guilt Trip at PBS? Washington Post 8/26/07]

In fact, the number of Mexican Americans who served in the armed services was around 300,000, not a large number when you consider that 16 million went to war. Therefore, the percentage of Mexican Americans in uniform was less than 2 (1.8 to be precise).

Patriots honor all individuals who served–I certainly do–but the Hispanic presence in the American armed forces during WWII cannot be considered numerically substantial.

The continuing complaining of the reconquista Hispanics in this matter is unseemly and only indicates that they apparently feel their tribe is a special class, separate from other vets. There is no similar demand from other ethnic veterans groups that they receive unique recognition from Burns.

Here’s a story about a recent ACLU suit about conditions in immigration detention, especially for children:

TheStar.com - News - Kevin, 10, helps reform U.S. immigration

Toronto-born boy was a lead plaintiff in lawsuit settled by improved detention conditions for kids
Aug 29, 2007 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

All 10-year-old Kevin Yourdkhani remembers about the T. Don Hutto immigration detention centre in Texas is that it’s “a very bad place for children and babies.”

Yesterday, when the Toronto-born boy heard the deplorable conditions are bound to improve for young inmates, he wasn’t fully convinced.

“I trust nobody there,” noted Kevin, who, along with his parents, was detained at Hutto earlier this year for 45 days. “It’s good that they are fixing up the problems but they should just shut it down.”

In a landmark settlement this week between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the American Civil Liberties Union, Washington said it would improve the conditions for children and their families inside the Taylor, Tx. facility. The settlement is to be approved by U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks later this week.

Kevin, his father Majid and mother Masomeh Alibegi had been deported to their native Iran and were trying to fly back to Canada in February when caught carrying fake passports during an unscheduled landing in Puerto Rico.

The ACLU has issued a gloat, in English and Spanish:

Landmark Settlement Announced in Federal Lawsuit Challenging Conditions at Immigrant Detention Center in Texas (8/27/2007)

ACLU Urges Congress to End Policy of Detaining Immigrant Children

Se anuncia acuerdo negociado sin precedentes, en demanda entablada en los tribunales federales, impugnando las condiciones en un centro de detención para inmigrantes en Texas (8/27/2007)

La ACLU exhorta al Congreso a ponerle fin a la política de detener a los hijos de los inmigrantes

I admit that the US Government should make an effort to keep the children of illegal immigrants happy while they’re in custody, but first of all, no one has to stay in immigration detention. Just about anyone in detention can leave by agreeing to leave the country, and your tax dollars will pay for their ticket.

Second, the problem is caused by the unique nature of the crime involved–most people don’t bring their children with them when they rob a bank, or burgle a house. They do bring them with them when they immigrate illegally.

That’s the meaning of the famous “Immigrants Crossing” sign,

This is from Alien Nation, Page 238[PDF], about an early 90’s trip to the Border, by Peter Brimelow, who saw, in an infrared scope, a father leading his small child by the hand across the river.

[T]hat point on the border the Tijuana River, through which that father must have dragged his child, is filled with raw sewage (Mexican sewage, although it then flows through U.S. territory).

And the entire no-man’s-land is infested with bandits preying on the illegals. When we had arrived at the celebrated Smuggler’s Canyon after nightfall, my guide had flatly refused to go up into it on the grounds that it was now too dangerous. (The novelist Joseph Wambaugh wrote a powerful 1984 true-crime bestseller, Lines and Shadows, about a San Diego Police Department undercover squad’s heroic but ultimately vain effort to control this nightly carnage in the late 1970s. And traffic then was a fraction of what it is today.)

My young guide, in general remarkably cheerful about the Border Patrol’s thankless task, said it was the illegals’ children that he found the most distressing, too. Particularly when the Border Patrol got there too late and found that the bandits had already managed to steal them. Steal them? I said stupidly. “They sell them to child-prostitution rings.”

Maybe immigration detention isn’t so bad, by comparison.

The question hasn’t been raised in the press, but I was surprised to see that Larry Craig didn’t try to claim Senatorial immunity under Article One, Section 6 of the Constitution, which gives members of either house of Congress immunity from arrest for anything but “Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace,” both “during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same,” which sounds like it includes the men’s room at the Minnesota Airport. What he was charged with was a misdemeanor, after all. In fact, I remember that Robert Byrd, who always has copy of the Constitution in his pocket, literally, used it to beat a traffic charge in 1999.

However, according to Findlaw.com, this clause is not effective on any criminal charges whatever.

Privilege From Arrest

This clause is practically obsolete. It applies only to arrests in civil suits, which were still common in this country at the time the Constitution was adopted. 376 It does not apply to service of process in either civil 377 or criminal cases. 378

Nor does it apply to arrest in any criminal case. The phrase ”treason, felony or breach of the peace” is interpreted to withdraw all criminal offenses from the operation of the privilege. 379

They mention WILLIAMSON v. U.S., 207 U.S. 425 (1908) as a case that stated that Senators and Congressmen can be arrested for anything actually criminal.

The article was designed to prevent partisan judges from issuing writs, including civil writs, which would prevent someone from being able to vote on a bill.

Even if the clause construed literally, Senator Craig’s misconduct was a “breach of the peace.”

The Minnesota statute he was charged under was 609.746 INTERFERENCE WITH PRIVACY, a law which punishes Peeping Toms for peeping, punishes people who install hidden cameras in tanning booths, and is designed to keep men from peering over or reaching under a bathroom stall occupied by another man, who may simply want to be alone with his thoughts. Thus, a “breach of the peace.”

So what Larry Craig was claiming when he showed the arresting officer his business card was not “Senatorial immunity” which has some limited actual existence under the Constitution, but corrupt special privilege, which unfortunately is fairly common–see Beltway-itis: When Politicians Attack, by Michelle Malkin, just the other day.

Anyhow, Senator Craig, even before this scandal, wasn’t much of an asset to either the Republican Party or the rule of law as far is immigration reform is concerned.

In 2003, a reader forwarded an LA Times story about Senator Craig’s “bipartisan” cooperation with Ted Kennedy over “undocumented” workers with the words “With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?”

This latest incident just reinforces that point.

Daniel de Vise writes in the Washington Post:

The Class of 2007 posted the lowest SAT averages in several years, according to scores released this morning.

Now part of the reason is related to recent immigration:

The share of test-takers for whom English is a second language has nearly doubled in 20 years to 24 percent

I think a bigger reason is that the “economic strategy” of recent years has been moving the US towards more of a low wage, low productivity economy. Why should US students bother to achieve academically when the bulk of investment is in areas like meat packing plants, Walmart or the expanding underground economy–and those skilled jobs that do exist in the US are likely to be subject to immigration practices like H-1b which mean foreigners will be given immigration preferences if they can get an American job?

What I think we are seeing are the fruits of perverse economic incentives in the US that no country could maintain without massive foreign borrowing.