The following letter was sent to us in February. It’s from Margot Pepper, one of Xispas’ good friends and an long-time activist for social justice and immigrant rights. We apologize for taking so long to put this on our blog. Still, we feel it’s very pertinent and important even now. So here it is. Thank you, Margot.

February 14, 2007
To: The Honorable Immigration Judge,

I’m a 2nd grade Two-Way Spanish Immersion (TWI) teacher at Rosa Parks school in Berkeley. Today is Valentine’s Day. It was my last day with one of my top students, Gerardo Espinoza. His father received an order of deportation and is moving the family to Mexico to comply with the law. Gerardo is a stunning seven-year old, with unusually wide, round brown eyes, a cute little nose, full lips and round pale baby cheeks—the kind of child that Japanese anime depict. He’s wedded to a knit cap. The behavior of Gerardo and his brother Felipe, whom I taught nearly a decade ago, has been an example to everyone, including myself. They are both reasons why I love my job. Whenever I had difficult students, I’d seat them in a group with Gerardo or Felipe for a month and their behavior would improve tremendously. I attribute the brothers’ outstanding comportment in large part to their close-knit family, especially the loving care of their mother, Norma, who spends every lunch time with Gerardo.

Honorable Sir, I do not understand why Gerardo and José are being denied their rights as U.S. citizens to an education and parents, both; why, under the law, they are forced to choose. My colleagues and I envisioned their winning scholarships at U.C. Berkeley, eventually lifting them up to the middle class. Like their children, their parents are also model—I’d like to say citizens—but they’ve been denied this. Your honor is probably aware that their former attorney, Walter Pineda, was exposed on the news for defrauding immigrants and aiding in their deportation. He was disbarred on November 1, 2006, State Bar No. 97293.

Felipe Espinoza Senior has lived in the United States for 20 years. His wife Norma, has lived here for 14. Felipe Sr. has worked five to six days a week in jobs from Skates by the Bay to a steel mill in Oakland. Today, when he dropped by for Gerardo’s farewell Valentine party, in which the other students read him their going away valentines, I commented that I hadn’t seen him since Felipe Jr.’s conference a decade ago. Felipe Senior still looked about the same: like a well-groomed, dignified banker or professional. “I’ve been working,” he said, which I knew was an understatement. He is the sole provider for a family of five, six if we include his former exorbitant lawyer, Pineda.

Felipe Senior has always done everything by the book. He has always paid his taxes, car registration and insurance. He followed the letter of the law to apply for citizenship. And this, your honor is what I don’t understand. According to the SF Weekly (The Asylum Trap by Eliza Strickland, May 10, 2006,) immigrants are more likely to slip through the eye of a needle than they are to receive asylum or residency. Only 34 asylum applications were granted to Mexican immigrants nationwide. San Francisco Attorney Enrique Ramirez observes that immigrants can also apply for residency through work visas or petitions by family members who are residents. Mr. Espinoza was misled by Pineda, apparently like countless others, into falling for the “the ten-year pardon,” or cancellation of removal, though as you know less than 4,000 of these cases have been granted each year. Now I ask you, what is the goal of a system which punishes the vast majority of those who follow the letter of the law and which rewards those who manage to keep their identities off the books?

The Espinozas met two of the three requirements needed for Mr. Espinoza’s cancellation of removal to Mexico: 1.) 10 years of continuous presence in the U.S. and 2.) proof of “good moral character” including a clean police record. But Pineda didn’t bother to convince the judge that Felipe Espinoza ‘s deportation would cause 3.) “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a spouse, parent, or child who is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident—namely Gerardo and his other son José.
Immigrations lawyers have since informed me that Mr Espinoza likely lost his appeal because Immigration judges believe Gerardo’s rights as a citizen are not being violated since he is free to stay in the country himself–in foster care. (His mother has never worked and his father would be unable to support them from Mexico.) The lawyers tell me that no immigration judge would recognize tearing a child away from his parents and placing him or her in foster care as an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.” Dear Honorable Sir, have you and your colleagues really become so hardened? Is the reason that you believe such a trauma is not “unusual” because you have caused such horrendous circumstances to become the norm among this population, rather than the exception?

If so, dear Honorable Immigration Judge, my question to you is, how can I go on teaching about equal rights and freedom of speech and all the things our constitution is supposed to defend, and that the very name of our school is supposed to represent, when the father of my students is deported simply because his skin is darker? Both my Latino and white students are U.S. citizens. So how do I explain to the class that one has the right to a family in the United States and the other citizens do not? Do you think they’ll understand why Felipe and Gerardo’s parents cannot gain citizenship in a country in which they’ve lived for 20 years and in which their children were born, yet it is all right for U.S. citizens to buy up all the beach front property in the Espinoza’s motherland? Do you think such an incident is going to convince my students and their families that the United States is the compassionate model of democracy for the rest of the world?

Dear Honorable Judge, I ask you, what are you and your colleagues doing to shatter or foment these dreams and ideals?

