PhD’s fantasies, truth and realities
American historians are a confounding bunch. Among them are those still maintaining that the Civil War was a war of aggression by the northern states against the socially/morally honorable south. It was a “Lost Cause.”
The 1861 secession effort was an effort to protect the south’s right to own Negro slaves.
Mississippi’s official announcement of secession after Abraham Lincoln’s presidential victory in 1860:
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery
.... Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money [the estimated total market value of slaves], or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.”
American historians know that what Mississippians said was the universal position in the South after Abraham Lincoln was elected and of many today.
Facts: Before 1924 restrictionist immigration law, Mexicans did not need visas to cross the border, or to move permanently to the U.S. or to work in, say, agriculture. The numbers involved were negligible. Not negligible were the hundreds, perhaps thousands of Mexicans slaughtered by the “vaunted” Texas Rangers who prided themselves on killing Mexicans. No Ranger was ever convicted of murdering Mexicans. The State of Texas has placed historical markers in locations of Texas Ranger murders of Mexicans. Rangers have never been punished.
The restrictionist 1924 Immigration Act limited immigration by race and ethnicity by assigned country quotas. Mexico did not have a quota. The determining base for quotas was based on the predominately white non- Catholic demographic that dominated the U.S. prior to 1890, the year used to assign quotas.
Needless to say, there weren’t many Ethiopians in the U.S. in 1890; ditto Polish, or Turks. Indians from India were not permitted to immigrate to the U.S. Why? Because they were “Asians” and Asians were prohibited.
Mexican men illegally flooded the border in the 1950s. The numbers increased in the ‘60s through the ‘90s. It is with great certainty that most that stayed would not have if they had had renewable legal work papers.
Congress, in its wisdom, has not created work papers needed by the 50% of all American farm workers who are here working illegally.
A new fact has entered the picture, added to the anti-immigrant philosophy that prompted the 1924 Immigration restriction that slammed the door on immigration and the end of the 1944 work permit program. Asylum law. The asylum law is clear: Anyone who enters the U.S. can apply for asylum even if they crossed the border illegally. Once they apply they are legal, until an immigration judge rules they are not. Again, they are legal until a judge rules they are not.
A bona fide honest American historian would know that asylum seekers are not classified illegal immigrants once they apply for asylum ....
So, why does noted historian Victor Davis Hanson “PhD” say the things he does about our southern border?
E.g.: “The border is not just porous as in the pre-Trump past. It is nonexistent. Some 2 million people may cross illegally in the current fiscal year – with complete impunity …. There is zero effort to stop them … (Biden’s White House and appointees) are mute about illegal entrants … Biden has demolished America’s southern border. His illegal nullification of U.S. immigration law is ‘real and dangerous.’”
Victor Davis Hanson, PhD: “One sure sign of historic national decline is the collective inability of a government and its people to defend their borders and national sovereignty.”
“Dr.” Hanson, please …. The overwhelming number of recent border crossers are non-Mexican individuals and families that immediately surrender to American agents and apply for asylum. The law considers these people legal, they are legal applicants for asylum – per law.
It seems that Victor Davis Hanson, PhD, is not aware of that. He should know. He is a certified historian; of course, so are those that propound and still believe in the South’s “Lost Cause” and those that declare the Texas Rangers heroes.