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Originally Posted by tw
BTW, did you notice Americans even in the Cellar make the same complaints about them evil illegal immigrants who are destroying the American way of life?
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I would just like to clarify my participation in that thread, which I was not able to do as it developed because I was in the hospital. I also did not give the title to that thread, but I read it as "ironic" rather than racist.
Illegal and legal immigrants from Mexico and are now a huge percentage of the population in California, and Fresno county has a higher percentage of them than any other place north of LA. We are waist-deep in them, and they just keep coming. They are not in any way evil, nor as a group are they conniving to destroy ANYBODY'S way of life. I have the right to talk about it because for 12 years I have had more to do with Mexicans than the so-called "white" community; they are my friends, dates, co-workers, bosses, classmates, and my teachers. Mexicans who know me like to tease me that I am more Mexican in attitude than they are. I speak to them all around me during the day and spend all night writing in Spanish and monitoring a bilingual forum. I only watch Spanish TV programs and my radios are all tuned to Spanish pop music stations, so most of the time I know nothing about network TV. I adore Mexico and find the people from there to be warm and interesting.
All they want to do is have a chance to work and raise a family, and they are often excellent parents. There is not a higher percentage of criminals and abusers in the Hispanic population than there is in the US population as a whole, but they have an unfortunate tendency to end up in the spotlight. For one thing, they have no experience or confidence in navigating through the social and legal system of this country, and they tend to "get in trouble" at a rate 4 times higher than other groups. 80% of the court cases in Fresno County have to do with Hispanics. The schools and hospitals are filled with them at a very high percentage compared with only 10 years ago. THIS is what has already cratered the social services in my area. THAT is what disturbs me, not that some hated group has conspired to do this to me and "us". This is simple arithmatic, not a conspiracy or an invasion. If the per-capita income and education level of any given area DECREASES steadily year after year, which is happening to us here, the resulting degradation to the quality of life is inevitable. Taxes are way down, utilization of services has more than doubled, you do the math. It is not racism to report the facts. After filling every other part of our lives, they are now filling our jails. Immigrants are more likely to kill each other, they are more likely to be involved in gangs, they drive without insurance and hit things frequently, and they get tangled up in bad life choices which drag them down. This is not because they are sub-normal or evil people! Far from it. As a group they are no worse than the rest of us, but they are too new to the kind of life and regulations which we take for granted and they slip up a lot. Then they do not take care of the problems so they keep coming back to bite them. They do a LOT of things "all wrong" by our standards, but it's a learning process. The good news is that by the 2nd generation they no longer have too many babies, they start getting to college in greater numbers, they have their own businesses, things start leveling out.
So do not mistake my position in the Illegal Immigrants thread, that's all. I hate the situation and I think it is being "handled" all wrong, if you can say it is being handled at all, but I am not for throwing them all out of the country. Too many of my friends would be gone if you did that.
France is facing the same thing with the Muslims as we have with the Hispanics in this country. The difference between France and the USA just might be because Hispanics are not perceived as having any theocratic or radical-religious leanings. In the post above, I had no intention of analyzing "race relations" so much as pointing out the hypocrisy of other countries coming down on the USA when they have many social wounds of their own festering. Racial inequality is inevitable, no matter what the country or its level of development. Even in Africa, where EVERYBODY is "black", they are busy discriminating and trying to wipe each other out based on any perceived difference you can imagine, this is NOT just OUR personal defect! I perceive a real fear in France that the Muslims WILL try to take over and enforce some kind of cultural and governmental change, if their numbers continue to increase and "if they are given the chance", and this probably has something to do with the police response. Fear like that is not something the "civilized countries" want to admit.