Illegal alien invasion!

Rick Casey, in the Houston Chronicle, on a previous wave of illegals in Texas:

Stephen F. Austin, who brought many Anglo families to Texas, is not numbered among the illegals…

He traveled to Mexico City to negotiate a pact under which he pledged to bring Anglo settlers into Texas according to rules set out by Mexican authorities…

He negotiated a generous deal. A head of an immigrant family would get 4,438 acres for farming and another 177 acres for livestock. For every 200 immigrants he or other impresarios brought in they would receive 66,774 acres.

There were a few rules. They had to pledge loyalty to Mexico. If they weren’t already Roman Catholics, they had to convert.

Despite Austin’s best efforts, Henderson says, Anglos came pouring in and most “had no intention of abiding by their end of the bargain.”

Mexican law, for example, stipulated that any slaves would be free as soon as they entered Texas.

Anglo immigrants “elected to assume that this referred only to the buying and selling of slaves and did not apply to slaves brought by colonists for their own use,” …

Some illegals came to escape debts or domestic obligations. Some were simply adventurers.

Some were fugitives from justice, “sporting brands on their faces marking them as miscreants.” (Think gang tattoos, only not voluntary.)

Some of these, not surprisingly, continued their criminal careers in Texas. Colonists who caught them at it considered the Mexican prohibition of the death penalty to be inconvenient and carried out executions.

These immigrants not only entered illegally or violated the terms of their legal entry, but rather than keep their heads down and try to fit in, they lived in active defiance of the law.

So much so that the Mexican government in 1830 passed a law barring all new American immigrants from entering Texas.

Among the illegals violating that particular law were David Crockett, William B. Travis and Sam Houston.

(Sombrero tip to Dos Centavos)