Posts By Carmen Samora
‘Illegal’ Should Be The New N-Word
By Jose Armas / Albuquerque freelance writer on Fri, Nov 4, 2011 Tweet
Following the GOP presidential wannabes has been, well … entertaining. In answer to our immigration dilemma, top contender Herman Cain would build an electric fence to electrocute folks. Michele Bachmann would build two walls!
Is it any wonder this slew of presidential hopefuls is also known as the “committee to re-elect the president?” Who could have more loony ideas? Well, Democrats are working just as hard on this issue.
No matter. After years of passing laws targeting undocumented immigrants, economic necessity may begin to force more rational answers.
Farmers in Alabama, Washington state, Georgia, Utah and Arizona are now whining that crops are rotting in the fields because immigrants are fleeing their states, or afraid to show up to work. Interestingly, some employers are offering twice the undocumented wages to “American” workers, but are finding few takers.
Hundreds of millions of agriculture, construction and service dollars are at stake. And we’re now destined to pay higher prices for scarce food and products because of our continuing wacky immigration course. We need a climate for common-sense solutions. While not a presidential candidate, I’d like to propose a start:
n Let’s stop demonizing and pursuing undocumented workers. They’re a national resource. And we have a symbiotic relationship with them. To his discredit, Obama’s administration has arrested record numbers of undocumented immigrants, thereby adding to the wasted billions on needless police actions, deporting needed labor, building hatred fences and behaving as ugly Americans.
n Stop referring to the undocumented as “illegals.” Otherwise decent people and the media have embraced this misleading “illegal” slur and are unwittingly are carrying the water for the racists in our midst.
The fact is, undocumented folks are merely guilty of a misdemeanor. Just like those who run red lights, don’t buckle their seat belts, talk on the phone while driving or jaywalk. Note that the Journal recently reported on the crackdown on jaywalkers: Cops will be issuing warnings to violators. We don’t label these millions of miscreants “illegals.”
“Illegals” is a derogatory slur, a hatred code word and should be stopped. Hate crimes against Latinos since 9/11 have doubled with the escalating anti-immigrant mood. Calling people “illegals” is disrespectful enough, but they’re also slandered by being called “terrorists,” “un-American,” “criminals.”
Politicos and the media play into the hands of these bigots who incite hate and violence and have poisoned the well of rational discourse. All parties, liberals and conservatives, are drinking from this toxic well.
It’s time to stand up to the persistent racism fouling our society. If decent people everywhere would say, “Enough!,” then we could begin to develop a rational, long-term immigration plan – none of which exists in today’s political picture.
But let’s close this shameful chapter in U.S. history. One that includes the owning of slaves, the slaughter of Native American people, the internment of Japanese Americans and now, the dehumanizing and battering of lowly immigrants whose only crime is to be brown and poor and vulnerable.
I’d like to see Herman Cain’s grandchildren respond to learning about black lynching and then, of their grandpa’s presidential campaign plan to electrocute/kill hungry human beings who came here to work backbreaking jobs and improve our society, all the while, forced to live in hiding and in fear.
Likewise, there’s a great, if sad irony in Gov. Susana Martinez, whose grandparents are now branded as “illegals,” a slur she herself casually throws around today. Would her grandparents be proud of the first Latina governor in U.S. history nonchalantly using this ugly slur and wasting taxpayer money to pursue folks, like themselves, for wanting to legally drive on our streets? I doubt it.
Let’s stop using the vile slur so we can create the climate for real immigration reform.
Senator’s call to check citizenship of Hispanic voters draws fire
Fueled by a surge in the Hispanic population, Florida will get two new congressional district. A state senator wants Hispanic voters to prove they are citizens first.
By Mary Ellen Klas And Michael C. Bender, Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
Miami Herald (October 20, 2011)
TALLAHASSEE — A state senator’s comments ignited a fierce rebuke from his colleagues Thursday when he said that voters should be screened for citizenship before legislators draw a congressional district to favor Hispanics.
Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, rekindled the divisive debate over illegal immigration when he told the Senate committee reviewing a series of congressional redistricting plans that “before we design a district anywhere in the state of Florida for Hispanic voters, we need to ascertain that they are citizens of the United States.
“We all know there are many Hispanic-speaking people in Florida that are not legal,” he said. “And I just don’t think it’s right that we try to draw a district that encompasses people that really have no business voting anyhow,” he said.
“He is calling on a witch hunt before a Hispanic district can be realistically considered,” said Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa.
Florida will receive two additional congressional seats because of its population growth in the last 10 years that, according the U.S. Census data, was largely fueled by the surge in the state’s Hispanic population. Hays made the comments in response to a proposal being considered by the Senate Reapportionment Committee that would create a Hispanic-majority district in Central Florida, where the Puerto Rican population has exploded.
Cruz pointed out that Puerto Ricans are American citizens at birth.
While no one on the committee responded to Hays’ comment on Tuesday, the remarks were published in an Orlando Sentinel blog, provoking outrage from the Hispanic caucus. Several members of the Republican-dominated group met late Wednesday and considered drafting a letter of complaint, said caucus chairman, Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Miami. Sen. Garcia said he asked Hays for an explanation and Cruz and Rep. Luis Garcia, D-Miami, demanded that Hays apologize or resign.
