ing that for two centuries has helped other immigrants to the
United States—language immersion, autonomy from government
assistance, rapid assumption of an American identity, and eager
acceptance of mainstream American culture—has either been dis-
counted as passé or embraced only halfheartedly.

The backward-looking new ideology about Mexican

immigration is obsessed with the racial prejudice and economic
exploitation of the past—a wound repeatedly scrutinized by com-
fortable elites, but clearly not much of a hindrance to the millions
of impoverished Mexicans and Indians who still risk their lives
daily to reach the promised land of America, apparently glad to
escape the wretchedness of their native land.

When ethnic chauvinism is preached by our elites (who often

do not really practice it themselves), it creates situations with real
consequences. Brothers with Mexican surnames get scholarships,
while their half-siblings with equivalent records but non-Latino
names do not. Friends of four decades suddenly drift apart
because one is made to feel that his commitment to assimilation is
somehow retrograde or proof of false consciousness. Our sense of
history, both national and familial, is stolen from us—a longsuf-
fering grandmother born in 1890 who worked hard is no longer
remembered as a unique individual, but is categorized along with
millions of anonymous others as simply an agent of past oppres-
sion.

Most Californians of all backgrounds understand these

growing social and cultural costs that ultimately originate from
their dependence on seemingly limitless cheap labor—the Devil’s
bargain we have made to avoid cutting our own lawns, watching
our own kids, picking our peaches, laying our tile and cleaning our
toilets. But despite the benefits that flow from the bargain, they
are still ill at ease for having made it, although, because of fears
that they will be disparaged as illiberal, they seldom voice openly
what they feel. This situation led to successful ballot initiatives
that cut off aid to illegals, ended affirmative action and curtailed

MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson

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