Outrageous? You go out of your way to find stuff to get indignant over, don't you? 
That is a promotional gimmick. A marketing stunt. For the large Mexican-born audience of that station.
Los Angeles is still a part of the United States. I promise.
To be on the safe side though, let me settle your nerves... Little Italy, Greektown, Chinatown... they're still part of the city of Chicago and have not yet seceded
(On the other hand, Goose Island may or may not in fact be controlled by a super-intelligent race of giant mutant waterfowl, as all of the facts are not yet in).
Maybe your outrage is really directed at MEChA, LA Raza, and MALDEF - the groups the linked article suggests are behind the insidious attempt to dupe gullable Americans into thinking we unknowingly gave up LA at some point. If that is the case, then fair enough, give 'em hell. If you're actually mad that the new generations of immigrants to this country don't get the whole assimilation thing then you are in good company.
But if it's a silly billboard on a highway saying Los Angeles is now a part of Mexico that forms the core of your outrage, then man you have outrage to spare.
I am upset that "new generations of immigrants to this country don't get the whole assimilation thing." Why don't they? Part of the reason is that far too many Americans are blase regarding affronts to our soveriegnty, our society, our culture and/or our laws. I'm doing something about that by demanding American soveriegnty be respected by all. When I feel offended in this way, I believe I should express my feelings. How else will anybody know?
I don't begrudge you your frustration at what I, of course, assumed was the real target. 'Outrage' at a stupid billboard seemed a bit over the top.
The assimilation thing is a real wierd one. We have to all recall, however, that the "melting pot" always took a few generations to really absorb and transform various immigrant cultural waves into fully assimilated Americans. Whether that is the case now as well, or if the new waves really have stopped trying is difficult to discern at this point.
Assimilation is not a passive process. It requires the active effort to learn English. I am pro-immigration on the condition that it is lawful and the immigrants attempt to assimilate. There are those that are fighting this and the billboard is seen as a symbol of the Reconquest. As a symbol it is open to ridicule. But AVQ, you do recognize that there are people trying to stop assimilation? That this is part of their agenda to reconquest the Southwest, however silly that my seem.
So there are real world consequences to this battle. Young immigrants are not being taught English in school and this hurts them when they are older. It also makes it more likely they will feel alienated from America. What we want to avoid is a Balkanized country.
I do agree assimilation is being met with resistence on many fronts and I do think it is a problem. I also, however, recognize that this is not the first time assimilation has been fought and it is a multi-generational phenomenon.
If the point of immigration is making a better life for the next generations, then those next generations are going to be a vital part of the processm (as they always have been). These generations will become more Americanized if the quality of life afforded them is substantially better.
Sure, the 'Mexicanizing' of LA reinforces the status quo and is a disincentive to assimilation - the country's largest ethnic ghetto allowing the ethnic insularization that ghettos always have afforded. So maybe it takes longer this time.
I do know that not everybody in the southwest thinks the citizen border patrol idea is so hot (it's vigilante week), even ef people from afar think it is a sound approach. I have a friend in south Texas who (I kid you not) sells propaine and ropaine products. He knows the entire economy there is based on exploiting immigrant labor (as does GWB of course), and has accepted that he needs to be as open to change as the immigrant workers who work for ad with him. He at least is cautiously optimistic that assimilation is occurring, if at its own pace.
Commenting by HaloScan