The last time I saw Gerardo, I asked him to let me make a video so I could remember him. He stands below the letters that read Rosa Parks School and recites by heart our Rosa Parks school pledge, which he and I still believe:

“To this day, I believe, we are here on this planet earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for ALL people to enjoy freedom.”

I’d like to conclude with a poem Gerardo wrote for his parents for their Christmas present. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Margot Pepper

WITHOUT YOU
Oh Mamá and Papá,
Without you,
I’d never be able to
cook or eat your enchiladas again;
we wouldn’t play “trains” together anymore,
or go to the park
without you.

Without you,
I wouldn’t be able to have any fun;
I wouldn’t be able to feel even the breeze anymore,
or love;
I wouldn’t have anyone to play with
Without you.

Without you, I’d be as lonely as a baby abandoned
and left to cry alone in a house,
As sad as a little bird
that can no longer sing.

by Gerardo Espinoza,Age 7,
©December 2006
Written in a Christmas/holiday card to his parents

###

Margot Pepper is a journalist and author whose work has been published internationally by the Utne Reader, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, City Lights, Monthly Review, Hampton Brown and others. Her memoir, Through the Wall: A Year in Havana, was a top nomination for the 2006 American Book Award.

Famed author and social critic Mike Davis, wrote in his book, Planet of Slums, that Photojournalist David Bacon is “a nonfiction Steinbeck, the foremost documentarist of the great human drama of the borderlands.” Bacon is concerned with the “issues of our times,” and over the years he’s been busy shooting photos of migrant workers, antiwar protestors, unionists, cultural activists, and many others. Of particular note have been Bacon’s photographs of immigrant farmworkers who labor in California’s agricultural fields, and Xispas has published some of these photos in the past. So it’s exciting to hear that he has a book of these images coming out, Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration. People in the San Francisco Bay area can meet David Bacon when he presents a slide show on his works during a panel discussion on the issues of migration and work contained in his book. Other panelists will include Professor Emeritus Carlos Muñoz Jr. (UCB Department of Ethnic Studies,) and workers whose stories are presented in the book.

The book presentation and signing by photojournalist David Bacon takes place on Friday, January 19, 2007, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way Berkeley, CA. For more information, call 510-643-7077. If you are unable to attend the event, you can make an online order of the book, Communities Without Borders, or visit Bacon’s extensive website.

The Avenue 50 Studio and the Arroyo Arts Collective in Los Angeles, invite the community to join us in a Candlelight Posada for Immigrant Rights, Sunday, December 17, 2006. In the spirit of the season, and in celebration of the United Nations International Day of the Migrant, walk with us through one of Los Angeles’ oldest, most diverse neighborhoods, singing together to the accompaniment of live musicians, and stopping at three art galleries along the route, where specific immigrant concerns will be highlighted with brief readings. Our walk will begin and end with music and refreshments at the Acorn Gallery, 135 N. Avenue 50, in Highland Park. Gather at 4pm in the yard behind the Gallery to learn the Posada song. The walk will begin at approximately 4:30pm, and will proceed, even in the event of rain.

The Posada is a traditional Mexican pre-Christmas procession inspired by the story of Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethlehem. It has been adapted for this event to draw attention to the fact that the doors to basic human rights such as housing, education and medical care, as well as our historic right to habeas corpus, are being closed to migrants. We are a nation of immigrants. Join us on our symbolic search for shelter that offers hope, justice and human dignity for all. When: Sunday, December 17, 2006 starting at 4:30 pm. Where: 131-135 No. Avenue 50, Highland Park, CA 90042. Contact: 323/258-1435.

The following photographs of the Minutemen demonstrating against “illegal immigrants” really need no further commentary.

COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
BY ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ & PATRISIA GONZALES
JUNE 19, 2006

Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the body count continues to pile up daily. Meanwhile, the Minutemen patrol the U.S.-Mexico border and shameless politicians find it easy to denounce illegal immigration as the cause of all the nation’s problems – including linking it with “the war on terror.”

Amidst all the clatter, the only views not being heard are the ones that matter most. Thus here, we bring you a truly historic column, featuring the views of the nation’s only non-immigrants: American Indians:

“The immigration issues are many and are so very complex; however, we cannot have a productive dialogue about anything when we begin the conversation, thinking it is “us against them” or when the ‘truth’ is only half true or we only use rhetoric to back our claims. We can’t resolve any of these complex issues if we label our neighbor as an “immigrant” and not as a relative, friend or human”
–Nadine Tafoya, friend and colleague, Mescalero Apache, Salt River Pima, Maricopa

“I feel that as Native Peoples of the Americas, we have the right to be anywhere on this continent as we have for generations. To hear people telling my relatives that they are ‘illegal aliens’ and criminals and to get out of our own land is very disturbing!”
–Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, PhD, President/Director, The Takini Network

“Indigenous peoples haven’t known any borders. Colonial borders are new. It’s ironic that essentially white men of privilege who created the category of white - that it is they who determine who gets permitted into our lands.”
–Winona LaDuke, founding director, White Earth Land Recovery Project

