Most of the Mexicans I know are wonderful people, too. Most of them would take in a stranger even if it put a burden on them.
However, I’m sure there are “bad apples” in every barrel, Mexicans included.
My point was that we can’t make “blanket statements” as Trump did.
Immigrants vary a great deal in their characters and in how they see this country and its people. When it comes to Mexican immigrants, it’s really mixed.
Admitting in advance that this is anecdotal, I have known a significant number of those who were formerly illegal and became legal, and those who were illegal and remain so. I know some who have been here longer than my own ancestors have been.
Among the recent arrivals, there are those who are as good as any on the face of the earth. Kindly, generous, open, wishing to be sociable despite the language barrier. There is a significant number, however that deliberately remains apart; a “country within a country”. Many teach or influence their children to remain apart and sometimes sullen toward native-born. Perhaps in a few generations that will all change, but among many, it hasn’t yet and seems pretty intractable.
Admitting these are generalizations, I have yet to meet a recently-arrived Mexican who has any use for black Americans whatever, and the antipathy is mutual and far stronger than the mild distances white and black Americans maintain between each other. Nor do Mexicans, generally, have any use for the “Indios” who come from Guatemala or even from those parts of Mexico where there are a lot of pure Indians, like Yucatan. I have seen a Hispanic nun vigorously bawl out a Hispanic Catholic congregation after Mass for this kind of thing.
On the other hand, when it comes to assimilation, Mexicans exceed most other Hispanics generally. They seem already to have absorbed parts of the culture here before they got here. But there is a price they pay, which is a degree of rejection by their own people. There isn’t much “in between” for them. One either joins the “white” culture or stays within the culture of “La Raza”. The whole race thing is, to me, a mess. “Indios” are not welcome within “La Raza”, and “pure Spanish” (yes, I have heard some of them refer to themselves as such) don’t really want to be considered part of “La Raza”.
One needs to keep in mind that the Hispanics I know are all from south of the border. There are no Cubans or Puerto Ricans here. Very few South Americans.
Finally, anybody who doesn’t think there are a lot of criminals among them really doesn’t know much about them. That seems to come with a rush of indiscriminate immigration from anywhere. There are no few Russian criminals who have come here to prey, first, on their own nationals, then on everyone else.
