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A substantial portion of the current concern over illegal Mexican immigration seems to be just one more resurgence of the Leyenda Negra , an ancient northern European prejudice against Hispanics that can be traced back to English horror stories about the conquistadores and the Spanish Inquisition. Such prejudices have a rich history in the U.S., too... rooted in a misunderstanding of Mexican culture and in good old American xenophobia.

Few Americans seem to realize that our Southwest was once part of Mexico and was taken by us in a war of conquest, or that the Hispanic community was already in place when—in 1848—the U.S. annexed more than half of Mexico's territory through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo... which ended the U.S.-Mexican War. American history courses rarely point out that the rights of the Mexicans living in the newly annexed territory were systematically denied them, even though those rights had been guaranteed by the Treaty.

LAST-RESORT LABOR

As one famous student of the subject put it, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "left the toilers on one side of the border and the best land and the capital on the other." Ever since modern agriculture and mining began to be developed in the Southwest, our country has exploited these "toilers" as a labor pool of last resort. They've been welcomed when their help was needed and expelled as shiftless "greasers" and welfare bums when they were no longer wanted.

It's obvious that anti-Hispanic prejudice is involved when the Mexican immigration situation is contrasted with our attitudes toward immigrants from Canada. Historically, the influx of people from the north has placed a far greater population pressure on the United States than has the movement from Mexico... but we don't hear about a "Canuck" menace, and there's no call for fences along the Canadian border or for a beefed-up northern Border Patrol. (After all, less than a fifth of our border agents are stationed there!)

In our next column, we'll attempt to evaluate the current status and impact of Mexican illegals in the United States... take a look in our cracked and clouded crystal ball to see what the future may hold... and recommend some steps that might be taken toward a humane and rational solution to this "problem", as well as to a number of related problems of international migration.

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