“From the point of view of the laws of the indigenous nations of North America, the Europeans are the original illegal immigrants in the area of North America. The United States has for more than 200 years methodically and militarily violated indigenous law, and even solemn treaties, in order to take over and occupy the vast majority of the lands of Indigenous nations and peoples. It is hypocritical in the extreme for the people of the United States to now pretend that it is paragon of virtue, and a country that has always conducted itself on the basis of the rule of law.”
–Indian Law Scholar, Steven Newcomb

“The movement to try to force the Mexican people to learn the English language and the culture and traditions of America to stay in this country may not be totally successful. I can tell you from firsthand experience that when the federal government tried to strip me of my language and traditions, it did only a partial job, because of my resistance to being subdued. Today I am glad I have retained my culture, traditions and the Keres language, for that is where my heart and soul belong.”
–Katheirne Augustine, Laguna Pueblo, retired nurse, excerpts from Albq Tribune

“Too bad WE didn’t think of insisting that European arrivals speak OUR language. We’d all be speaking Ojibwemowin right now.”
–Patty Loew, Assoc. Prof., UW-Madison

“In an important and emphatic way, the indigenous peoples of the Americas are reclaiming their continent, whether with the ballot, by boat, by air, or on foot. Let us call it repatriation on the march.”
–Shirley Hill Witt, Coauthor, El Indio Jesus

“The white supremacists masquerading as patriots are building a fence at the southern border to keep out the brown people. Notice that they aren’t building a fence at the northern border. Recall too that the 9-11 terrorists were here legally, complete with freakin’ flyer numbers. I’m for all the Native people to have cross-border privileges up and down our hemisphere, and would close the borders against all the peoples from other places who look down on us.”
–Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee, Dir., Morning Star Institute

“The argument used by the Minute Men, that their mission is to keep terrorists out of the U.S., cannot be ignored: With terrorist training camps recently found just north of the U.S.-Canadian border, their mission makes little sense and gives weight to my belief that the Minuteman movement is clearly racist. So is the new U.S. policy to keep our southern relatives out by militarizing the border to the south. Not that troops are wanted on the northern border either, but why send 6,000 troops to the southern border when no terrorists ever have been detained there?”
–JoKay Dowell, Quapaw-Peoria-Cherokee, OK, Eagle and Condor Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance

“Indigenous peoples are brothers and sisters, regardless of which side of the line drawn in the desert sand they are from. Our historic relations pre-date any European conquest. Our ‘free trade’ was much less conflictual, and was on more of an equal basis. Corporate ‘free trade’ is the driving force behind American politics and international actions…. It continues to be, contradictory to the interests of humanity.”
–woliwon chi miigwech, Karen S., Ypsilanti

“Are ‘immigrants’ the appropriate designation for the indigenous peoples of North America, for enslaved Africans and for the original European settlers? No. Are ‘immigrants’ the appropriate designation for Mexicans who migrate for work to the United States? No. They are migrant workers crossing a border created by US military force. Many crossing that border now are also from Central America, from the small countries that were ravaged by US military intervention in the 1980s
and who also have the right to make demands on the United States. So, let’s stop saying ‘this is a nation of immigrants.’”
–Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, mixed-Cherokee activist, professor, writer

“False and violent borders have been imposed upon our many peoples and upon the landscape, dissecting our Mother Earth, our home continent, in two and attempting to sever our deep connection with the land, and with each other. We maintain our recognition and respect for all our Indigenous brothers and sisters of the Western Hemisphere, with whom we traded, learned from, loved and laughed with for a millennia. We are Indigenous, of this place on Mother Earth, called Turtle Island, the Middle Place, Abya Yala and the Fourth World. And we remain bonded together forever, knowing ourselves as the K’iche and Karuk, Saraguro and Cheyenne, the Cherokee, Xicano and Chumash, we are all relations.”
–Tia Peters, Zuni, Seventh Generation Fund

“If America is a shining beacon of hope for legal immigrants perhaps the laws should be adjusted to make it a reality for the illegal immigrants. They also see America as a place where dreams can be lived. Ironically, most of the illegal immigrants are Indians, or Indios as they are known in Mexico, and in Central and South America.
Most of their ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower or on the Spanish galleons. They were indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.”
–Tim Giago, president Native American Journalists Foundation

“Americans can say, surely not with pride, that our country knows from centuries of personal experience how unchecked immigration devastates life and why it’s an issue that deserves the best of our thinking and empathy. These are thoughts that cross some of our minds when we hear rhetoric about the so-called invasion of illegal immigrants (many of whom are — gasp — Indians) and calls to protect “our” land. If we smile in response, it’s not so much out of agreement. We see a payback
coming home to roost.”
–David House, mixed Cherokee/Scots-Irish, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“It’s never been clear to me why animosity exists toward today’s immigrants, considering the founding fathers arrived as immigrants. Are today’s anti-immigration voices afraid of a new Manifest Destiny? Many Native prophecies foretell the demise of U.S. indigenous people from European invaders. But the stories also speak of a time when the land will be reclaimed by indigenous people.Perhaps the time has come.”
–Jodi Rave reports on Native issues for Lee Enterprises.

