Free Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson Page B

in Mexico City.
    I often fly eastward via Phoenix with aliens from Fresno on their way to Guadalajara; the overhead compartments on the plane are stuffed with wrapped fishing rods, fax machines, and boxes of vitamins and medicine. But what follows from that? Is there an ophthalmologist in the town square back home to treat your glaucoma? Can you show up with a 103-degree temperature at the local clinic and be given an instantaneous shot for strep, with free sample bottles of new antibiotics accompanied by kind words of encouragement from a
Stanford
Medical
School
intern? And will your children come home with notices from the local school advising you about free study halls, college scholarships and mental health counseling - along with a printed lecture from an ambitious principal about his own proven commitment to "diversity" and the richness of a multicultural perspective"? Is there a chance that being "Hispanic" in America bodes better for your children than
    remaining an "Indian" in Mexico? The finest universities of Mexico do not scout out Indians from
Oaxaca
to redress historic imbalances in their enrollment; America's Ivy League does.
    No, the immigrant senses that - whether out of altruism, guilt or coercion - the crazy gringos in America treat him better than his beloved amigos in Mexico. So it is harder than one expects to cut this new umbilical cord he has grown in America. Tricky also it is to forsake the mall, the summer blockbuster movie fare, or the free and modern emergency room. Mexican television in America broadcasts not dry notices of immigration reform or Mexican consulate seminars, but splashy Jerry Springer-like talk shows, where Chicanas with dyed blond hair, breast implants and bare navels wiggle in the audience and chatter in hot tubs, unlike anything that used to be aired in the village plaza in Mexico. America, it turns out, gets into one's blood. A Mexican once told me, "I'm Siamese twins - my Mexican and American heads so glued together I can't turn in either direction."
    But just because the illegal alien visits Mexico without staying permanently does not necessarily mean he is happy in America. Within three years - five at most - a series of stark realizations about the United States begin to crystallize in the mind of the alien. Most of those under twenty-five that I encounter are perpetually smiling. They bounce, not shuffle, on the sidewalk. They laugh out loud. Not so their elders forty and above. I see the Great Awareness etched on their faces. These guys grimace and wave their hands in anger, exhibiting more frustration than can be attributed to the ambiguity of middle age. A Mexican male who may be fifty often looks sixty and walks as if he is seventy.
    He begins to see that he is the beleaguered root, while a myriad of others are the fleshy stalk, leaves and fruit of the immigrant experience. He goes to bed at 9 P.M. so as to rise at 4 A.M. - unlike the others who profit far more and off him. In his immediate circle there are the contractors who take him to work and bring him home. For that easy effort, they make not $10 an hour, but $100. (Californians deplore the dismal safety record of farm labor vans.
    Hundreds with crude wooden benches, no seat belts, bald tires and intoxicated drivers, overloaded with fifteen workers, overturn each month - prompting the California Highway Patrol to bring in new rules, inspections and education programs. We lament all that, but must remember that these mobile coffins are not "vans" so much as taxis, which can bring the unlicensed and unregulated owner-driver of a dilapidated $600 vehicle a profit of over $1,000 a week.)
    The agricultural leeches are only the alpha, not the omega that surrounds the unskilled laborer. Beyond them is a virtual army of parasites. The coyote who smuggled him in makes tens of thousands of dollars. The forger who gives him the false identification earns hundreds. The landlord who rents him - and two others -   the use of