Man, I know this is going

to sound like a commercial for the DMN

Blog, but the discussion of this

issue over there has really intensified. Click on the link and scroll

down a bit to follow it. A number of NRO readers from around the country are

writing in with their experiences, and as someone hoping to buy his first

home in the next year or so, they’re scaring me. Neighborhoods can change so

fast, and in the absence of the will or the means to enforce zoning codes

prohibiting multiple families or non-family members from living in a

single-family dwelling, things can go wrong very quickly. Readers are

making it clear that to them, this is a question of behavior, not

ethnicity. Unfortunately, the ethnic factor makes an honest discussion of

these problems difficult. Besides which, as I’ve said on the DMN Blog, the

media love to feel sorry for particular groups who are trying to defend

their community’s way of life against the encroachments of “progress” — be

it economic or moral (and I use the term “progress” advisedly) — except for

those groups we don’t like, in which case we demonize them as

fundamentalists or racists. It also seems to me that the communities bearing

the brunt of the bad-neighbor immigrant wave are not the communities that

make use of cheap migrant labor, and benefit from it.