by Pedro Gonzalez
On a Sunday afternoon in May, Etta Nugent found Marco Cobos, a Mexican national, at her doorstep in Houston after his truck had broken down nearby. Cobos knocked and Nugent, described by friends as “gentle soul” and a “good Christian woman,” answered. When Cobos asked her to help him fix his truck, the septuagenarian politely declined, citing her age.
Feeling entitled to a different answer, Cobos forced his way into Nugent’s home and stabbed her in the chest. He proceeded to show himself to kitchen to look for “more knives,” he told prosecutors, while his victim lay grievously wounded. As Nugent attempted to flee, Cobos killed her in her home of 50 years, across the street from St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church where she had worshiped for most of her life.
With cash stolen from the house, Cobos drove Nugent’s car to an auto parts store to buy a new battery for his truck. He stopped for food before returning to Nugent’s home, where he ate and lounged for hours, helping himself to Nugent’s credit cards, even paying his phone bill with one of them.
Nugent’s horrific fate has become all too common in an America that has bought into the lie that is is “a nation of immigrants,” rather than simply a nation. Increasingly, however, immigrants show little appreciation, often outright hostility, for this nation and its people.
Consider the “Dreamers” of North Carolina, thousands of illegal aliens who were brought, illegally, into the country by their parents. The fact that they have not been deported despite their unlawful presence is, in itself, a benefit undeservingly conferred upon them. Their stay has not been cheap, either. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, North Carolina spent $4,630 per illegal alien in 2017, for a total cost to taxpayers of $2,437,965,113.
The Tar Heel State even allows illegal aliens access to Medicaid for “emergency care,” with which they can receive chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and even outpatient dialysis. These are costly medical procedures that U.S. citizens struggle to afford, yet the burden on their backs grows even heavier now as they unwillingly subsidize the entitled uninvited. Still, the “Dreamers” want more, demanding in-state tuition and protesting that they even have to ask for it.
It was against this backdrop that I considered the news this week of an illegal alien named Jose Antonio Vargas, who is set to have an elementary school in California named after him.
Vargas has dedicated his life to subverting our laws and the salience of citizenship as an advocate for illegal aliens. He has also directed and starred in a documentary, “White People,” about the concept of “white privilege,” to which, if it does indeed exist, Vargas owes his fame and fortune.
This is something I’ve always found amusing among militant minorities, like Vargas and the “Dreamers.” They have, though it would hurt their pride to admit it, benefited from a society organized around “white” people and “white privilege.” They have formed their personas in contrast to “white” people and “white privilege,” to the extent they are actually dependent on the existence of those things for their very own identities. Without “white” people and “white privilege,” they would be, ironically, worse off and more uninteresting than they already are.
Vargas and the “Dreamers,” then, are only different in degree, not in kind, from Cobos.
They force their way into our homeland, entitled and uninvited. They benefit from this, even as they strike at the heart of its people and their way of life. For this, they are “Dreamers,” have schools named after them, and are called “all-American.”
This is a fundamental problem in our culture that a wall will not fix. But the preservation and continued existence of our country demands that we face it, find the root, and sever it.
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Pedro Gonzalez is assistant editor of American Greatness and a Mount Vernon Fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
