Does how immigrants get here affect the recent past’s immigration wave from south of the border?

How immigrants come to America are few. They can walk or ride across the borders legally and illegally, or take a plane ride or boat ride mostly to an immigration screening station. Plane or boat rides are generally across an ocean, and pretty much one way if accepted into America at the immigration screening station.

Swimming or walking home across an ocean is a non-starter. Those who follow this route to get here generally want to assimilate to aid and abet their efforts here in America. Assimilating usually means learning English, and giving children American first names, as in Charles Rodriquez, or Nancy Liu. And assimilating is a two way street in a melting pot such as America. America changes, too. Cultural changes are the obvious, as in the food we eat and the menus. Since almost all legal immigrants miss their homeland and relatives, the assimilating time is often most difficult if one is stranded in the new foreign land called America.

Walking or riding home across a southern border is a starter, for both legal and illegal immigrants. The best guess is that 90% of illegal immigrants from south of the border go home sometime to visit and be with their relatives. That is just life, and is normal. It is the mindset that is different because they can go home with much more ease than those that crossed oceans to get here. And the porosity of the border in the past has aided and abetted this practice. This porosity of the border is both in movement of people, and their monies.

The practical effects of the past immigration practices by America are simple. We have an illegal alien population of somewhere between 12 and 20 million, mostly from south of the border. And the ability to go home now and then, especially for illegal immigrants, has changed the assimilation pressures, at least that is the theory. Predicting group behavior is most difficult, but the common theme seems to be how illegal immigrants got here, and how they can go home to visit. Do gooders promoting illegal “rights” and giving back land to Mexico are distracters, and in the end do more harm than good.

We in America do have our own National Interests. Like an old Superman movie, it might be truth, justice, and the American way. Others may call it protecting our children’s opportunity for the future, and some may even add protecting our way of life and culture.

Whatever we think about it, illegal immigrants who work and go home now and then and do think assimilation is not important to them are not those we seek for our National future. We have better choices as a Nation, and deserve to be selfish about our choices. One discriminator in a legal screening process is “how did you get here?” One discriminator for illegal immigrants when caught or screened is the “how did you get here?” This discriminator is important as an indicator of the intent to assimilate. Those who do not want to “join” must go back home. Let the do gooders defend and promote them from afar, one hopes. There are plenty of “assimilating intended” immigrants to choose from as part of our National Interests.