Parapundit quotes this article from Victor Davis Hanson

Chewey Escobar, now 38, whom I met when he was looking for work at 15, at last has noticed that all the people in the American Southwest who do the least sought-after work are, like himself, Mexicans — whether washing windows, making beds at the hotel, hauling trash, or picking lettuce. Why is this so? Chewey has a vague idea that the absence of education, degrees, contacts, perfect English, and years (if not centuries) of family roots in America can mean that you blow leaves while some pink person in slippers and bathrobe sips coffee and watches you from a glass-enclosed solarium by the pool.

Someone like Chewey cannot help but think something like: "I work, she does not. I sweat and lift and pick, and they sit and talk." Envy, it turns out, is a powerful new force in the life of the alien — especially when so often he is not mixing with America’s middling classes, but hired as a gardener, nanny, or unskilled laborer by our more affluent. That I tell him there are millions of poor whites who far outnumber impoverished Mexican-Americans makes no impression; it is the contrast — Mexican help, white helped — that he is obsessed with.

VDH's article is not light / lively reading (not that his other articles on the Middle East or Europe are).   In the series of articles that Parapundit quotes, VDH the writer, shines far more brightly than VDH the political analyst and he raptures us & forces us to internalize and understand the desparate plight of an illegal immigrant from the badlands of Mexico.  The immigrant's angst, disgust, fear, and insecurity drip off the pages.

"Right wing" commentators like VDH (and Parapundit) are emphatically NOT concerned by illegal immigration because of some latent racism but, unfortunately, that's the easiest / fastest retort that critics fling.   The caring and thoughtfulness in his writing shine through and are genuine in this single piece (VDH's other articles over the years establish a general body of work that waxes admiringly about the racial integration in the military, for example).

This is a topic that is FAR outside of my area of expertise though I can't help but wonder how the different political / cultural climate in Texas vs. California have created different environments for illegal immigrants.   The harshly segregated underclass in "Mexifornia" seems a far more near term concern than "Mexas".  

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UPDATE: A provocative followup post from Randall Parker / Parapundit about the situation in Mexico w.r.t. illegal immigration:

Imagine what the effects would be if the US adopted a very hard line toward immigration from Mexico. Suppose the US started building a wall to close off the border (total cost of only about $3.4 billion dollars) and started to round up and deport the millions of illegal aliens currently living in the US. The shock of the closing of the emigration escape valve on the Mexican political system would shatter the status quo thinking that maintains the current political deadlock over economic reform. The forces that stand against the modernization of Mexico might well feel so much pressure that they'd cave in and stop blocking obvious needed reforms.

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