The Washington Post writes approvingly on the front page about Alonzo Cantu, “a self-made millionaire who once picked grapes on the migratory farm labor circuit.” Cantu has risen from such humble, presumably Mexican (though the Post won’t specify), origins to become the power-broker of McAllen, Texas. The Post article details developer Cantu’s (his building signature is “Southwestern stucco and Spanish tile”) interests in the new local hospital, the town bank and other businesses, as well as his past and present fund-raising efforts on behalf of Democrats, most recently Hillary Clinton.[How Big Man In McAllen Bundles Big For Clinton. By Matthew Mosk,November 25, 2007]

The Post calls Cantu a “Big Man” in McAllen. That’s no doubt true, but doesn’t give the full flavor of what Cantu is and what he represents for America. In time-honored Mexican fashion, Cantu is McAllen’s cacique, the local grandee who–in return for favors such as political contributions when he demands them–is the intermediary between the town’s little people–his clients–and the political powers-that-be. Caciquismo is a very common social and political arrangement in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, with well-documented roots back to the earliest Spanish colonial period. As the name implies, caciquismo doubtless echoes pre-Columbian Indian arrangements as well.

Thanks to America’s British roots, American social and political arrangements have generally been quite different–until now. Now, wholesale Latin American invasion, legal and illegal, means not only that caciques move north, but their clientèle does too. In a short article, the Post mentions five McAllen clients and cronies of Cantu, excluding the cacique himself but including the local congressman: all have Mexican names. As of the 2000 Census, over 80% of McAllen’s population was of Hispanic origin and over 76% of people over age five spoke a language other than English at home. The city’s population had increased by over 24% since 1990, while almost 28% was foreign-born (which, obviously, does not include anchor babies), strongly implying both that all population growth is attributable to illegal entry and immigration, while Americans are leaving. In 2003, the Census Bureau estimated McAllen’s population had grown over 10% just since the 2000 Census. The Census data for the city of McAllen, of course, entirely omit the entirely Mexican populations of the colonias that have sprouted all around the city limits.

Not so long ago, McAllen was a Texas town. As was typical of the Rio Grande Valley, the population was a mix of white Americans and Mexican-Americans, most with fairly deep roots north of the Rio Grande. Today, however, the Post reports:

Cantu credits his support for the Clintons and members of Congress, especially local Democratic Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, for the positive changes that have happened in the area. A Washington Post review of 15 years of campaign contributions by Cantu and the 339 donors whose checks he has bundled found more than $1.4 million in contributions to federal candidates and party committees, most of it to Democrats.

The Clinton administration set up a $40 million rural empowerment zone near McAllen that helped encourage business investment. Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, the population has nearly doubled, and nearly 100 Fortune 500 companies have set up operations to help import goods manufactured in Mexico. That has meant jobs and an improved standard of living. [Emphasis added.]

Not surprisingly, the Post says nothing about where the new inhabitants have come from, nor to what extent the new influx–certain to be overwhelmingly from south of the border and illegal–is displacing McAllen’s previous residents. Equally unsurprisingly, cacique Cantu is a vocal lobbying opponent of even the feeble Bush administration’s insincere attempts to fence the border.

Stories like this one tell us what is becoming of America, even though that is not what their writers intend. Perhaps McAllen, Texas was never a Model American City–I don’t know. But what it has become is a Typical Mexican Village writ large, even in its buildings, with all the corruption and patronage that implies. McAllen’s Wikipedia entry lists 13 “sister cities” for McAllen–10 of them are in Mexico. Let’s give the last word to one of cacique Cantu’s clients:

“When Alonzo comes through the door, you want to give to him,” said Gerardo J. Reyna, Cantu’s brother-in-law. Reyna owns McAllen Carpet & Interiors, a company that provides close to 90 percent of the floor coverings in Cantu-built homes and offices. “The last thing you want to do is get on Alonzo’s bad side,” he said with a smile. Reyna donated $1,000 to Clinton.

It will be interesting to read the rest of Jerry Seper’s coverage of America’s Second Mexican War, which just keeps getting hotter.

It is evident that the Mexican government plays a material role in the ongoing border incursions and violations of U.S. sovereignty from south of our Mexican border, which have increased in frequency and impunity while George W. Bush has been in the White House.

