Congressman Black does not want Tennessee to become California, Ground Zero for America’s post-1965 immigration disaster. Along with a gorgeous coastline, perfect weather, and swarms of celebrities, most California cities now feature the “vibrant contributions” of the multicultural immigrants from south of the border: emergency rooms packed with people using them as free clinics, high schools that have race riots most Fridays, MS-13 gangland atrocities, and even sporting events marred by the most vile and disgusting behavior. When the U.S. plays Mexico in soccer, the Mexican fans shout “Osama, Osama” (2005), throw containers of urine and vomit at U.S. players (2009), and boo the national anthem (2011 and 2017). And all of this happens within America’s borders.(Yes, Cicero explains that Representative Black [R-TN], a woman, prefers to be addressed as "Congressman." Hey, as long as she understands our immigration madness and votes accordingly, I don't care how eccentric she might otherwise be!)[Tennessee’s Rep. Diane Black Shows Immigration Patriotism Taking Hold In GOP]
Depending upon how long he's been disgruntled, Mr. Cicero may or may not recall a classic man-bites-dog article—"man-bites-dog" because it appeared in the Los Angeles Times, of all places—from July 28, 2006: 6 + 4 = 1 Tenuous Existence, by Sam Quinones. The article's sub-headline captures what it's about:
An illegal immigrant couple with six children were already living in poverty. Then the quadruplets arrived. They're still in a daze.The couple were living in some unspecified Los Angeles-area "immigrant enclave." Husband Alfredo Anzaldo was earning up to $400 per week as a carpet installer. The wife with the hyperactive uterus, Angela Magdaleno, had earlier worked in the garment industry but was now a full-time mother. Though they'd been in the U.S. for 28 years and 22 years, respectively, neither spoke English. Three of those first six children were triplets [!!!!—fertility drugs were involved], still in diapers when the quadruplets appeared on the scene.
Quinones described the bundle of joy this family provided to U.S. taxpayers:
[A]ll of Magdaleno's 10 children are U.S. citizens. The triplets receive subsidized school lunches. All the youngsters have had their healthcare bills covered by Medi-Cal, the state and federal healthcare program for the poor.Magdaleno, the oldest of ten siblings, was the first to come illegally to the U.S., and all nine others wound up doing that, too. Quinones again:Alfredo Jr. [one of the triplets—PN] had been hospitalized all his life until recently. He's had three state-funded brain operations and will require several more, the family said. The couple receive $700 in monthly Social Security payments to help with his medical needs.
"I thank this country that they gave me Medi-Cal," Magdaleno said. "There's nothing like that in Mexico."
Magdaleno's existence contrasts sharply with that of her younger siblings, who followed her to Los Angeles but then left. They have settled in Lexington, Ky., had no more than two children each and built better lives than they had known before. Four bought houses. Their children speak English fluently.(Some or all of those nine were gifted with legal status—via amnesty—thanks to the 1986 IRCA disaster.)
So you're wondering, "What does this have to do with Tennessee??" Well, Tennessee and Kentucky are in the same part of the country—they share a long border. And here's what Quinones reported, deadpan, about Alejandra Magdaleno, Angela's four-years-younger sister:
Alejandra was the first to leave. In Los Angeles, she and her husband were barely able to make ends meet. As in Mexico, "there was little work and it's poorly paid," she said.Emphasis added.Eight years ago, she and her family moved to Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs.
...
Today, the Magdalenos in Lexington earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico.
"What we weren't able to do in many years in California," Alejandra said, "we've done quickly here.
"We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico — everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken."
So there's a frank admission by a Mexican-born woman that California natives like Mr. Cicero have good reason to be disgruntled about what Mexicans have wrought in California.
And that's an article to print, with its passage about sister Alejandra highlighted, ready to be waved in their faces when you're trying to spur some patriotic action out of lackadaisical friends—in places like Kentucky. And Tennessee.