Maggie's Farm

There used to be an older Hispanic woman from Chile that I would regularly run into, working in a restaurant in the Miami airport as I returned from my overseas hitches. We became acquaintances, friends. She had immigrated legally, and worked hard to support her family, all of whom worked. She would take a break when I came to the restaurant and sit and gab. A very lively lady.

She maintained to me that Hispanics are dominantly conservative, by nature - traditional Catholics, many of them. They have seen the failures of both socialist/communist governments and autocracies/dictatorships, leftist and rightist both. On balance - they find the former more insidious, because it appeals to the poor for political power and harvests the spoils from the middle and upper classes. The rich get richer in both cases, but more people prosper when there is a strong sense of order.

She also told me that Hispanics take a while to figure out our political system once they arrive here. 'Democratic' political parties are often rightist in South America; 'Republican' political parties are often the leftist ones. Don't know if this is true or not. But she said she had been profoundly shocked when the penny finally dropped. She was Republican, here.

The people who come to the US are poor by our standards - but not necessarily by theirs. Like it or not, these are people with work ethic, determination, gumption - and funds to pay the coyotes. As with Venezuela, in populations that are in desperate circumstances, the ones who leave are the ones who can - the ones who have the means.

The same thing is happening, in a slightly different way, in California and New York right now. Wouldn't it be uproariously funny if the Democrats spent all this political capitol, corruptly importing new voters, only to find out they're naturally conservative?