Americans have now endured at least a decade of hectoring from Mexican politicians – including presidents (most recently here: Mexican Leader Sees Bias in U.S. Politicking | Stop Disparaging Migrants, Calderón Says Washington Post, November 15, 2007) – about gringo discrimination against Mexicans and all “Latinos” and our duty to welcome and cosset Mexicans, however they may have come to America, at the same time as they demand all those free-loading Mexicans remain fully Mexican, send their Yanqui dollars home, and unto the seventh generation “think Mexico first,” as Vicente Fox’s U.S.-born cross-border invasion coordinator so diplomatically put it on American prime-time TV.

For several years now, we have been reading stories, and not only from Border Patrol sources, about armed and vehicle-mounted men crossing the U.S. border from Mexico and firing on Border Patrol agents and ranchers. The sheer volume of illegal entry, the growing violence, the patent collusion of the Mexican government–all show this is a national security problem that demands a stronger and more effective response than county sheriffs and state policemen can mount.

Indeed, despite the sterling efforts of many agents the Border Patrol is unequal to the task–especially since the GW Bush administration refuses adamantly to give the Border Patrol the tools to get on with the job, and railroads into federal penitentiaries agents who take border patrolling too seriously.

Fortunately, the United States has a force explicitly established and chartered with the mission of protecting the United States against invasion on the ground. All that is lacking is the will and the wit to use this instrument in the American interest. What America needs on the Mexican border is the United States Army.

By “send the Army,” I don’t mean merely mobilizing National Guardsmen piecemeal and sending them to sit unarmed in the sand and watch illegal aliens cross the border. I mean deploy units of the Regular Army to the border, augmented as necessary by National Guard and Army Reserve units, and with Air Force support as required. (On our sea frontiers, of course, the Navy and Marine Corps, augmented as required by the Coast Guard, should be doing the same thing.)

Now don’t even bring up the red herring of the Posse Comitatus Act. That law, like the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, is another one open-borders proponents love to misconstrue. The Posse Comitatus Act restricts the federal government’s ability to use the Army for domestic policing. Securing the nation’s borders is not domestic policing. On the contrary, border defense fits squarely within the very definition of the Army’s core mission. Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution says it plainly: “The United States shall … protect each of them [the States] against Invasion.” The Constitution says nothing about a border patrol, but it has plenty to say about the Army, which has been in existence since 1775.

Patriotic Americans should be asking themselves: What should the primary mission of the U.S. Army be in these post-Cold War times? Is it trying (and failing) to defend Iraq and impose order–including secure borders–on hostile Moslems in that Mesopotamian morass? Is it chasing still other hostile Moslems around the desolate mountainsides of Afghanistan? Or should it be keeping uninvited and unwanted foreigners–many armed and among them at least a few of those hostile Moslems who make life so pleasant in places like Iraq - out of the United States? The answer becomes even more obvious when Americans realize the government of our large (and pretty affluent by world standards) neighbor next door is doing everything it can, including armed cross-border incursions, to abet the demographic invasion and transformation of our country.

The United States should withdraw all forces–Army, Marine, supporting Air Force and Navy –from Iraq and Afghanistan. Our presence there, no matter what facetious mission-of-the-minute justification the Bush administration comes up with, is a fool’s errand. We cannot win, on any intelligent definition of winning, and there is no point in continuing to try. We can only bleed our armed forces dry and damage America’s standing in the world and economy. The U.S. armed forces should return to their constitutional mission of defending the United States.

The U.S. Army, built around mobile and mechanized forces designed to fight the Red Army in Germany, is–with some notable exceptions– ill-suited to the role it has been forced into in Iraq. We can solve that problem by bringing our soldiers (Marines too!) home, post-haste. In the largely open desert terrain characteristic of America’s Mexican border, mobile units can range widely and, with their built-in aerial surveillance capabilities, cover large stretches of border effectively.

What I am proposing is a mission built around reconnaissance, surveillance and apprehending illegal entrants. I am emphatically not proposing turning the Mexican border into a free-fire zone. That said, Army units engaged in border defense will need reasonable rules of engagement – and they will need to be able to deploy with their weapons.

Opening fire cannot be the first choice for stopping individual, unarmed illegal aliens. In those cases, we would have to ask our soldiers to operate more as policemen. That said, American soldiers on border duty have the right to be at least as well armed as police officers on major city forces, and at least as permissive rules of engagement for self-defense.

What of those armed incursions, some probably by Mexican soldiers or former soldiers now in the pay of drug cartels? Those incursions should be met with deadly force, and American forces can and should pursue them back across the border. Once those invaders understand that they will be resisted, driven back into Mexico, and pursued and destroyed even in their base areas, their incursions will stop. Right now the perception on the border, despite the carefully staged wailing of Mexican politicians, is that the United States lacks the political will to control the border.

