tornadoes28 on May 01, 2008, at 01:14PM – #1

The fact that the protestors finally figured out the benefit of carrying American flags does not make their protest march legit. They are still advocating for people who break the law, illegal immigrants.

Before people put down what I say, let me tell you that I am married to an immigrant, a legal immigrant. Both of us spent hours filling out immigration forms, standing in immigration lines, and following the process. And both of us do not feel that it is fair that people illegaly cut in line by sneaking across the border.

Kristen on May 01, 2008, at 09:44PM – #2

tornadoes28....

I agree with you. As citizens of this country, we all have our crosses to bare no matter what part of the system we fit into. No, I'm not an immigrant, but I'm a taxpayer who signs over 35% of my wages to help fund projects that do nothing but help immigrants, wellfare, healthcare, and education for the people who aren't surviving in our system on there own.

I couldn't even get into the college I wanted because they needed to make a racial quota to students with government loans when I was ready to go with good grades and a check in my hand that was hard earned money. Now I'm stuck at the bottom of the ladder trying to work my way up like everyone else should be.

If you want this land that we worked so hard to build and maintain then prove it....

Wait in line....fill out the forms, pay absurd amounts of money from your wages, and struggle with the rest of us who are working hard to make this country better and to protect it.

THIS COUNTRY HAS NOTHING AGAINST PEOPLE WHO RESPECT THE LAWS THAT WERE LAID DOWN AND PARTICIPATE IN OUR ECONOMY. OUR REWARD FOR ALL OF THIS DUE DILLIGENCE IS FREEDOM AND PROTECTION FROM OTHERS OUTSIDE OF OUR COUNTRY. IF YOU WANT IN THEN YOU NEED TO CONFORM OR GET THE HELL OUT.

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO FREEDOM! WE'VE BEEN IN A 1,000 YEARS OF WAR FIGHTING FOR OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOM AND ANYONE WHO WANTS OF PIECE OF IT NEEDS TO DO THE SAME!

tornadoes on May 02, 2008, at 11:02AM – #3

Unforetunately I witnessed more idiots carrying Mexican flags at the protests. Why don't they use there brains. If they want people to agree with them, then don't carry a foreign nations flag.

Do you think if I carried an American flag in Mexico City demanding they change their policies that the Mexican citizens would like that? Hell no.

Nor would people in China, Brazil, Venezuela, or even England or France. Hell no would they want to see an American carrying around and American flag.

So why do the idiots carrying Mexican flags not realize that?

Dennis Smith on May 02, 2008, at 12:43PM – #4

Many people displayed Mexican flags, not just as a sign of ethnic pride but also as a symbolic reminder that Los Angeles, as well as much of the southwestern United States was once part of Mexico and was only seized in a war of conquest that ended in 1848. There is a reason this city is not called Angelville or Angeltown or Angelburg but Los Angeles and some immigrants remain cognizant of our Mexican heritage and character. Mexican immigrants have a saying that in English translates as "I did not cross the border, the border crossed me". Now as to whether carrying a Mexican flag is an effective political tactic, that is much up to debate and as has been pointed out but to merely decry these people as "idiots" is something of an oversimplification of an issue that still remains unresolved.

Karyn J. on May 02, 2008, at 01:12PM – #5

"I did not cross the border, the border crossed me".

And if most of the areas north of the border were as impoverished, polluted, corrupt, crime-ridden and backwards as most of the areas south of the border, no one would pay as much attention to where that border was located to begin with.

Pete on May 07, 2008, at 03:54AM – #6

Dennis, California was a part of Mexico for a grand total of 26 years, during which time it was sparsely populated by settlers from Mexico/New Spain. Despite Mexico's promises to return land to American Indians taken by New Spain and to make the Indians citizens after the Mexican War of Independence, they did not. Indians were given in the best of cases the right to only the least desirable parcels, with the rest of the hundreds of massive land grants going to well-connected Mexicans. Most Indians were left with little choice but to go to work essentially as serfs for rancheros or the fading missions. A lot of California Indians were simply made slaves by colonists. A significant of them even allied, wisely or not, with the invading U.S. army against the Mexicans. This isn't to say that the U.S. had a right to take the land in 1847, but that Mexico really had no claim to it either.

Dennis Smith on May 07, 2008, at 08:24AM – #7

Pete,

Your historical assessment is absolutely correct yet it does not take into account the meaning of the Mexican flag for people of Mexican descent. Instead of being a symbol of national pride in the accomplishments of a government for which they have little respect, it actually serves as a badge of ethnic pride in the indigenous roots of the predominantly mestizo culture of Mexico. The very word Mexico comes from "mexica", the Nahuatl word for the people also known as the Aztecs. The image of the eagle and the snake found in the center of the flag also recall the indigenous origins of the Mexican people and it is this ethnic pride that people are demonstrating by flying the Mexican flag or participating in regional or indigenous dance groups. Now, it could be argued that the Los Angeles area was originally settled by the Shoshonean speaking peoples of Yag'na and the Chumash peoples along the coast who had nothing to do with the Indians of Mexico. However, there is a historic memory of the displacement of the original indigenous people of the Americas by Europeans who came later and it is this memory that prompts some people to carry this flag as a protest against further forced displacement and unchosen relocation.

Pete on May 08, 2008, at 03:52AM – #8

Dennis,

Indeed, most of the Southwest, including the area around L.A., was occupied by Indians who had little in common, except racial relatedness, with the Aztecs. Thus the argument that people from Mexico have an inherent right to be in California, and the Southwest in general, is in essence a racial one (it would therefore also suggest they have a right to the rest of the U.S., and Canada, as well). But this argument is a bit overconvenient. One of the most important reasons that a small number of conquistadors was able to topple the Aztec empire was that the Aztecs were widely despised by their non-Aztec, indigenous neighbors, and they sided with Cortes. The racial argument didn’t hold much sway back then, so why would it now? Because it serves current purposes. Why didn’t the mestizos from Mexico embrace, or at least treat with benign neglect, their racial compatriots in Alta California? Because they had different goals back then.

Dennis Smith on May 08, 2008, at 09:26AM – #9

Pete,

Of course the whole question of convenience can be applied to the anti-immigration argument as well. In times of prosperity, cheap immigrant labor has been seen as a boon to both business and consumers. However, in times of economic distress, it has often been recent immigrants who have been used as scapegoats for America's ills. In the 19th Century, Irish and Chinese immigrants faced this pendulum swing of emotion from welcome to xenophobia, the distance between the prose of Emma Lazarus and the invective of the Know-Nothings. In the early 20th Century, Mexican immigrants were blamed for bring drugs and disease into American society and many were forcibly repatriated to Mexico during the Great Depression. Yet, in the 1940's and 1950's, when cheap Mexican labor was considered vital to business interests, it was convenient for the U.S. government to institute the Bracero program in order to reintroduce Mexicans to the domestic work force.

This question of convenience also applies to the fixation on securing the southern border with Mexico as opposed to the far more wide open and exposed border with Canada to the north, despite the fact that people and goods illegally cross that border on a daily basis with impunity.