On Haudenosaunee citizenship & naturalization:

“Naturalization was not race-based as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) granted citizenship to other ethnic groups. Once a person became a Haudenosaunee citizen they were expected to discard any previous connection to their birth nation. They had to speak an Iroquoian language, dress as Iroquois, contribute to the security of their host nation and provide for the well being of their new families and communities though a host of activities ranging from hunting, fishing, food preparation and home building. They took part in the elaborate ceremonies which defined Haudenosaunee spirituality and were given extensive instruction into the history, customs and beliefs of their new nation. In the end, the Haudenosaunee people expected the new citizen to undergo an almost complete transformation; physically, mentally and spiritually. This process worked extremely well… [it] secured our survival and provided for our prosperity….”
–Doug George-Kanentiio, Mohawk writer

The Popul Vuh– one of the most important books ever written on this continent offers us a valuable lesson and roadmap about migration disputes. The volatile conflicts among the Maya finally ended when those who were new to the land accepted those who were here before them as their guides. In this spirit, we do the same. So too should the general public, Congress and the president.

2006 (C) Column of the Americas

Feel free to contact us or send us your views at XColumn@gmail.com
or 608-238-3161. Our bilingual columns are posted at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/
Info regarding our Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan documentary and origins/migrations research can be found at: http://hometown.aol.com/aztlanahuac/myhomepage/index.html

[ The following article was written by photographer, David Bacon, who also took the photos accompanying this story. The pictures show Mixtec immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, who work in the strawberry fields of Oxnard, Califas. The photos are part of Bacon’s Living Under the Trees series. ]

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (5/25/06) — When the US Senate today passed its version of “comprehensive immigration reform,” Senators from both sides of the aisle claimed that despite the enormous controversy it has generated, passing a bill with flaws was better than passing no bill at all. Outside the beltway and its coterie of lobbyists, however, a groundswell of community groups now argue that Congress would do better to pass no bill than a bill that reconciles the proposal just passed by the Senate, and that passed last December in the House of Representatives.

In a statement condemning the Hagel-Martinez compromise, S 2611, the proposal that just passed on Thursday, a national group of immigrant rights advocates convened by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights argued Wednesday that “the rush to reach a bipartisan accord on immigration legislation has led to a compromise that would create deep divisions within the immigrant community and leave millions of undocumented immigrants in the shadows.”

“The current Senate bill,” said Sheila Chung, of the San Francisco Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, “does not reflect the immigration reform called for by millions of immigrant communities marching the streets.” The United States is currently home to over 12 million people without immigration documents, which makes them and their families subject to deportation, and vulnerable to exploitation at work. Nevertheless, the groups point to provisions of the Senate bill, which they say will make immigrants much worse off than they are even at present. Those include:

– Under the Hagel-Martinez legalization plan, undocumented immigrants with less than two years in the US (about a million people) would be immediately subject to deportation. Those with two to five years would also have to leave the country, and could apply to reenter through some currently unknown process. The ability of border stations to handle the applications of the 3-4 million people involved is extremely doubtful, given the current years-long backlog in normal visa applications.

– S 2611, like HR 4437 passed by the House in December, would ramp up the enforcement of employer sanctions. This provision of current law makes it a crime for undocumented people to hold a job, and is used frequently by employers to retaliate against workers who try to enforce labor standards or join unions. The Social Security Administration would become immigration police, forcing all workers to carry a new national ID card, and would require employers to fire anyone who’s documents they question. The current Basic Pilot program, which moves in this direction, has shown the SSA database to be rife with errors.

– The Senate bill expands current guest worker programs and establishes new ones, allowing employers to recruit workers outside the country on temporary visas. These new contract workers would be vulnerable to employer pressure, since their visa status would be dependant on their employment. Further, as the AFL-CIO’s Ana Avendaño points out, “this turns jobs which are now held by permanent employees with rights and benefits into jobs filled by temporary, contract employees. It basically takes the jobs of millions of people out of the protections of the New Deal, won by workers decades ago.” The labor federation points out that if currently undocumented workers and new immigrants were given permanent residence status instead of temporary visas, they would be able to exercise their rights as workers and community residents.

– S 2611 “vastly increases detention and deportation, and further militarizes the border,” according to the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Halliburton Corporation has already been given a US contract for construction of immigrant detention facilities near the border with Mexico, and proposals have been made for reopening closed military bases to house deportees and detainees. The bill, which makes document fraud an aggravated felony and grounds for deportation, would result in the criminalization of the millions of immigrant workers who have had to provide false Social Security cards to employers in order to get hired.

Stan Mark, AALDEF director, warned before passage of S 2611 that “the upsurge in the mass movement will redefine this debate well into the elections if Congress passes their so called “compromise” of comprehensive immigration reform.” He calls instead for eliminating current laws penalizing lack of legal status, especially employer sanctions. “The political climate of the debate,” the AALDEF leader says, “has converted this immigration bill into a Trojan horse into which lawmakers have crammed anti-immigrant and undemocratic policies.” The NNIRR declaration, a similar set of principles enumerated by AALDEF, and other programs put forward by groups outside Washington, all emphasize the need for positive, pro-immigrant alternatives. They include immediate legal status for the undocumented, easier family reunification and elimination of the backlog in processing visa applications, no expansion of guest worker programs, ending the indefinite detention of immigrants, restoring due process to immigration proceedings, and, instead of the new walls Congress wants to build, ending the militarization of the US border with Mexico.

