California on January 1 officially became a sanctuary state, refusing to hand over those who violated U.S. immigration laws to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Economist and actor Ben Stein sees a rebellion and expects a civil war . . . in the courts. Meanwhile, the “Calexit” movement wants a sovereign nation or “an independent country.” But that’s not exactly what state leaders have in mind.
Last week, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Los Angeles Democrat, headed a delegation of fellow partisans on a four-day trip to Mexico. “There is no sensible place for barriers between California and Mexico,” Rendon proclaimed. “This trip will send a message that California resists isolation and is willing to step up and work with Mexico if the federal administration abdicates that responsibility.”
This revealing statement was not a departure from the vision of speaker Rendon, who earned a Ph.D. in political science at University of California, Riverside and conducted post-graduate work at Boston University. On November 9, 2016, one day after Donald Trump’s election, Rendon and State Senate Pro Tem, Kevin de Leon (who also happens to have authored the sanctuary state legislation) released a joint statement claiming “we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land.” After several hundred words of anti-Trump boilerplate, the pair said, “California was not a part of this nation when its history began, but we are clearly now the keeper of its future.”
Rendon doubtless knows that Maine, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Louisiana and more than two dozen other states were “not part of this nation when its history began.” Rendon’s focus on California reflects the belief, common among ruling class Golden State Democrats, that California is essentially part of Mexico.
That is why, as Rendon and De Leon said, “we are proud to be Californians,” and did not say they were proud to be Americans. That is why Rendon proclaims “there is no sensible place for barriers between California and Mexico.”
In this view, Mexicans who cross the border by any means whatever are only visiting the northern part of their own country, and not illegally trespassing on foreign sovereign soil. They are therefore entitled to education, medical care, drivers’ licenses, welfare, and in-state college tuition. As the case of Kate Steinle’s killer, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, confirmed, repeatedly deported Mexican career criminals are also entitled to protection from federal law enforcement.
A recent State Department investigation confirms that false-documented illegals also vote in federal, state and local elections, serving as the imported electorate of California’s ruling-class Democrats. So no mystery why California Secretary of State Alex Padilla refuses to reveal voter information and cooperate with a federal probe of voter fraud.
Rendon claims the federal government is abdicating its responsibilities, but the reverse is true. It was reactionary ruling-class Democrats who proclaimed California a sanctuary state that defies immigration law and made false-documented illegals a protected class.
As longtime Sacramento observer Dan Walters notes, incoming state legislators take “an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.” So do legal immigrants such as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the concussion expert who grew up in civil war-torn Nigeria. So did the thousands of Armenians who fled persecution and genocide at the hands of the Turks. So did Janet Nguyen, a refugee from Stalinist Vietnam.
These immigrants and countless others understand that California is part of the United States which, of course, is a huge part of its attraction. Rendon appears to believe he represents all Californians, who might wonder about his unilateral proclamation of Mexico as a replacement for the federal government of the United States.
Rendon was born in 1968, year of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. In the run-up to the games, students held demonstrations demanding more democracy in Mexico. On October 2, 1968, Mexican troops gunned down hundreds of students in Tlatelolco Square, and Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) regime has been covering it up ever since.
In 2014, students at a Mexican teacher college commandeered buses to attend demonstrations commemorating the Tlatelolco massacre. Mexican police attacked the students, killing six and dragging off more than 40 others. The PRI government claimed they had been taken by a drug gang and incinerated in a garbage dump. That’s what happens when rule by one political party replaces the rule of law. Critics of the government tend to disappear.
Anthony Rendon feels “like a stranger in a foreign land” since the election of Donald Trump but he’s right at home with Mexico’s corrupt PRI regime. Californians who aren’t, particularly legal immigrants, have no reason to take Rendon seriously on anything.