Who said college professors know history?

University of Utah Professor Armando Solarzano thinks that Utah is "his place" because it was once nominally Mexican territory.

Well, that's nice. But it's garbage, nonetheless.

Yes, Utah was part of the Spanish Empire, and then Mexico when they gained independence. But if you're looking for original inhabitants, the Shoshone and Utes were here long before Fathers Escalante and Dominguez passed through and claimed the whole area for Spain in 1776. If we're getting into claims of who "deserves" to be here, Mexicans are at the back of the line because they never permanently inhabited Utah in the first place.

You see, when the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847 (an event that causes the good professor "deep-seated pain"), there wasn't a permanent Mexican settlement within 400 miles of the Salt Lake Valley. To the Mexicans, Utah was an uninhabitable corner of a barren region, and they made no effort to settle here. Indeed, the Mormons considered the lack of settlements here to be a great advantage.

What's more, Mexico and Mexicans have no claim on Utah because we have paid them for it already. According to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded control of most of the western US, the US paid Mexico fifteen million dollars for the land. Adjusted for inflation, that's several billion dollars for land that was considered at the time to be worthless desert. Sorry, Professor, but it doesn't matter if the pioneers were "illegals" when they got here -- the US ended up buying the land from you anyway.

So Professor, please take your snide entitlement mentality and shove it. This is the United States of America, and just because there weren't any immigration laws then doesn't mean Mexicans -- or persons of any other nationality -- can ignore immigration laws now. There is a tremendous undercurrent of resentment towards illegal immigrants here in the US; in my opinion we're just another 9/11 away from closed borders and mass deportations.

Even though there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, there are also 280 million legal residents. Unlike the illegals, they have a right to vote. And if a large majority of those 280 million Americans perceive that several million Mexicans pose a threat to their safety and security, you'll see a 1,500 mile-long, 40-foot high concrete fence on the southern border quicker than you can say "Japanese internment".

Don't push it.