Mi Casa es Su Casa
Contributed by Russ Vaughn
In Latin America and the southwestern U.S., a frequent greeting of welcoming hosts is mi casa es su casa, meaning "my house is yours," conveying the sense of total hospitality. Considering the outsized impact illegal immigrants from south of the border appear to be playing in the current housing foreclosure crisis, that saying has never been more appropriate than now. Our house is theirs and our guests are stealing our silverware.
Ignored by the major media is the simple fact that the understandable yet unrealistic aspirations to the American Dream by all those gardeners, cooks and chicken processing plant workers, who have entered our country illegally, have played a significant role in the financial crisis that has been shaking the underpinnings of America’s economy for the past two years.
Michelle Malkin points us to a WAPO sob story where we learn that a mere 20% of the 375,000 high interest mortgages issued to Hispanics in 2005 are likely to go into foreclosure. One doesn’t wonder why, when reading further into the article we discover that one example WAPO chooses to use to exemplify this problem is an illiterate carpenter who somehow managed to buy a little $740,000 hacienda and a tile layer, Francisco, who on annual earnings of $60,000 decides he needs a spacious, red brick casa grande on Lord Culpeper Drive that only sets him back a mere $540,000.
Through this link Michelle leads us too another tale of illegal immigrant woe wherein a pair of Hondurans with combined monthly income of $4200 and poor credit saddle themselves with the foolish purchase of a run-down, one-story $430,000 duplex with a monthly mortgage payment of more than $3,000, roughly 70% of their income stream. Guess who’s going to be picking up the tab on these foreclosures and tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands just like them when these folks who shouldn’t even be here walk away from their federally guaranteed financial commitments? That’s right, Bubba, you and me.
Michelle points out another unsurprising detail in how the liberal media, when it does deign to address this very real problem, uses the term immigrant frequently to describe the subjects of their articles but never preceded by the telling descriptive, illegal. One would never know from reading the WAPO article that these folks have been engaged in illegal activities from the time they entered the country until they fraudulently applied for federally subsidized and guaranteed loans, frequently with fake documentation. No, they’re just the latest, struggling wave of poor, huddled masses seeking a better life in the Great Melting Pot, er, forgive my cultural insensitivity, Salad Bowl.
Most Americans are very aware of the heavy burdens illegal immigration has placed on our educational and healthcare systems, but I’d wager there are very few who realize that the housing foreclosure crisis that has brought our economy to a crawl is also attributable to a large extent by those who enter our country illegally and then suck the lifeblood from our domestic and financial support systems with impunity. The liberal media are quick to point the finger of blame at the manipulative financial sector and document the abuses of those who take advantage of these poor, financially unsophisticated illegals. And without question, there are plenty of scoundrels in those ranks, with tellingly, many of the predators being of the very same ethnic backgrounds as their victims. Latino coyotes bring them in and Latino wolves strip the meat from their bones, all at our expense.
But the liberal media, as usual, miss the larger point: if these victims weren’t here illegally they would have all the normal protections from such predatory lending practices the rest of us have. Being illegals, they have no legal recourse when victimized and that leaves you and me, Bubba, holding the bag for this flock of sheep who are getting sheared. And that’s a multi-billion dollar bag that’s going to raise our taxes, effect our property values, and in the case of retirees like me living off our investments, reduce our standard of living.
All this because, in defiance of the historical evidence of the wisdom of not doing so, the world’s greatest sovereign nation has been convinced by feel-good, liberal, leftist elements within that she shouldn’t enforce her borders. Truly, in the worst sense of mi casa es su casa, we’re literally giving our home away. And those to whom we have incautiously opened our doors are burgling the premises right under our noses.
|
