Pat Buchanan’s Anti-Hispanic BS Echoes Earlier Anti-Immigrant Hysteria

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/23/buchanan-nativism/

Immigrants will not be able to assimilate:

Where the Italians wanted to be part of our family, millions of Mexicans are determined to retain their language and loyalty to Mexico. They prefer to remain outsiders. They do not wish to assimilate and the nation no longer demands that they do so. {Buchanan, p. 28, 2006}

VERSUS

Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Languages or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. {Benjamin Franklin, 1751}

Immigrants are responsible for crime:

Many Hispanics, as a matter of fact, you know what culture they are assimilating to? — the rap culture, the crime culture, anti-cops, all the rest of it. {Buchanan, 8/22/06}

VERSUS

“The Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses. … Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country.” {Chicago Post, 1868}

we wouldn't be troubled by this Buchanan fellow.

But I guarantee you'll have "but it's different!" posters soon. Probably arguing that the Irish and the Germans came here "legally" (but failing to note the difference between 18th and 19th century "legal" and 20th century "legal".

Navajo (or any other appropriate Native American language ...)

Pre Louisiana Purchase there were probably few in the U.S proper but we've always been here. If nobody noticed, we've probably done an adequate job of "assimilating".

He's evoking a past that never existed.

lol