President Bush's rationalization for winking at massive illegal immigration into this country is still haunting me – a year later.

His contention that these illegal aliens are "doing jobs Americans won't do" was wrong then and still wrong today.

In fact, illegals are taking lots of jobs Americans would love to do.

We get more truth from the Mexican government and media on this score than we get from our own elected officials.

El Universal, the Mexican daily, was especially candid in a feature earlier this year.

"The Mexicans in the United States are no longer invisible," explained a page one feature called "Mexican Power." "Their number has grown to 25 million, with or without papers. They represent a purchasing power of more than $378 billion (of which 5 percent was sent to Mexico last year). The majority no longer work in the fields, as before, but in the principal cities. They are professionals, politicians, businessmen or influential communicators, students, laborers or those who work in the service sector."

This is exactly right.

Long gone are the days of the bracero programs in which Mexican farm hands helped harvest crops and went home. These people are not going home any more. They are taking permanent jobs – jobs that many Americans would gladly take.

Let me give you one anecdotal example. This week, a new Wal-Mart store opened in Kearny, N.J. The store advertised 350 job openings associated with the new store. It received 8,000 applications for jobs – most of which pay no more than $10.50 an hour.

These are jobs both Americans and illegals want. Many Americans were willing to commute from the Bronx for those jobs. And you can bet that among those competing for those jobs are hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal aliens.

This is one example of thousands across the country. But you get the point. Maybe in George W. Bush's world, people can't imagine working for minimum wage. But many Americans would be glad to get those jobs – not just at Wal-Mart, but in construction and other fields.

Think about it. Some of the most "Mexicanized" areas of the country are nowhere near agricultural areas. I lived for many years in Los Angeles, in the second most Hispanic congressional district in the U.S. There were no fields in sight! You couldn't even commute to a farm.

By the way, I didn't invent that term "Mexicanized." It was the term used by El Universal in discussing the regions of the U.S. already taken over by Mexico's excess population.

According to El Universal, "The Mexicanized states are California, Texas, Illinois, Arizona and Colorado." Yet, across the U.S. – in so-called red states and blue states – everyone is feeling the effects of this Mexicanization. Everyone, apparently, except the political and cultural elite, who may not notice the degrading conditions of their communities, the graffiti, the litter, the men standing around waiting for day-labor jobs, the crime, the crowded hospitals, the language problems, the higher taxes, etc.

"Mexicanized" is the Mexican term for what is happening in the U.S. We're being colonized. We're being invaded. We're being irreparably changed as a nation – without so much as a debate or a vote.

This is about a power grab by Mexico. This is about cheap labor, merger, globalism and greed for the U.S. elite.

Bush is out on the hustings promoting his "comprehensive immigration reform plan." It doesn't address the real problem – the immediate and continuing insecurity of our border that continues to allow untold numbers of illegals into our country, exacerbating a problem that is already a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

He has never retracted that insulting statement about cheap labor. He has never apologized for it. He continues to flout the laws of the land. He continues the charade. He continues to try to persuade the gullible that he really cares about what ordinary Americans care about.

I don't believe it. Do you?

---

Related special offer:

"ALIEN NATION: Secrets of the Invasion – Why America's government invites rampant illegal immigration"