American Elephants

“Americans are obliged to help bring more foreigners into their American society“, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a briefing ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Mexico’s president on Monday and Tuesday. The White House apparently needs a new “spokesman”. Americans are not obliged to do any such thing. Americans can shut down the borders completely, should they choose to do so. Don’t know who John Kirby is, but he needs to study up a bit. How can anyone supposedly representing the White House say such a dumb thing?

“You can’t forget that … we do, as a nation of immigrants, have an obligation to provide better tools and pathways for them to come in,” Kirby told reporters in the White House. The “Nation of Immigrants” narrative was invented in the 1950s by advocates for more migration. Biden and his deputies are pushing that claim to justify their importation of more illegal migrants above the limits set by Congress. Kirby also said Biden is trying to “balance” the additional immigrant inflow with actions that merely “curb” but not stop — the illegal migration that is strongly opposed by most Americans.

Excuse me. I think the “Nation of Immigrants” bit has outlived its usefulness. We can set our immigration levels wherever we, as a nation, decide they should be. We have laws about immigration, and laws that define just how one becomes an American citizen. We’re mostly pretty friendly about that. But it does not include people from other countries just sneaking across the border to take advantage of what we have to offer. There are clear rules about how to become an immigrant, and it’s not hard to learn what they are and how to follow the rules, and be welcomed.

A group of U.S. Senators went down to the border today to make a public appearance to show how in control of things they are, and apparently learned nothing at all. You are not, I’m sure, surprised. There’s a lot of that going around.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez thanked President Joe Biden for halting the construction of a border wall between our two countries. Wonder how President Lopez would react if the traffic were in the other direction We probably all know.

I have studied Spanish in American classes at both high school and college levels, and unsurprisingly, am extremely far from fluent. I don’t know if it is a common experience, but I certainly get the impression that we are really lousy at teaching other languages. Maybe it’s different in border states, or perhaps I just got teachers who were in the “really lousy” category. Or perhaps you just need immersion where you are forced to learn.

Admittedly, I currently live close to the Canadian border, where there is no language barrier whatsoever, but I’ve lived close to the Southern border as well, where there is. Down there there is a lot more infiltration of Spanish in American cities, and more kids learn Spanish in school.