Extreme as these proposals may sound, there is solid precedent for them.

The Mexican War was not simply, as it is portrayed today, a Yankee invasion of Mexico. The U.S. invasion of Mexico, when it finally came, was largely in response to repeated Mexican violations of the U.S. border. It is forgotten today, but in the 1840s the conventional wisdom was (despite its drubbing ten years before in Texas) that the Mexican Army was stronger and more professional than the American.

In 1916, in response to cross-border raids and murder in towns such as Douglas, Arizona, the U.S. Army launched a punitive raid into Mexico under John J. Pershing, warming up for his role as commander of the American Expeditionary Force sent to France the next year. Mexico protested, but it was generally understood that the United States was within its right to defend its border and to suppress the bandit forces that had raided American soil. Would that we were so self-confident today.

As the lead unit of an Army deployment to the Mexican border, I would nominate the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Hood, Texas. U.S. Cavalry did not cease to exist when the Army retired its horses. On the contrary, mechanized cavalry groups performed yeoman service in World War II, and air and armored cavalry squadrons were some of the most effective units in Vietnam. The 3rd ACR itself played a critical role in breaking Saddam Hussein’s army in Desert Storm, and has been one of the most successful units employed in the younger President Bush’s dismal Mesopotamian misadventure.

With their unparalleled mobility and built-in combination of mechanized and air power, armored cavalry regiments have great potential for covering the wide expanses of our Southwest border region. If commander-in-chief Bush were serious about defending America, he would seriously consider deploying them there.

Last week, I was at West Point for the Rutgers football game. Despite grim weather and a grimmer score, I was pleasantly surprised by the spirit of most of the Cadets I encountered. I thought to myself, though, how excited can they be about becoming officers of an Army mired in political correctness, debilitated by feminism and over-reliance on mercenaries to fill the ranks, and currently squandered on dead-end missions like Iraq and Afghanistan? I’m willing to bet many of those Cadets would be far more excited if they knew they really would be defending America after they graduate.

Send the Cavalry back to the Border!

The Wall Street Journal reports on Spanish-language TV network Univision’s televised citizenship drive - uncritically, of course. Population replacement is always pleasing to the WSJ, as we march happily forward to the great one-world mongrel mega-market of Bob Bartley and Peter Kann’s dreams.[Univision Gives Citizenship Drive Unusual Lift May 10, 2007 By Miriam Jordan]

Univision’s management is encouraging Latin Americans resident in the United States to get U.S. citizenship as quickly as they can, so they can have a say in the running of “their” country. This “Ya Es Hora” (the WSJ translates it as “It’s About Time”; “It’s Time, Already” or “Now Is The Hour” would be closer) drive is a perfect example of the convergence of dollar-driven disloyal business types and the ethnic fifth-columnists who have inserted themselves into American public life:

The citizenship drive is the brainchild of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, a nonpartisan outreach group known as NALEO. Last year, NALEO officials gathered representatives from Univision, Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, Spanish-language radio, unions and dozens of community groups to hatch a plan for drawing more Hispanics into the U.S. political process.

The result is the largest campaign ever to convert eligible Hispanics into citizens and, ultimately, voters. “This is about increasing the participation of Latino immigrants in U.S. civic life,” says Marcelo Gaete, a senior director of NALEO. “They can change the political landscape.”

Naturally, instead of safeguarding the value of American citizenship, those charged with that mission are abetting this tactical dilution of our citizenship:

“I have never seen anything like it in my career. It’s big,” said Jane Arellano, a 39-year veteran of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who is district director in L.A. According to a person close to the situation, the initiative was a factor in the agency’s decision to extend the terms of 40 immigration adjudicators in the district whose contracts were due to end in January.

Call me racist if you must, but am I the only one who is nervous that we are entrusting citizenship matters in Los Angeles to someone named Arellano? It is hard not to notice one strange and very doubtful by-product of federal affirmative action: almost everyone in CIS and the Border Patrol, the very people charged (on paper, at least) with resisting the Latin American invasion of these less-and-less United States, are almost all Latin Americans, or of Latin American origin, themselves. Imagine the Israelis hiring Palestinian Arabs as their border guards, or Her Majesty’s Government hiring Moslem Pakistanis to police Heathrow (eh, that, I’m sure, is already happening), as a rough analogy to show how stupid - in terms of Americans’ interests, not that anyone in the federal government cares about those - this is.

