The other day I happened to unplug from the web and listen to the car radio. It was the "news." We live in earthquake country, but the earthshaking local "stories" that day were the most trivial of gossip from the police jotter. An illegal alien with a Spanish surname was picked up going through a dumpster, and jailed overnight on suspicion of some dope connection. Another Hispanic was allegedly caught holding a small amount of speed. Like, this is the news? The only thing new was to hear such humdrum scraps being spiced up as the news of note.

It is an isolated desert valley here. Having no nosy neighbors attracts a lot of small-time meth labs, run by white refugees from LA. Not that many Mexicans around, very few blacks.

No crack-down on the crack labs, though. To hear the "news," our parched valley is inundated under a wave of Mexican petty crime. Obviously and obnoxiously, a witch hunt was on, as the stench of a burning at the stake wafted from my radio.

Today the demagogy dragon popped up its ugly head again by e-mail. A Mexico-bashing message from the freepers is twisting the creepers on the grapevine, and my best friend around here, a decent guy with a head turned about 3780 degrees to the "right" by years of "news," sent it my way.

The rant was an American manager writing about the tough time he had getting a work permit in Mexico, and what a huge, ironic injustice this is, and this is my answer to it.

Sometimes you have to go way back to square one with people. America is open to foreigners, they argue, so why not the reverse?

Yes, America is one of the few countries where you become a citizen just by being born here. The Indians didn't get a chance to require your grandfather be a native American!

And America is a country of immigrants, for the same blunt reason: the original inhabitants never had a chance to keep foreigners out. The colonists moved in literally over their dead bodies.

How righteous is the indignation against Mexican "newcomers" of all people, when the Yanquis stole half their country? And they are cousins of the original natives, too?

Insulated and not unspoiled American readers were not likely to realize that the hurdles their compatriot faced south of the border are the same ones any foreigner has to get over for a work permit almost anywhere, anyway. The requirements for immigrating on a work permit are pretty universal: employers have to show that competitive local labor is not available. If you think Mexicans are coming in on some kind of bureaucratic flying red carpet, try on their shoes sometime. Even immigrants without papers mostly take jobs that US citizens don't want.

Now daily wages in Mexico are about equal to the hourly wages in the US! Then how could an American who probably doesn't even speak the language, and certainly doesn't know the terrain, be so "competitive" to qualify for a job in Mexico at an American wage scale, equal to the salaries of eight aspiring Mexican managers? Of course, bribing the immigration helps.

And why does the Mexican subsidiary of an American company even want to hire such a priceless American manager? Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, and you'll know two answers. One, to have a good old boy who can be trusted to siphon off all the profits from the empire's outposts back to the USA, and help the folks back home carry on making a day's pay in an hour. And ditto, to give a plum job to a homeboy, not a "foreigner" (even if it's supposed to be their country.)

The ranting ex-pat also complained he couldn't buy property in Mexico. That marks it as regurgitated old news. Under current law, foreigners can buy just about any property they like in Mexico.

So why is this kind of sheer demagogy suddenly being whipped up? Strange, weren't the Republicans the ones who wanted easy immigration to keep wages cheap? Or maybe jailing illegals as felons will augment the supply of dollar-a-week labor in the prisons? Although the incarceration rate in the "land of the free" is already Number One in the world. Or is the Fifth Column of foreigners just automatically part of the ruling not-so-neo fascist ideology? Or are they getting so desperate at their dive in the polls that they have to play the Mexifobia card? Maybe it's either bash Mexicans, or pop an even bigger 9/11, like a nuclear false-flag attack blamed on Iran, to rubber-stamp the next war for more elbow room and police state measures? They bungled 9/11 so badly that half the planet already knows it was an inside job, but the media cover-up was tip-top. Much easier and safer to let the media engage in a little hired demagogy this time?

Or is it just sheer desperation to find some wedge issue, any emotional, tangential red herring to keep a grand coalition from forming against them? Double or nothing. Maybe after the pipedream scheme of the regime plays out, Mexicans won't be voting anyway.

Come to think of it, I'm not too sure their votes were counted the last two elections either. Nor mine, for that matter.

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