Scapegoat and exploit!

Dear Mexican:

My father and mother were able to come over because after the “yellow scare” was over, the United States didn’t seem to mind that Chinese were coming over here by the boatloads. Since my parents were given visas and green cards pretty easily, my father was able to get into school pretty easily. This seems to be pretty prevalent among the most of Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Indian populace (a.k.a., the model minority groups). As a result, immigrants from China, Taiwan, Korea and India have been able to get an education here and prosper. Additionally, many of these immigrants have a pride for their home country (as do Mexicans, unlike what most of the anti-immigration crowd thinks, you’re not the only ones who wave your home country’s flags around). This resulted in a lot of newly educated Chinese, Taiwanese, South Koreans and Indians bringing skills and expertise back to their home country. This allowed the aforementioned countries to build up. And these countries have begun to pump out fewer immigrants since there are a great number of job opportunities, better education systems, and better living conditions overall (still a ways to go in China and India, but it’ll get there).

So, my point being: Why doesn’t the United States grant a greater number of Mexicans green cards, visas or opportunities for a college education? I mean, it would stop all the whiners from saying, “We’ll all be speaking Spanish soon.” I mean, seriously: If the States would allow more Mexicans in legally, then we’d have more Mexicans with actual opportunities here, which would mean Mexico would eventually benefit, and in turn, would reduce the number of illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico. You’re a much better fact and statistics finder than I am (and you reach a lot more people than I do), so I was wondering if there is any way you could let some of those wall-building whiners know that billions spent on letting Mexicans in and helping them succeed now (the “illegals” are a necessity, anyways—New York would grind to a halt if the legal or illegal immigrants left) is a whole lot better in the long run than billions spent building a wall that doesn’t work, then spending billions more to tear it down when we realize that the damn wall separates us from our neighbors and destroys ecosystems that keep America from turning into the Sahara.

—Baby of Immigrants (Doesn’t Really Matter if They Are “Legal” or “Illegal”)

Dear Chinita:

Hear, hear, all around. I’ll just note that the conservative right want to keep Mexicans pendejos, poor and illegal because it makes it that much easier to scapegoat and exploit them. You rarely hear Know Nothings go after Indians, for instance (who by far get the largest share of high-tech visas: 64 percent compared to Mexico’s puny 1.2 percent), because they’d go all Shiva on them with their money, education and ghost peppers.

Confidential to: The young student at Claremont McKenna College who approached me after my recent speech there to fret about family members not liking her because she’s not 100 percent Mexican. Don’t pay attention to the haters. I know that the Mexican part of you feels you’re obliged to hang out and respect family members because they’re familia. Screw that. Never surround yourself with people who obsess about racial cultural purity, because they’re the ones whose futures are doomed in this multicultural reality of ours—they’re going to end up whining as much as neo-Nazis. Always surround yourself with people who’ll celebrate your diverse background. Stand strong, breathe deep and repeat after me: ¡A la chingada con haters!