One simple question:

Why do Mexicans want to come to the USA?

The answer's obvious -- isn't it? Or is it?

The US has more and more attractive jobs. The US has a higher standard of living. The US has opportunities. The US has a very attractive social welfare system.

Right. All that is clear. But, again: Why the difference? Why is there a difference between the US and Mexico in regard to these criteria? What is it which makes our countries so different that people would want to leave one to go to the other?

Does the USA have some kind of mineral deposits which make it wealthier than Mexico? Not especially: to the contrary, countries who derive most their income from some kind of natural resource -- for example oil or diamonds -- generally suffer from endemic corruption and poverty.

Is there some kind of natural feature which gives the USA an advantage? I don't see how: both countries have deserts and mountains, plains, rivers, and beaches.

Is there something different about the people, genetically? I don't think so. Both countries had natives and European settlers, and the US has been such a melting pot of different kinds of people, of all different races, from all different places. I don't tend to believe one group of people is "better", genetically, than another, so I don't see how this could possibly be a significant factor.

So what then? Why is there such a huge difference between the US and Mexico? Why are Mexicans sneaking into the US, and not vise-versa?

Culture.

Actually, I'd say culture and government, but government is, I believe, in the long term, a reflection of culture.

Culture is simply a term describing the generally shared values, outlook, and customs of a particular group of people. Although each individual can differ from the "cultural norm" on one or many points, overall, the "culture" is composed of those ideas and behaviors which tend to occur frequently.

The biggest difference between the US and Mexico is cultural. And I believe, if you look at the US today, and Mexico today, the result you see is the product of several hundred years of cultural influence. The same factor also explains differences between Europe and the Mideast, where many are moving from Islamic countries to those which were formerly shaped by European Christianity.

And there's the problem: If cultures do shape regions -- and I wholeheartedly believe they do -- then you have a real problem when people leave their region -- due to lack of economic opportunity, freedom, etc. -- for another, yet insist on taking their culture along with them. That culture is precisely which caused the problems they are fleeing.

I myself am the product of immigration -- legal immigration. When my grandfather came to the USA from Denmark (incidentally, he had a ticket for passage on the Titanic, no kidding -- but his papers weren't in order), he pledged not to be a burden to society, to adopt America as his new homeland, and, most importantly, he gave up his old culture for the new one. When my mom would ask him about Denmark, he would just say: "That was the old days. We are Americans now!" Citing the same reasons, he would never speak Danish in the home.

Now, perhaps that's a bit extreme: How could it have hurt for us all to have learned more about Denmark? But the point remains: Immigrants in the past generally agreed to become "Americans". Whatever remnants they privately preserved of their old culture, it was generally publicly agreed that they had moved into a culture, one which they acknowledged was superior (else why would they have left?) and whose values they agreed to adopt.

Not so with the new wave of immigration sweeping Europe and the US. While the Europeans hear restive demands that whole regions of their country be placed under sharia, we in the US are seeing masses of protestors waving the flag of another country! A Persian friend of mine reports that when he was in California -- and apparently being mistaken, by Mexicans, for another one -- he was constantly attacked for speaking English. "Don't speak that language! Be proud of your race! Racial pride!"

La raza.

Last I checked, that kind of idiocy would be considered facist if whites did it. I'm not a racist, so I consider it equally dangerous from other races. (Look, for example, what that same attitude did to the Japanese in the 1920s and 30s.)

We're fools if we defend this practice: We're committing cultural suicide. We have been so bamboozled into buying into this idea of "cultural relativism" that we're ashamed of pointing out that our own culture has attractive and helpful features when compared to others. So we are killing off good cultures and replacing them with unsuccesful ones, rather than reforming bad cultures with good cultural values. In short, we are making the whole world worse.

So I have no problem with immigration: legal immigration, where the immigrant is forced to admit the are moving into another culture, one which will now eclipse their own. Where the immigrant is forced to pledge allegiance to their new country. And if they can't agree with that, well, then perhaps we aren't doing them any favors by allowing them into a culture they will have such vast disagreements with. Let them go back to that country which is so superior.

There's nothing wrong with remembering one's roots. But when I display a Danish flag, on the rare occasion when I do so, it is but hat-tip to the past, not a demand that the surrounding culture yield to my former one. I am American with some Danish ancestry, not a supplanted Dane demanding America cater to Danish language, traditions, and customs.