Many of the local political disputes these days are caused, at root, by immigration. Santa Ana’s city council debates where Mexican vending trucks are to be allowed to park. Latino activists protest proposals by one of the county’s municipalities and the county sheriff to check the immigration status of those arrested for serious crimes. Emergency rooms and trauma centers throughout the region are closing under the financial strain of serving a population that does not pay for medical services. Schools pass new bond initiatives to keep up with the costs of services for the growing population, most of whom are the children of immigrants, legal or otherwise. Residents bicker over daywork centers and other places where illegal immigrants congregate to solicit construction work. Republican strongholds are becoming Democratic strongholds.
The situation has replicated Third World development patterns. Wealthy people congregate along the beach areas depicted in the TV shows or move to the further reaches of the region and live in gated communities. Older areas become barrios. And, while the county remains mostly nice and middle class, a recent report shows that fewer than two percent of the homes sold in the LA/OC area are affordable by families with median incomes. A once-middle-class region is now becoming a county of rich and poor. ~Steven Greenhut
Why anyone wants to replicate the splendid “successes” of the Mexican social, economic and political model, I will never fully understand, but the reality that Mexican immigrants will reproduce the society and culture of their old country was entirely foreseeable and was foreseen. For some folks, the transformation will not be so bad and will make some into a hereditary oligarchic ruling class tucked away in their little enclaves. That is, at least until homegrown Chavismo comes knocking on their door.
1 comment
Comments feed for this article
November 24th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Grumpy Old Man
I live there, and greatly admire Steven Greenhut, who’s a columnist for the local paper (I call it “the libertarian Pravda), an Orthodox Christian, and specializes in skewering the Nanny State.
Much of Greenhut’s description is accurate. The white working class has largely fled, to Riverside and San Bernardino counties, or further. Home ownership for those who aren’t already invested in the real estate pyramid is a vanishing dream. Immigration from Mexico, Indochina, China (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland), Korea and Iran has transformed a place that 30 years ago was a Mediterranean Iowa. The economy is becoming post-industrial.
A couple of random points are in order:
Living as I do in the beach corrridor, I must say that the TV programs don’t depict accurately the way most people live. There are plenty of high schoolers who study hard, go to Bible classes and football practice, and have never set foot on a yacht.
The Asian immigrants, in general, are acculturating quite well into the middle class, because they’ve been advancing by taking examinations for 2,000 years, and they can’t go home again, at least not by bus. Their IQ’s, on the average, are half an order of magnitude higher than American whites. The Iranians were middle or upper class to start with. The rapid change in population composition may be an issue in terms of cultural and ethnic continuity, but these folks aren’t burning buses, knocking over liquor stores, or flooding the welfare rolls.
What’s more problematic is Mexican immigration, much of it illegal, with the country of origin a bus trip away. Mexicans don’t do well in the meritocracy. The first generation is hard-working but not entrepreneurial, IQs are lower, and commitment to education quite limited. Many Mexicans acculturate, but into the underclass. Themes of racial resentment and irredentism are attractive to many.
These folks are generally nice people. They’re God’s children. Their numbers, the rapidity of their coming, and the other things I’ve mentioned do pose a problem.
We are becoming Brazil, a nation with many immigrants, a racially marked class system of extreme inequality, and left-populist politics. Not a future I’d choose.