Can anybody translate Virgil Goode’s widely-quoted immigration comment?
Referring to a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks, Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia said, “I say if you are here illegally and want to fly the Mexican flag, go to Mexico and wave the American flag.”
Wha? Why would they do that? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Wouldn’t they want to wave the Mexican flag in Mexico? Or… Or what?
I’m confused. Help me out, Fifth District Republicans.
That’s exactly what I said when I first saw the quote. I went back the next day to look at it again figuring I was just too tire to comprehend from the night before and it still made no sense to me.
waldo! maybe he means, go back to Mexico, and, by waving the stars and stripes, petition the Lord from a distance.
It’s a mystery!
There is a problem. I see people with Irish flags. Big deal. Why single out Mexicans?
I have never seen a Mexican flag waved in the US. Maybe the person waving it, if I did see one, is a Mexican citizen with a green card.
Does that mean all the Canadians will have to go back to Can-a-dia?
I really hope the immigration debate brings itself up a notch or two on the maturity scale, but I doubt it.
Of course, the Richmond Times-Dispatch Washington correspondent Peter Hardin cleaned up Goode’s comment in two online RTD articles by changing the “American flag” to a “Mexican flag.” I posted the discrepancy on my blog yesterday afternoon, after checking a lot of online articles. Sources using the AP have American, while only the RTD is using Mexican to describe the flag. I even sent a comment about it to the RTD online comment section for the article and they wouldn’t publish it online. [I guess they don’t want the folks back home to think he’s as stupid as he sounded in that quote.] The print editions have the same distorted quote. So I sent the paper an email about it last night, posted a copy on my blog and then contacted Media Matters. Can’t have our main state paper changing comments without owning up to it, now can we? : )
As an exercise for fun here’s my interpretation of that quote:
It is a reflection of the hypocracy of the mexican government. Mexico is very tough on illegal immigrants, and they don’t appreciate a foreign governments attempting to influence their domestic affairs. Yet they expect the United States to allow them to interfere in our domestic affairs (with regard to immigration), and to have much softer standards toward illegal immigrants than they do.
Additionally the statement could be interpreted as meaning that illegal immigrants should first strive to change/reform their own government in Mexico, before coming here in violation of our laws, and attempting to change our government.
I heard this quote in the news this week summarizing Mexico’s position with regards to the United States and I think it’s pretty on target: “What’s theirs [mexico’s] is theirs. And what’s ours [the U.S.’s] is open for negotiation.”
It’s not terribly complicated.
Why would Mexicans be in America illegally? Presumably because they really like America. So why would people who really like America come here illegally and then wave the Mexican flag? Congressman Goode has a suggestion for them — if they like America so much, don’t break our laws… just go back home and wave our flag when you get there.
That actually makes a lot more sense than coming here illegally and waving the Mexican flag.
Why doesn’t Rep. Goods express such contempt for the scores of Cuban-Americans who wave the Cuban flag? Could it be because they are a reliable Republican voting bloc?
That is a tortured explanation, but it’s probably the most logical that can be teased from Goode’s statement.
I can only assume that meant to say that they should wave their Mexican flags in Mexico, as Lisa points out that the RT-D modified the quote to say.
I got a kick out of Lou Dobbs saying that those of us of Irish descent shouldn’t wave Irish flags on St. Patrick’s Day—I think he actually went so far as to speak in opposition to St. Patrick’s Day on the whole. A melting pot is one thing, but that sort of a vision of the U.S. is a little scary.
Id rather wave “goodbye” to Eric Cantor
I find it kind of reminiscent of those in the Vietnam War era who opined that those dirty protesters should go to Russia, because they don’t allow that sort of thing there!
I got a kick out of Lou Dobbs saying that those of us of Irish descent shouldn’t wave Irish flags on St. Patrick’s Day—I think he actually went so far as to speak in opposition to St. Patrick’s Day on the whole. A melting pot is one thing, but that sort of a vision of the U.S. is a little scary.
Yeah, Dobbs actually did say that he didn’t think there should be St. Patrick’s Day celebrations (he was talking to Jon Stewart, but if it was intended to be humorous, it was the best deadpan I’ve ever seen.) I had to give him points for intellectual consistency, but it was a little scary.
If it is, in fact, not a mis-quote, I can only assume he’s proposing some sort of insanely childish flag-based one-up-manship. Oh yeah? So you wanna wave some Mexican flags in America, huh? Well, How would you live it if a bunch of American flags got waved in Mexico? What then, tough guy? or something along those lines.
The absurdity of this is only compounded when we realize that by saying “American” flag, we actually mean the flag of the United States (of America). Last I checked, the country Mexico was still part the North American continent.
” I find it kind of reminiscent of those in the Vietnam War era who opined that those dirty protesters should go to Russia, because they don’t allow that sort of thing there!”
Wow, how many contradictory leaps in logic does it take to say THAT? I count at least three (3) … how many can you find, kids?
It looks like the AP posted a correction to the story that has Goode saying, “I say if you are here illegally and you want to fly the Mexican flag, go to Mexico to fly the Mexican flag.”
Speaking as someone who has lived near the border in rural San Diego County and southern Arizona, who grew up about a mile as the crow flies from the largest housing project in the barrio of East Los Angeles and had friends living there, who has met parties of illegal aliens–men, women, and children–hiking through the back country, who has known lots of people whose lives have been directly affected for better or for worse by illegal immigration, I get really tired of Goode’s uninformed grandstanding on this issue. What has made living along the border hell on both sides in the last decade is basically (1) shift in US enforcement that pushes people into the remoter regions to cross, killing illegal entrants and making life miserable for the ranchers and Indian people whose land gets impacted, and (2) the American appetite for drugs and its “War on Drugs” strategy that have both led to exponential growth of violent drug trafficking across the border.
I have every sympathy for Mexicans and Central Americans who enter the U.S. looking for work because there is none to be found at home. I have general sympathy for American employers who hire them out of necessity and pay them fairly. I have no sympathy for the vicious bastards who destroy land and traditional ways of life on both sides of the border in carrying on the drug trade, and no sympathy for Americans (and too many of them are liberal Democrats) who think it’s terrible to buy an SUV because of its impact on the environment but think it’s no big deal to buy a few ounces of marijuana or grams of cocaine without considering the impact on land and people that it has.
One comment: The one thing I thought to myself in seeing all the pictures from the immigration demonstrations, and I loved seeing people galvanize their communities and raise their voices in protest, is that I would have LIKED to have seen those folks waving American flags in addition to the flags of their native lands. I did see a few small ones, but it didn’t seem to be a big concern in the demonstrations.
It’s not really substantive, but it would go a long way to convincing Joe-Average that those immigrants love and believe in the American dream, just like they do.
And they do love America. My partner is from Colombia, and I have never known anyone who loves the freedoms and opportunities that America offers more. In fact, he criticizes me because he thinks I don’t take advantage of as many opportunities as I should. He works harder than anyone I’ve ever known.