Rep. Garcia said Hays’ comments reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of state law. “Either he is ignorant or prejudiced, neither of which are qualifications for him to serve on this committee,” he said.
Said Rep. Jose Diaz, R-Miami: “I think that it is unfortunate that anyone would question whether or not Hispanic voters are American citizens,” he said. “It is basic Government 101 that in our country only U.S. Citizens can exercise the right to vote.”
After criticism surfaced Thursday, Hays left a Senate budget hearing early and declined numerous requests for comment.
He told Sen. Garcia that he had called the supervisor of elections office in his home district of Lake County, which confirmed to him that there is no requirement for citizenship to become registered to vote.
But Lake County Supervisor of Elections Emogene W. Stegall said that Hays is mistaken if he believes there is a problem with illegal residents registering to vote.
“We’ve never had a problem with illegal voting in Lake County, no way,” said Stegall, who has served in the county’s election’s office for 40 years.
She said that while the state stopped requiring proof of citizenship when it enacted the 1995 Motor Voter law that allows people to register to vote when they obtain a drivers license, requirements for obtaining a drivers license have increased. Drivers now must show three forms of identification to obtain a motor vehicle license and the license may serve as the sole form of ID to register to vote.
As head of the Hispanic Caucus, Sen. Garcia said he spoke to Hays who told him ” he was willing to talk to any member of the Hispanic caucus and explain what he actually meant.” Sen. Garcia said he “was comfortable with that.”
But Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said she found Hays’ comments “irrelevant” to the redistricting process. She said it would be difficult for the Legislature to draw districts while considering illegal immigrants. The Census survey does not ask people to report citizenship and Census officials believe that even legal immigrants traditionally underreport their numbers.
“If we knew who they were and we could adjust for them in our districts, we would know who they were and we could report them to [federal immigration police] INS,” Bogdanoff said.
Sen. Thad Altman, R-Vierra, however, defended Hays. “I don’t think he meant it in a way that was negative or demeaning or detrimental,” Altman said. “I think he was trying to state the fact that if we are drawing districts and using large populations that have no legal rights to vote or no ability to vote then we are not really doing our job in drawing districts that are fair.”
Staff writers Adam Smith and Marc Caputo contributed to this report
Guest Blogger Series: Salomón Baldenegro “Mexican American History: A Patriotic History”
In Tea Party Republican Arizona, teaching Mexican American history is illegal because that history is purportedly “un-American” and foments the “overthrow of the government.”
The shamelessness of people who rally under the Confederate flag—a flag of treason, whose adherents renounced their U.S. citizenship, declared war on our country, and actually tried to overthrow our government!—claiming our history is “un-American” is breathtaking.
Let’s look at a few instructive snippets from scholars regarding this “subversive,” “un-American” history:
Carole Christian documents how during WW I Mexican Americans enlisted in great numbers, urged on by Spanish-language newspapers that reported the “courage and sacrifice, sometimes of their lives,” of these soldiers.
Raúl Morín describes the immense contributions and bravery of Mexican Americans during World War II and inKorea. One chapter details how “Company E, the All-Chicano Company,” whose members won many medals for bravery, was instrumental in winning several major battles.
John Culhane writes of the courageous WW II-Korea exploits of 57 Mexican American young men who lived onSecond Street(“Hero Street”) inSilvis,Illinois, many of whom lost their lives and were awarded medals for bravery. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, this constituted “…the largest number of servicemen from the same ethnic group to come from any area of comparable size during these conflicts.”
Ricardo Santillán’s “Rosita the Riveter” describes the contributions of Mexican American women who operated the factories, manufacturing ammunition and other war materiel during WW II.
Christine Marín wrote about the Asociación de Madres y Esposas (Association of Mothers and Wives) who developed a network of “VictoryGardens” so that the country’s harvest could go to feed the troops, sold war bonds, collected and sold scrap metal, and picked cotton, donating the proceeds to the WW II war effort.
Ralph Guzmán memorialized how Mexican Americans from southwestern states were 19.4% of Vietnam War fatalities but comprised only 10% of the population in those states.
Proportionately, Mexican Americans surpass all other ethnic groups with respect to the number of Congressional Medals of Honor earned for valor in combat.
After WW II, these patriotic men and women encountered “No Mexicans Allowed” signs in public places. Robert Oppenheimer describes a typical incident of a Mexican American WW II veteran, in his medal-decorated uniform, who was refused service in a restaurant. “White” cemeteries refused to bury Mexican American veterans.
Compare the decency of these patriots to the racism they faced: In Silvis, the home of Hero Street, Mexican American WW II veterans were not allowed to join the whites-only VFW chapter, but when the “white” VFW building was later razed and the members had no place to meet, the Mexican American chapter welcomed the displaced members to their chapter.
It is a perversion and a libel of monumental proportions to categorize the history detailed above—and similar historical dynamics regarding the immense economic, labor, cultural, political, educational, social, civil-rights, etc., contributions of Mexican Americans to our country—as “illegal” and “un-American.” Especially by people who rally under the treasonous Confederate flag.