[lbo-talk] (im)migration

[Michael Pugliese]

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/967796/posts
The Coming of Mexifornia - Victor Davis Hanson’s Second Thoughts on 
Immigration Hudson Institute ^ | August 21, 2003 | John Fonte
> ...Today, this "second thoughts" group would include, in varying degrees, 
> Californians such as Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and former leftists 
> David Horowitz and Peter Collier (Collier urged Hanson to write this 
> manuscript in the first place for Encounter Books, his publishing house); 
> City Journal writers such as Myron Magnet and Heather MacDonald; First 
> Things editor Fr. Richard John Neuhaus; American Enterprise editor Karl 
> Zinsmeister; Hudson Institute President Herb London; Nixon Center 
> President Dimitri Simes and center scholar Robert Leiken; academics 
> including Walter McDougall, James Kurth, Fred Lynch, and Samuel 
> Huntington; National Association of Scholars stalwarts such as Carol 
> Iannone, Glynn Custred, Thomas Wood, Gilbert T. Sewall, and Eugene 
> Genovese; journalist Michele Malkin (whose new book on immigration and 
> national security, Invasion, is a best seller); the National Review’s 
> Ramesh Ponnuru; Claremont Institute scholars Ken Masugi and Tom West; 
> neoconservative professor Fred Siegal; and, since 9/11, the prominent 
> scholar of Islam and presidential appointee, Daniel Pipes. Even the 
> venerable libertarian thinker Milton Friedman has noted that mass 
> immigration and the welfare state don’t mix.

   Only blurb I've seen on a book by Dubya is on the back cover of Myron 
Magnet's screed blaming underclass poverty on the 60's counter-culture. Ex- 
maoist Robert Leiken, has been writing a book on the Sandinistas and the 
American press, " Why Nicaragua Vanished: A Story of Reporters and 
Revolution (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming).

Pelosi aide offended by scholar's remark
By Jerry Kammer Copley News Service

August 26, 2003

WASHINGTON – When Victor Davis Hansen, a scholar of ancient Rome and Greece 
and a professor at California State University Fresno, described himself as 
"a classicist" at a Capitol Hill briefing last week, a staffer for House 
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took offense.

Frederico de Jesus, a native of Puerto Rico who handles Hispanic press for 
Pelosi, apparently thought Hansen had acknowledged a "classist" bias 
against immigrants, according to congressional staffers and Greg Krikorian, 
who sponsored the briefing as director of the Center for Immigration 
Studies.

Hansen and several others in attendance said de Jesus then attacked Hansen 
and his book "Mexifornia." The book argues that mass illegal immigration, 
coupled with the loss of traditional ways of assimilating newcomers into 
U.S. culture, has produced a social and civic debacle in California.

According to congressional staffers and Krikorian, de Jesus accused Hansen 
of "racism" and "xenophobia" and repeatedly interrupted him before stalking 
out of the room.

De Jesus did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for Rep. Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said, "A 
staffer thought a racially insensitive remark was made. He objected and 
left the briefing." Crider said de Jesus "spoke for himself," not for 
Pelosi.

"It was a tirade, and it was an embarrassing show of ignorance," said 
Krikorian, whose center favors tighter limits on immigration.

Hansen, a Hoover Institution scholar and military historian whose 
conservative views about the issues underlying Sept. 11 have caught the eye 
of Washington officials, said the behavior of Pelosi's aide shows how 
difficult it is to have a dispassionate discussion about immigration.