Is it Assimilation or Invasion?


By Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum, November 28, 2001

...While there is no evidence that the 9/11 terrorists entered over the Mexican border, the trial in El Paso of an Iraqi smuggler produced evidence that he alone brought more than 1,000 Middle East illegals into the United States via that route, charging his clients $10,000 to $15,000 each. Border Patrol agents have confirmed the increase in illegal aliens coming from the Middle East across our southern border and the fact that Arabs pay up to $50,000 each for a "coyote" to smuggle them into the United States....

In Chicago on July 27, 1997, then Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told the National Council of LaRaza ["The Race"], "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders." He announced a Mexican constitutional amendment that purports to allow Mexicans to retain their Mexican nationality even though they become U.S. citizens (which is contrary to the U.S. naturalization oath).

When President Vicente Fox came to the United States this year, he reiterated this line, proclaiming that "the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders" and includes migrants living in the United States. He called for open borders and endorsed Mexico's new dual citizenship law.

Some Mexicans use the term "reconquista," which is Spanish for reconquest, to describe their desire to see California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas acquired by Mexico and named the new country of Aztlan. They are teaching their youth that the United States "stole" those areas from Mexico and that they should be "returned."

The United States acquired the Southwest a century and a half ago in three ways: part by the 1845 annexation agreement with Texas, which was then an independent republic, part ceded by Mexico in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War, and part by the 1852 Gadsden Purchase.

Mexico's claim to the Southwest originated with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew an imaginary line on the map to divide the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. Because geography had so many unknowns at that time, Portugal got only Brazil (which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese)....

Mexicans obviously have no thought of invading the Southwest with troops, so their hope is reconquista by migration, both legal and illegal. According to Mario Obledo, founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, "California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn't like it should leave."...

Vicente Fox presented Mexico's Congress with a five-year development plan to eliminate the U.S.-Mexican border....

...In U.S. areas with large Hispanic (including illegal) populations, the Mexican consul donates to the local public schools the same textbooks that are used in every elementary school in Mexico, grades 1 through 6.

The books, written in Spanish and including all academic subjects, teach that America "stole" the southwest from Mexico and that Mexico is entitled to take it back. The Mexican government considers these textbooks a symbol of Mexican national pride, guarantees a set to every Mexican child, and makes it a crime for anyone to sell them....

The question we should ask our Mexican immigrant friends is, are you assimilating or invading?

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