http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 893554732/Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
Victor Davis Hanson
List Price: $21.95
Price: $14.93
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Classics professor Hanson is also, like generations of his family before him, a fruit farmer in California's central valley. He has employed immigrants, seen them flood his community during the last 30 years of mass flight from Mexico, and endured the crime associated with illegal immigrants. Hanson is immensely sympathetic to poor Mexicans, however, and the most powerful chapter here outlines the harried life of the illegal alien. But he hates to see the ordered culture in which he grew up drowned by an alien inundation whose undeserving beneficiaries are Mexico's kleptocratic rulers, for whom an open border is a safety valve expelling the potential for democratic change. The four solutions to the mess that Hanson enumerates include continuing de facto open borders but insisting on rapid acculturation; patrolling the border effectively and reducing legal immigration; imposing "sweeping restrictions on immigration" and ending Mexican chauvinism in the U.S.; and allowing present policies to make California increasingly mirror an unreformed Mexico. Hanson thinks that the U.S. "still need not do everything right" to prevent social collapse in the Southwest and that the totalitarian uniformity of valueless mass culture may soften that collapse. He also sees very clearly what has brought this crisis on: the American globalist ideology's lust for cheap labor and emphasis on "raw inclusiveness" instead of "standards and taste." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Linda Chavez, author of An Unlikely Conservative
"Hanson's 'Mexifornia' is that rare book that combines scholarship with personal experience to provide genuine insight into a complex issue."
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Hardcover: 150 pages
Publisher: Encounter Books;
1st edition (June, 2003)
***
Someone who sees it as it is!, October 21, 2003
Reviewer: Sally Quick (Salem, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This book shows how Mexico sends their poor to America to work, so they don't have to improve their own country, and how we use these people for cheap labor so that we can sell things for less. It's a deal made between the two countries. The trouble is, it's not what American citizens want. The "servants of the people", the representatives, are not listening to us, so it's always exciting to read something that really tells it like it is.
This book is written from the viewpoint of someone who actually lives with these Mexican immigrants. The rich people who want to use them in their businesses for cheap labor don't live with them; the liberal elites who push for them to get amnesty don't live with them. This guy lives among them, and knows the problems first hand, and as I suspected, there are many, and they're not pretty.
He writes very bluntly about the problems, but not without sympathy for the Mexican immigrants whose own country won't take care of them. With all the new books out and the discussions going on about legal and illegal immigration, and what the American people want, I'm hoping that these problems will be solved. This book is one of the best on the subject, because it is written from a viewpoint of personal experience.
***
Another Great Book From Hanson, July 9, 2003
Reviewer: Donald R. McClarey (Dwight, IL United States) - See all my reviews
I have read every book written by Hanson. From the hoplites of ancient Greece, the farming crisis of the 80's, the history of warfare and culture, the teaching of the classics and now this searching analysis of the debacle of our non-policy on immigration, I have been astonished at how skillfully this man writes and with what intelligence he cuts to the essence of whatever subject he addresses. In the present book Hanson turns his gaze to a subject he is personally familiar with: the transformation of his native California by massive illegal immigration from Mexico. Hanson is not anti-Mexican. He has several Mexican relatives, his daughters are dating Mexican-Americans and most of the people he grew up with are Mexican-American or Mexican. What Hanson is opposed to is our feckless non-policy on immigration which allows steady waves of illegals to flood our border states and does not give us time to allow us to assimilate the Mexican immigrants here. Hanson believes strongly that the vast majority of immigrants, given time and opportunity, will assimilate and become good citizens. However it is impossible for this to be accomplished unless we gain control of our southern border and curb most illegal immigration. A timely book on a major issue that both the Republican and Democrat parties steadfastly ignore.
***
Compassionate critique, August 30, 2005
Reviewer: John - See all my reviews
First, off, Hanson is a classical liberal, and he states he is a Democrat. The problem is, whenever you question the "party line" in the U.S. that mass, uncontrolled immigration is the only way, you are often labeled a "racist" or "nativist". This book is not anti-Mexican, it is pro-sustainability. The book is actually compassionate. Hanson states that many of the students he teaches are Mexican, and he likes Mexicans. But the point is not, do we like Mexicans, the point is, when does a society or a state reach the point at which immigration is no longer sustainable (to use a term that liberals love). Hanson's point is that that point is already reached. All you have to do is see the overpopulation of California. The 17 % of U.S. prisoners who are illegal immigrants. The ambulance services forced to go bankrupt in Arizona, because federal law mandates that they treat illegals, but federal law does not require the govnment to pay for it (!) [by the way, I am for such treatment, because it is the only humane way, but we also have to remember that someone pays for it]. Spiralling crime in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. State after state - including Democrat-run states like New Mexico and Virginia, declaring states of emergency because of the chaos of mass, uncontrolled immigration. Even Hillary Clinton and other liberals are now admitting, enough is enough. In the city where I live (Dallas), our schools now mostly teach illegals, and there are signs outside the schools in Spanish stating, "Become a U.S. citizen " (!). Crime is way up in Dallas, as it is throughout the southwest. Texas builds more and more highways and more and more housing to try to cope with the population explosion. The state is now a "majority-non-white" state, like California. Texas never solved the issue of dire poverty, and yet, we are now taking on masses of very poor people, all in the name of dubious "diversity" (when is there enough "diversity" ?), and cheap labor, so that we can get our cars washed and our hedges trimmed, dirt cheap. Sure, immigration has its positive side (an infusion of young people, with their energy, people willing to work hard, etc.), but the general trend has been negative, with social and environmental standards eroding over time, and Hanson does a good job of portraying that.
***
Absolutely Great Book!, July 29, 2005
Reviewer: Jolive (San Diego) - See all my reviews
This book hits the mark in every way and demands to be read!
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Mexifornia or mexiphobia?, June 16, 2005
Reviewer: Luneiro - See all my reviews
It's a book that follows the racism that the mexicans have to take in the U.S. Plain simple. In the XIX century the Irish were the discriminated, in the XX century, the blacks and in the XXI century, the mexicans.
The author encourage the discrimination against mexicans,and keeps going with the old thinking of the Manifest Destiny that took Mexico half of his territory. In a way, americans should be worried, because mexicans are doing to americans what they did to mexicans in 1846: invading the territory, ignoring the local authorities and imposing its own culture.
A perfect book for KKK wannabes, skinheads and pseudo-minute men.
***
A truly awful book, June 3, 2005
Reviewer: Daniel Knauss - See all my reviews
Anyone looking for a reasonable analysis of causes & effects; well-thought out proposals for future change, or even just an engaing read: Look elsewhere.
If you're looking for a seemingly endless and repetitive whine from an author whose only skill seems to be find the fault in every act from everyone on every side, this is the book for you.
Worst of all, a classics professor with a scholarly reputation ought to know better than to fill a book of this sort with the same circular logic politicos resort to all the time, a la: "Though well meaning, the policies of the liberal elites aren't based on a real understanding of the needs of Hispanics, so those policies are bad... And, liberal elites policies, though well meaning, don't seem to be working, and that's evidence that liberals don't really understand the needs of Hispancis." Huh?
Where's the beef? Definately a D- performance for a crucially important issue that needs both legitimate scholarship and good enough rhetorical ability to compel the dispassionate masses to start paying attention.
