Immigrants: If you can't beat 'em, get rid of 'em
SAN DIEGO -- The anti-immigrant crowd should just be honest and finally own up to the real reason they want to keep out foreigners.
It's fear of competition, silly. Same as it always was.
Oops, I shouldn't be talking. I've been put on notice. No sooner had President Trump sparked a national discussion about immigration than I was apparently ejected from the boardroom.
An irate reader recently wrote an email to a newspaper that runs this column with some not-so-friendly advice: "Navarrette needs to conflict himself out of writing articles about this subject."
When the subject is immigration, the alleged "conflict" stems from two things: the reality that, for the last few decades, most immigrants to the United States have come through Mexico; and the fact that I'm Mexican American.
Some folks add two and two together -- and get five.
Over the years, whenever sexual harassment is in the news, I have heard female colleagues complain that men consider them too "emotional" to comment on the issue objectively.
Today, the few Latino journalists out there are no doubt considered too emotional to write objectively about immigration.
We're told that conservative talk-radio hosts and Fox News personalities whose collective knowledge of the issue could barely fill a margarita glass with room left over for ice cubes have the conversation well in hand, and no one needs to hear from us.
But as a Mexican American, the "American" ingredient -- which was on display at the Boston Tea Party, and the marches for women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement -- makes me ornery and not so good at taking orders.
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