This month marks the 171st anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; the 1848 agreement that ended the Mexican-American War and secured for the U.S. most of the lands of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, as well as small parts of Colorado and Kansas. That it came just before President Trump refused in his State of the Union address to commit to an amnesty-for-wall deal was actually coincidental. Although the land granted under the Treaty was exchanged for money and debt-relief (and ratified by large majorities of both the Mexican and Democrat-led U.S. senates), today the transfer is routinely characterized as an act of theft. Because of this, so the argument goes, both a border wall along those lands and a denial of amnesty are respectively illegitimate and unjust. The stolen-land or “reconquest” argument for amnesty stands out among the others because, as Samuel Huntington once...(Read Full Post)