>>>>>>Here we go again...
>>>>>
>>>>>Not me. I have tuned out most of the anti-immigrant hysteria at this point. Fortunately there will be a lot less of it after election day, when building walls and deporting people and so on and so forth will lose their usefulness as hot button campaign issues.
>>>>
>>>>Who said anything about ANTI immigration?
>>>>Isn't ILLEGAL immigration the issue?
>>>
>>>No, I don't think it is, not really. IMO this is a quite specific reaction against Hispanics. They are the immigrants du jour and as such are feeling the brunt of our country's historic intolerance against new groups, any group. German immigrants felt it. A good soccer referee I know, Austrian by birth, told me his grandmother attributed her felicity with English to one simple reason -- "I didn't want them to know I was German." Krauts, micks, frogs, polacks, chinks, curry breaths, jungle bunnies, tentheads. I am repeating myself but immigration is the entire history of this country. The repeating pattern is every wave wants to haul up the drawbridge on the way in.
>>>
>>>Mike
>>
>>
>>What does foolish name calling by a few ignorant bigots have anything to do with whether a person is here legally or not? The bigots are going to do what they do regardless of how foreigners come here. In fact I think illegals gives the bigots and racists more excuse for their ignorant behavior.
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>I guess where we disagree is I don't think it's just a few ignorant bigots, and never has been. EVERY new immigrant group has been greeted with belligerance. Hispanics are only the latest. Whether they came here legally or illegally is just a smokescreen.

Historically, so called Hispanics in what is today the United States(let us say Tejanos, Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Californios, etc.) were treated poorly as soon as they were outnumbered by Anglos (1830 in Texas for example). They may have lived for generations on the land where they were born only to loose that land to Anglos for a number of reasons.

I just watched a PBS documentary about the Brownsville area of Texas and actions of the Texas rangers. If you were of Mexican decent you could be shot like a dog because of the color of your skin. The documentary covered a number of years but the worst was around 1917 to 1920 when over 5000 Mexican American men and women were killed within one small area. Today the number of Tejanos is almost equal to all other races in Texas.

Least we forget that Europeans are here illegally just as well as “Hispanics”. I would think that you might find an illegal Canadian or two in our country. Hating someone for any reason makes you superior. Some people are just more equal than others. Just ask a bigot!