Since the Senate has approved a bill far removed from these principles, and the House passed an enforcement-only HR 4437 even more hostile to immigrants, immigrant rights advocates believe killing all current proposals is their only option. That might in fact be the outcome of efforts to reconcile the House and Senate bills, since the most conservative House Republicans oppose any legal status for the undocumented. “It is possible that a reconciliation between HR 4437 and S 2611 will not happen in the conference committee,” speculates Evelyn Sanchez of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. “Should this happen, we will have time to continue pushing for real and fair comprehensive immigration reform. If HR 4437 and S 2611 are successfully reconciled, and the President signs the bill into law, then we have the task of overturning that law.” This is a grim scenario, but despite it, advocates are unwilling to give up. “It’s been done before.” she says.

[ In this Column of the Americas, Roberto Rodriguez writes about the role of racism in the immigration "debate." The author can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com ]

What does it say about a society that has to write into law its national language? What’s next, an official color (white)? An official food - (bread)? An official religion (Christianity)? An official song (God Bless America)? An official history (Pilgrims)?

When Sen. Henry Reid noted that the effort to proclaim English as the nation’s official language was racist, he was denounced as a lunatic by the usual right wing kooks. Texas writer Molly Ivins also made the same observation regarding Congress. No word of what she is being accused of yet.

For years, the term racist has been over-used to the point that nowadays, it is virtually meaningless. Besides, bigots have learned to neutralize the word (racist) by preemptively claiming that their opponents will use it against them simply to stifle debate. (They also cynically accuse peoples of color who fight for their rights of being racists themselves - cute logic). For instance, in the immigration debate, they say their beef is with illegal immigration, not immigration.

In other words, they welcome migrants of any color and from any country, as long as they immigrate legally. Thus, (they reason) they cannot be accused of being racists as all they’re asking is for immigrants to abide by the rule of law. OK.

So then what does affirming the English language have to do with notions of legality/illegality? What does it matter what language the national anthem is sung in? What does waving the Mexican flag have to do with legality/illegality? Might it instead be an indicator of manipulated and misplaced frustrations?

Of course, the above actions have nothing to do with illegal immigration. At best, it is cultural angst. There is no official U.S. culture (yet), but more than anything, America is an idea. And truthfully, it has always been a religio-racial-politico ideal as embodied by Providence and Manifest Destiny. From this nation’s beginnings, many colonists conceived of America as the new promised land… as a variation of Columbus’s mission to civilize the natives… or to exterminate them on their way toward building heaven on earth.

The original ideal of many of the colonists was to civilize all of the Americas - to bring it under the dominion of a Christian Protestant universe. That was also part of the reason for the Mexican American War… not simply to expand slavery, but to take all of Mexico. However, the idea of taking an entire nation of brown people under the U.S. umbrella was seen as too daunting a task for many adherents of Manifest Destiny, so they took only the northern half.

Yet, this isn’t restricted to history. As illustrated in the neoconservative document: “The New American Century,” the plan all along has been for the United States to dominate, first the continent, then the world. All of it has something to do with establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth. (At least, that’s the cover story for secularists). And like all great world civilizations, what better place to establish it than here — the new promised land?

Yet, always standing in the way are little brown people. Blacks too. What to do with them (besides getting them to fight against each other)? They certainly cannot be treated and viewed as peoples, but simply as exploitable labor forces. Are they deserving of civil and human rights? Of course not. As Otto Santa Ana writes in “Brown Tide Rising”: “Civil rights and human rights only pertain to humans.”

Yes. That’s what’s at the core of this immigration debate; many conservatives (and liberals) have convinced themselves that people of color are not fully human. Santa Ana traces this idea to the 19th century. Many Indigenous peoples trace this foundational idea to 1492. The European idea of the Americas was always predicated on the belief that they needed to civilize subhuman peoples - peoples who could never be afforded rights equal to that of Europeans… thus the rationale for the land theft. Native and African peoples were always deemed subservient and illegitimate populations, not worthy of full humanity.

In all these centuries, what has changed?Conservatives are adamant, not in resolving the issue, but in punishing and not rewarding (amnesty) illegal immigrants. Why? Because to do so would be to surrender the idea of a hierarchical society. It would be to surrender the idea of dominance and their civilizing mission. The very idea of viewing brown peoples as equals - as full human beings — must be quite an abhorrent thought.

© 2006 Column of the Americas

Whatever immigrant rights activists have been saying about a war against the undocumented have been proven right.

President Bush on May 15 made a speech to the country proposing the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops on the US-Mexico border (which will include units serving two-week stints before being “rotated out” and replaced by other units—a total of around 150,000 troops will be deployed in a year’s time).