Univision is another fine example of how, in pursuit of profit margins and market share (even if, as here, they manufacture their own market by flooding the country with their consumers), big businesses abandons any loyalty to their home countries and any sense of duty to the countries where they make their money. Univision’s former Chairman and CEO is Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio, Clinton cabinet member and convicted felon. What Americans need to wake up and realize is that networks like Univision and revolving-door Hispanic apparatchiks like Cisneros are agents of influence of the Mexican and other Latin American governments that want to influence the U.S. government by making American voters ever more Latin American. About America and Americans, they care not a whit.

The short term goal is to make America even more available than it already is to every surplus Latin American who wants to come squat here. The long term goal is…there isn’t one. When one thinks about it, the short-sightedness of the Latin American–especially Mexican–oligarchs and politicians who want an open-border America as a demographic safety-valve is quite something. As soon as they achieve their goal of “Latinizing” (apologies to the Romans for using the term in this context) the United States, no Latin American in his right mind will want to come here. This place will be just as squalid as the place he’s leaving - ever-growing stretches of it already are - and colder to boot. There goes the safety valve, and out may come the machetes for the oligarchs. It has happened before.

As for Cisneros, Univision’s management and NALEO’s membership, maybe we should give them credit for loyalty to their ancestry. We shouldn’t forget, though, their loyalty to that ancestry leads to treason against America. And, we must reject the multicult dispensation that makes loyalty to one’s ancestry streng verboten for most Americans.

To require visas for “Britons” of Pakistani origin. The Telegraph’s comment thread on the story is interesting, too. It is a mix (no surprise, there, I suppose) of limp Leftish comments bemoaning such unequal treatment of “Britons” and the evils of America generally, and more robust comments saying it’s a good thing the American government is awake to the threat – how I wish that were true – and the British government needs to wake up – which is certainly true. [US pushes for visa control on Pakistani Britons, By Alex Spillius in Washington and Philip Johnston, May 3, 2007]

The pithiest remark is in the very first comment, from one Tom Dixon:

Having a British passport does not make someone British any more than being born in a stable makes one a horse.

Hip, Hip…! As good a one-line summary of the National Question as I think I’ve ever seen.

But I thought this comment, from one Redwing, has an unfortunate ring of truth too:

As an expat, now an American, the USA has it all wrong. All terrorists have to do is hop on a plane to Mexico, then come in with the droves of illegal immigrants that regularly cross the border. There are reports of illegals being deported numerous times, only to get back in very quickly. It will be another waste of taxpayers’ money.

So is this a real border control initiative, as our dual-citizen homeland security capo, Judge Chertoff, assures us, or is it merely window-dressing to help us gringo suckers swallow the coming illegal alien amnesty/”guest”-worker programs? Last time I checked, George W. Bush was still President of the United States. I think I have my answer…

In case anyone is still wondering, the Bush administration really does believe America’s borders need even less policing than they get right now, The Decider’s Potemkin-village photo ops in border towns like Yuma notwithstanding.

Phase One in the Bushite neutering of the Border Patrol is finding scapegoat Border Patrol agents to put in federal penitentiaries as punishment for doing their jobs. For emphasis, make sure you mix those defenseless agents into a prison population full of illegal alien gang-bangers, and see what happens… Phase One is still ongoing, but President Bush must figure the prospect of telling your illegal-alien fellow inmates why you work for the Border Patrol still isn’t deterrent enough to keep Border Patrol agents from patrolling America’s border. Time for another brainwave that could spring only from the furrowed brow of The Decider or his twin brain, Ms. Rice (not-so-affectionately renamed by Bill Lind as the Tea Lady): Better to remove the Border Patrol from the border altogether!

So bring on Phase Two of the Bushite gutting of the Border Patrol, reported by the Houston Chronicle yesterday: lure Border Patrol agents away from the onerous (and counterproductive, in President Bush’s eyes) task of securing America’s borders. Instead, offer them a huge premium over what the Border Patrol can offer to go help secure the borders of a country Mr. Bush does care about: Iraq.[U.S. wants Border Patrol agents for Iraq |Firm seeks veteran officers to mentor Iraqis on immigration , By Steve McVicker April 30, 2007 ]

What could be in store as Phase Three? Filling the Border Patrol with affirmative action hires with roots and relatives in Mexico, and all the conflicts of interest that flow therefrom? Oh, I forgot, the feds have already been doing that for years…

Now the Democrats have tipped their mitt that they don’t have the guts to impeach President Bush over his mendacious Mesopotamian misadventure, are any Congressional Republicans willing to buck the GOP party line and offer articles of impeachment based on Mr. Bush’s criminal dereliction of one of his few explicit constitutional duties (Art. IV, § 3): to protect each of the United States against invasion?