Is California Dreamin'?

            I guess the California legislature passed a bill that would allow non-citizens the right to do jury duty.  (“Illegals just want to do the jobs that Americans don’t want.”)  Amazingly, Governor Moonbeam, now partly grown up, vetoed it.  Last year he vetoed a similar bill that would have allowed illegals to vote.  The LA Times was chagrined that such wonderful laws were vetoed by a Democrat, no less.  And they just can’t understand why the 2.5 million legal aliens in California (another 1-1.5 million illegals reside) don’t apply for citizenship. 

            Good thing.  They would vote La Raza and ask to secede to Mexico.  La Raza, which means “The Race” as in Nazi Superior Aryan terms wants everything from Cal to Col to Tejas back in Mexican hands. And when they are talking The Race, they aren’t kidding.  Mexico has a troubled relationship with their history.  Cortez defeated the Aztecs and brought Western values, but also smallpox and measles and the colonial hacienda system.  The Aztecs were murderous sacrificers yet artistic and passionate. Today, few Mexicans are either purely Native American or purely Spanish heritage.  Almost all are mestizos, mixed blood.  Since neither ancestry has a good reputation, they have swept some things under the carpet and blended the two into a Mestizo Race of pride.  And the analogy to the way German Nazis constructed a Race myth of an oft-mistreated Great Race of people, drempt-up to smother any possible shame, is too close for comfort.

            Don’t think I am kidding or stretching things.  I have this on the authority of a Mexican friend who went to the university to study political science and history before he became a pastor.  He laments that Mexico doesn’t honor Cortez and has basically built construction over the historic sites.  And rather than see something to imitate in USA’s good government, they cling to revolutionary models and resentment of the Anglos.  Hence, when you examine the attitudes of Mex immigrants, they divide.  Some want to stay proudly Mexican--but just want a good job.  Or they dearly want to be an American citizen.  Or they are in-betweeners who came just looking for prosperity but learned English and are now toying with the idea of being from USA.  That explains why so few of the legal aliens have applied for naturalization. It also disproves the oft-repeated Republican bromide that all those people are coming to have anchor babies and dig into our welfare and get the Dems to promote them to citizenship through amnesty.  (alacrity of gentry liberals over voter registration and amnesty aside).
            Oddly, I think I am agreeing with Governor Moonbeam for the first time ever.  Just let immigrants sort out their attitudes before we offer them citizenship and do it with care.