While Bush says this is not “militarization of the border” (a foregone conclusion, unfortunately) these probably include battle-weary units in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as units that may end up there. Catering to the most conservatives elements in the Republic Party and to groups like the Minutemen, Bush ignored millions of people who peaceably took to the streets for amnesty and a fair & equitable border policy. He ignored the largest social mobilization in the history of this country.

Even Nixon, one of this country’s worst presidents, couldn’t entirely ignore the Civil Rights Movement (despite doing all he could to derail it), which at its heights did not produce the numbers of demonstrators that came out on this past May 1 for immigrant rights.

The Senate is presently debating new immigration policies that will probably include a guest worker program (which immigrant rights activist are largely against), some level of amnesty, and greater border enforcement. The government, led by Republicans, has diverted the rising anger toward war, high gasoline prices, and eroding economic realities into “secure our borders” demagoguery that has further divided the country.

The backlash against the past several weeks’ national marches, walkouts, and boycotts has taken the form of death threats to Latino politicians; a Mexican restaurant burned to the ground with anti-immigrant graffiti on the walls; a Mexican teenager beaten, sodomized, and left for dead by other teenagers yelling out anti-Mexican epithets; and renewed activities by the Minutemen, including in a largely Black LA neighborhood that got booed by a counter demonstration of Blacks and Browns.

Now the government has joined in with the vigilantes. The only solution the government has is war and war propaganda. History will judge the Bush Administration and the Republicans as one of the most racist and corrosive elements in US history.

While Iraq has proven to be a failure—with growing casualty counts on both sides—and Hurricane Katrina dramatized the failure of this government to respond with men and resources to protect the poor and defenseless, they’re going to go all out to send armed troops to the border??

Failure after failure should tell us that we shouldn’t go along with anything Bush or the Republicans say or do.

Mexico and the rest of the Americas (and other countries of the world for that matter) should decry this development. Most of all, every American should be outraged. We cannot better our lives, our futures, our economy, or social standing by attacking other workers whether from Mexico or Iraq. That is the Bush way. That is the Republican way. That is the way of failure.

Mexicans and Central Americans are not immigrants. They are indigenous people (more so than many people who claim to be Native American) who have been following these migrants trails for tens of thousands of years.

Conservatives think by declaring the brown-skinned native people to be foreigners and “illegals” they can turn history and truth on its head. Now the white-skinned invaders who only have 225 years as a country (and only 500 years of existence on this land) are now the true “natives.”

Borders are a relatively new phenomena, created by rich and powerful men that no worker—whether they are White, Brown, Black, Native, or Asian—should recognize if other workers are hungry and in need of a decent existence.

Now is the time to expand the mobilization of millions for immigrant rights to include the rest of the poor, the disempowered, and abandoned—citizens, legal residents, and the undocumented. The divisions and diversions are to undermine any level of unity people attain; our aim should be to increase this unity and truly pressure this government to change course or be replaced by one in tune with the real aspirations and needs of everyone.

Placing National Guard troops on the border is a sign of the most moral ineptitude—as is the war in Iraq. The ground has widened for us to truly push back the Empire-building strategies of this global capitalist class to a vision of a new America that makes sure the highest levels of health, housing, education, and work needs can be obtained for all.

by Tom Hayden
From www.truthdig.com - May 2, 2006

I wore the multicolored Aymaran flag of Bolivia to the
May Day march in Los Angeles, the same day that Evo
Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia,
nationalized the oil and gas fields. It seemed right to
recognize the reappearance of the indigenous in the
Americas. I gazed at Marcos Aguilar, one of the UCLA
hunger strikers for Chicano studies in 1993. Now he
stood bare-skinned and feathered, leading a traditional
dance below the edifice of the Los Angeles Times.
Rather than becoming assimilated into gringotopia, he
was forcing the reverse, the assimilation of the
Machiavellians into the new reality of L.A. Another
hunger striker from those days, Cindy Montanez, was
chairing the state Assembly’s rules committee. Another
UCLA student, a beneficiary of ’60s outreach programs,
was mayor of the city.

Contrary to most mainstream commentary, these protests
were part of a continuous social movement going back
many decades, even centuries. And yet the commentators,
especially on the national level, once again summoned
the stereotype of the lazy Mexican, the sleeping giant
awakening. For years it was convenient to blame apathy
and low participation rates on the Mexican-Americans
and other Latinos, ignoring the racial exclusion that
prevailed east of the Los Angeles River. In 1994, the
same “sleeping giant” arose against Pete Wilson’s
Proposition 187. It previously awoke in the 1968 high
school “blowouts,” the 1968-69 Chicano moratorium and
the farmworker boycotts, which were the largest in
history, and, in an earlier generation, the giant awoke
in the “Zoot Suit Riots” and Ed Roybal’s winning
campaign for City Council. The giant never had time to
sleep at all.

In the Great Depression, in the lifetimes of the
parents and grandparents of today’s students, up to
600,000 Mexicans, one-third of the entire U.S. Mexican
population, many of them born in the United States,
were deported with their children back to Mexico, their
labor no longer needed.

Out of nowhere?

