More on migration vs. immigration and Umberto Eco

I think Eco's subtlety either escaped you or got lost in translation, Strother. I think you're trying to apply a negative connotation, which is strictly American, to the word, "ghetto." In Europe and in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ghettos were places where assimilation took place. The first generation of immigrants lived in the ghettos simply because the language and the vestiges of the culture they left were still the rule. In some cases, immigrants who were slower to assimilate, for whatever reason, stayed in the ghettos all their lives. In some cases, immigrants assimilated quickly and left the ghettos. In nearly all cases, some succeeding generation left the ghettos to live a culturally integrated life in their adopted country. No doubt life in the ghettos was somewhat more difficult than outside, but that was due mostly to the fact that the average immigrant arrived at his destination with little more than the clothes he was wearing.

American liberals co-opted the word, "ghetto" in the 1960s to refer to concentrations of minority populations living in sometimes squalid conditions. The intent was to cast some aspersion of apartheid on mainstream American society. As with so many other English words co-opted by the Left, the original meaning is lost.

A very close friend of mine - an American who grew up happily in Haywood County, NC - lives an enviable life in Mexico (and far from anything you could consider a "hellhole") and will most likely stay there. Rest assured, there will be many more like him in the future.

As does Fred Reed. But anecdote isn't evidence, Strother. There is no demographic evidence that suggests anything like a White American migration to Mexico. I don't know if you've spent a lot of time there, but I have. The places where American expats live are essentially resort areas, or as in Vox's example, suburbs of San Diego. If you leave those areas and head out into the densely populated urban centers or out into the wastelands of Chihuahua or Oaxaca, you will discover that hellhole is probably a beneficent term. It makes no sense to imply that 10 million Mexicans would leave such a paradise to come live on welfare.