April 25, 2008

May Day Madness From Immigration Anarchists!

What’s that definition of insanity attributed to Albert Einstein?

Oh yes, now I remember! “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Apply Einstein’s take on the uselessness of repetitive behavior when the desired outcome never materializes to our Open Borders adversaries and one can only conclude that they are—well, insane.

Perhaps “insane” is too strong.

Or then again, maybe it’s not.

Whether it’s crazy or it isn’t, I wonder, given the abject failure of previous marches and public demonstrations demanding “amnesty now,” what immigration enthusiasts—both in the U.S. and Mexico—could possibly be thinking as they organize yet another May 1^st circus.

In my home state of California, no fewer than 23 cities will host pro-amnesty marches, including three in Los Angeles and two in San Diego.

To see if your city is one of the unlucky ones, check the complete list of locations here.

The master plan includes the typical protesting and Mexican flag-waving that we’ve grown to know and love.

An organization called “Latino Families United Without Borders” and whose motto is “Together We Are The New Majority” announced their demands.

Stop me if you’ve heard them before:

Legalization for all now!

Stop the separation of families!

Health care for every family!

Vote for those who cannot vote!

According to the Los Angeles-based Spanish language daily La Opinion’s (wildly optimistic) projections, “mobilizations” will occur in 200 cities with the backing of 1 million people. [Líderes migrantes piden a Calderón apoyar marchas, By Gardenia Mendoza Aguilar, La Opinion, April 10, 2008, Spanish only]

No “mobilization” is complete without a call from anarchists for illegal immigrants to stay home from work, to boycott American products and stores, to keep their children out of school (a possible violation of state compulsory attendance requirements) and sundry other nonsense that is at best impractical and at worst impossible.

South of the border, none other than Elvira Arellano, the bad penny of the “justice for immigrants” crowd and a member of the very same “Latino Families United Without Borders,” has resurfaced just in time for May Day.

Here’s what Arellano’s up to.

Speaking from the Cancun Airport, where she landed after returning from a visit to Cuba, Arellano announced that her dual citizen anchor baby son Saúlito would return to Chicago, the scene of their crimes to lead that city’s May 1st march.

Then, according to his mother, Saulito will proceed the next day to Washington D.C. “to participate in a lobbying effort before the House of Representatives, where he will deliver the demands of reform to the U.S. immigration laws that the undocumented Latin-Americans want, 12 million of whom are Mexicans.” [Cambiar ley migratoria del pais, demanda Elvira Arellano, By Mauricio Conde Olivares, La Jornada, April 6, 2008, Spanish only]

If demanding, lobbying and crazy anti-American rhetoric seems familiar to you—and I’m sure it does—it’s because we’ve been subjected to it steadily for at least five years.

At first, we patriots feared that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants participating in organized protests across the country might intimidate Congress into passing amnesty.

But not only did that not happen, the exact opposite turned out to be the case.

Many Americans, once passive fence-sitters, first became seriously engaged in the patriotic immigration reform battle in the summer 2003 when the ludicrously and insultingly named “Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride” launched from nine major cities to transport busloads of aliens who bravely “came out of the shadows” bent on protesting and demanding en route across the country.

I personally witnessed the “freedom riders” take off from downtown Los Angeles, spurred on by virtually every political, religious and workers’ organization that you can name.

The riders, many of whom I am certain had their way paid for by the subversives who endorsed the event, arrived in New York via Washington D.C. to enormous mainstream media fanfare.

In Corona Park, Queens labor leader May Chen said to the crowd: “In a few intense months we have challenged and changed America's attitudes about immigrants.” [Freedom boards the buses; immigrant workers' freedom ride revives debate, New Internationalist, by Mark Engler, Nov, 2003]

A Lehman University professor of black studies and a true1960s freedom rider, Edward Culvert, [Email him] speculated that that advanced technology would bring the immigration version of the Civil Rights march to a much wider and supportive audience.

But despite predictions by Chen, Culvert and others that the “freedom ride” would “change American’s attitudes” or reach a more “supportive audience,” it never happened. After the groups broke up, little more was heard from them.

Three years later, pro-amnesty advocates laid two more massive eggs.

The 2006 May 1^st “Great American Boycott,” as it was billed was a big, fat zero.

The announced goal was not only to paralyze the U.S. economy but also to shut down ports, airports and major highways.

Not even close…business as usual on all fronts.

But just one failure in 2006 didn’t dampen their immigration enthusiasm. Amazingly, the Open Borders gang, despite hitting its head against a brick wall, tried the same old, same old on Labor Day …with the by-now predictable dismal failure.

Again, and incredibly, in 2007, organizers made another futile effort to create pressure for their cause, although by this time virtually no one paid attention.

What these imagined show of force demonstrations generate is a far cry from what their promoters hope for.

As I wrote in my 2003 column: “I’m so enthusiastic about what the ‘ride’ means for us because, historically, the more up front and in the headlines the gripers are, the less success they have.”

Although it’s hard to envision how much less effective this year’s amnesty marches could be than the four very public failures in five years, that’s exactly what I foresee.

Here’s why:

With a presidential election on the horizon, no immigration legislation will be moved forward this year. Nor will it in 2009, given the issue’s toxicity. Congress will completely ignore the agitators.

Marches are old news even for the gullible, pro-immigration media. The story has been told; no one bought it. You’ll read fewer nauseating immigration “sob-stories .”

If the “trend is our friend” as Wall Street traders like to say, then the other side is doomed. In 2006, about a million of protesters showed up nationwide. But by 2007, only a tiny fraction of that total participated. Look for 2008 to have the smallest turnout of them all.

Given their disastrous history, why would the so-called immigrants rights activists go back to the same dry well?

Are they stupid? Are they stubborn? Are they stupid and stubborn?

Who really knows? And who really cares?

The important thing: they’re failures.

We opened with an Einstein observation that provides important insights into the other side’s mentality.

Let’s close with some valuable advice we should heed from Napoleon Bonaparte:: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”

Joe Guzzardi [e-mail him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor. In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.