There is a frightening gap between the white perception
of this 50-year trauma of deportation and the
experience of Mexicans and other immigrants, like the
Salvadorans who were driven here by the U.S.-backed
civil wars of the 1970s. Somewhere between amnesia and
a self-induced lobotomy, the gap needs to be closed in
the dialogue that may come of these historic protests.
The mere passage of time may erase white memories and
guilt, and induce acceptance among Mexicans, but it
does not legitimize the occupation itself. The wound
will not disappear under American flags, searchlights
and border walls.

The fundamental issue still shaping attitudes down to
the present is this: Either the Mexicans (and other
Latinos) are immigrants to a country called the United
States or the U.S. is a Machiavellian power that denies
occupying one-half of Mexico for 156 years. During the
1846-48 war against Mexico, at least 50,000 Mexicans
died. The fighting took place across many cities
considered pure-bred American today; in Los Angeles, a
revolt temporarily drove out the U.S. Army. Guerrilla
resistance by Mexican fighters left a mythic legacy of
those like Joaquin Murrieta and Tiburcio Vasquez, names
still alive among Mexican-American students today.
Meanwhile, The New York Times was declaring in 1860:
“The Mexicans, ignorant and degraded as they are,
[should welcome a system] founded on free trade and the
right of colonization so that, after a few years of
pupilege, the Mexican state would be incorporated into
the Union under the same conditions as the original
colonies.”

After unilaterally annexing Texas in 1845, despite
massive protests, the U.S. president sent troops 100
miles into what previously was Mexican land. When the
Mexicans retaliated, the U.S. declared war on the
pretext that Americans had been attacked on American
soil. When it ended, the U.S. took 51% of Mexico’s
land, including California, where the discovery of gold
had been kept secret from Mexican negotiators. At least
100,000 Mexicans and an additional 200,000 indigenous
people lived on those lands. Ever since, those people
and their descendants have lived in a split-
consciousness similar to that of African-Americans
described in W.E.B. DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folk.”
Each new generation of immigrants fuels that
consciousness all over again.

Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the imposed
settlement of the 1846-48 war, the inhabitants of the
occupied territories were granted legal, political,
educational and cultural rights as citizens, not as
immigrants. Some of the earliest official documents of
California were required under the treaty to be printed
in Spanish and English. This treaty, which was
unenforced, became the basis for later movements
stretching into the 1960s, movements that gave the
Southwest an Aztec name (Aztlan) and demanded the
return of former land grants. It was not unlike Radical
Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when
Gen. Sherman’s official promise of “forty acres and a
mule” was withdrawn.

Today’s demonstrations are not demanding implementation
of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Modern Mexican-
Americans have made the legalization of undocumented
workers as United States citizens their consensus
demand. But there remains an unspoken difference
between two states of mind regarding the meaning of the
border. In every generation, immigrant workers and
youth have claimed their American rights without
abandoning the memory of their deeper historical ones.

A significant number of white Americans, especially
among the elites, still hold to nativist definitions of
American identity, in contrast to those multinational
corporations that tend to be more interested in cheap
foreign labor than in keeping American white.

Conservative journals like the American Outlook publish
articles glorifying “the Anglosphere” as the standard
of globalization (March-April 2001). Kevin Phillips is
quoted in the article as still longing for an American
culture whose “core thought is a kind of English
revivalism.” Regarding this month’s demonstrations, the
black neoconservative Thomas Sowell has criticized the
“demanding” and “threatening” tone of “people who want
their own turf on American soil…” (L.A. Daily News,
April 29, 2006).

No one lends an Ivy League luster to the Minuteman
Mentality more than Harvard University professor Samuel
Huntington. A proud “Anglo-Protestant,” Huntington
previously advocated the “forced urbanization” of the
Vietnamese peasantry into a “Honda culture” as a
formula for ending the nationalist uprising. In
the&nbsp’70s, he complained that an “excess of
democracy” threatened Western authorities. More
recently, he formulated the strident doctrine of “the
clash of civilizations,” decreeing that Islamic culture
is incompatible with democratic civilization. Finally,
he has weighed in on “The Hispanic Challenge,” arguing
that Latino immigration is “a major potential threat to
the cultural and possibly political integrity of the
United States” (in Foreign Policy, March-April 2006).
Huntington argues that Mexican-Americans are too close
to their traditional culture to become assimilated as
patriotic Americans. By this he means, of course, that
they cannot become imitation WASPs, whose identity he
sees as basic to the American nation. For Huntington,
assimilation seems to mean submission and disappearance
into the master culture, a viewpoint still held by
many. We defeated you, and now you should become like
us.

Largely forgotten in the current debate, too, are those
among the elites who still consider Mexico itself a
strategic long-term threat. The late Caspar Weinberger,
a secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, wrote in
1998 of planning for a theoretical “next war” against
Mexico, opting for the military option in case “it
becomes necessary to go down in and try to catch [a]
rebel leader in Mexico and restore democratic rule to
Mexico” (interview with “Chuck Baldwin Live,” Feb. 17,
1998). The Harvard historian of Chiapas, John Womack,
has written that in the 1990s “the US government, in
particular the Defense Department … wanted ‘low-
intensity’ warfare in Mexico” (”Rebellion in Chiapas,”
Harvard, 1999).

But the U.S. has historically been the destabilizing
force in Mexico, most recently with the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has flooded the
country with corn and other products and replaced
indigenous manufacturing with the maquiladora economy,
thus displacing at least hundreds of thousands of
Mexicans, many of whom seek survival in el norte.
Perpetuating the cycle is absolutely crucial to neo-
liberal economics. But it also perpetually stimulates
rebelliousness, in fact and memory, among those who
take to U.S. streets today, and who shortly will be the
urban majority in a new America.

As people of color, mainly immigrants, edge closer to
majority status in key states, their relatives to the
south are becoming nationalist, populist majorities in
country after country, with interests that sharply
conflict with the disintegrating U.S. Monroe Doctrine
of 1823. If the populist mayor of Mexico City is
elected president of Mexico this fall, NAFTA itself
will die or be re-negotiated. This is the first time in
many decades that the interests of Latinos in the U.S.
are closely converging with the governments and people
of the nations of the south. As seen even in the recent
international baseball championships, the willingness
of America’s major league Latino players to join the
lineups of their homelands shows the fluid nature of
borders and solidarity. A policy beyond the Monroe
Doctrine will have to be crafted for the United States,
with Latinos in the lead. As Evo Morales of Bolivia is
suggesting, “another annexation is possible,” the
annexation of the United States into peaceful
coexistence with Latin America.

Some would argue that America must simply follow the
path of previous immigrant generations, like my Famine
Irish ancestors. It is true that the slum-dwelling
Irish, Jews and Italians rose in time to the middle
class, and the same future may lie ahead for the new
immigrants. We can see signs of the past in the growing
ranks of Latino trade unionists and mayors and other
politicians. But the difference in the histories is
race and class. If neo-liberalism has failed to widen
the American middle class since 1973, how will it
expand to provide decent jobs for the aspiring
immigrants in today’s underclass? Is there another New
Deal just over the horizon, or a hardening defense of
the status quo?

Huntington’s Anglosphere is dying, if only through
demographics. It is a matter of time–of when, not
whether. The newcomers have neither the need nor the
capacity to assimilate into a declining Anglosphere.
They will remain multicultural of necessity, the hybrid
multitude arising from the depths of empire and its
resistance. The real question is how the rest of
America, the rest of us, can assimilate and find
belonging within all the Americas, where so many flags
are fluttering in the gusts of self-determination.

In Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Portland, Tucson, New Orleans and over 200 American cities - millions of workers stayed off their jobs to protest against repressive legislation aimed at undocumented immigrant workers. The national May 1st Day without an Immigrant boycott and strike brought sectors of Los Angeles to a standstill. Two enormous mass marches, one in downtown L.A. and the other along Wilshire Boulevard, clogged city streets with up to two million workers. Hundreds of shops and businesses closed their doors in solidarity, tens of thousands of students walked off campuses all across the city, and the ports of L.A. were effectively shut down by truckers who had walked off the job.

These were the largest demonstrations in the entire history of Los Angeles, but they are also indicative of something much greater. Immigrant workers in the United States, with their massive demonstrations and work stoppages, have breathed life into International Workers Day, or May Day. That holiday is celebrated around the world each year on May 1st, as an expression of solidarity with the industrial workers killed by Chicago police in 1886 while demanding the eight hour day. While virtually ignored in the United States, the day is a legal holiday throughout much of Latin America (and indeed the world.) Spanish speaking immigrants have brought to the United States a lived tradition of celebrating May Day, as well as a sophisticated understanding of labor organizing and worker’s rights. When it was proposed months ago that May Day be designated as a national day of protest for Immigrant Rights, mainstream politicians and community leaders discouraged the idea - with some going so far as to plea with workers to stay on their jobs and not participate in May Day. However, the appeals of the timid and the backwards were ignored by the masses, who stopped work and poured into the streets in their millions.

In Los Angeles, wave after wave of demonstrators filled the streets. Most wore white and U.S. flags were displayed everywhere. Spanish was the dominant language on the streets that day, with most protestors being Mexicano - but many other Latinos were involved as well. Large numbers of L.A.’s Asian community turned out, especially for the march down Wilshire Blvd., which runs through L.A.’s huge Korean community. Some of the signs carried in the marches read: Nigun ser humano es ilegal (No human being is illegal) - Our citizenship wasn’t a problem when you sent our children to war - Are our troops in Iraq illegal too? - Jose called in today, Make your own taco, USA. - Hoy marchamos. Manana votamos (Today we march. Tomorrow we vote) and No Somos Crimales, Ustedes nos hacen criminales (We’re not criminals, You make us criminals.) Pictures of the massive L.A. marches taken by photographers Stephen Sakulsky, Rogue Gringo and JLR, can be viewed at the L.A. Indymedia website.

May 1st, 2006 was not the end or the culmination of a people’s struggle, it was the beginning, and in the months to come that fight for the rights of all will grow stronger. The people made history on May Day, but there’s much left to accomplish. Now stronger bonds must be forged between immigrant and U.S. workers - for our interests are one and the same.