The New Anti-Latino Movement
Friday December 14, 2007
Two recent studies have confirmed that the American anti-immigration movement has fueled a new wave of discrimination and hatred.
According to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center, 64 percent of U.S. Latinos say that their lives have been made harder by the immigration debate. (About 75 percent of Latinos are in this country legally; undocumented immigrants make up only 12 million of the 47-million-strong Latino population.) And over the past year, the percentage of Latinos who say that they, their families, or their close friends have been victimized by discrimination has increased from 31 percent to 41 percent.
These statistics are corroborated by FBI data indicating that hate crimes against Latinos have increased by 35 percent over the past four years.
This doesn't surprise me. Local anti-immigrant initiatives, such as the Hazleton Ordinance, follow what I call a Juan Crow standard--they require employers, tenants, and so forth to check out the paperwork of any persons they might suspect to be undocumented, which (as noted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Office) amounts to a de facto presumption of illegal status for Latinos. Authorities have by and large turned a blind eye to Border Patrol assaults on Latinos crossing the border, even when those Latinos happen to be U.S. citizens.
And politicians have increasingly been playing on racist sentiments, too; Tom Tancredo famously referred to 67-percent-Latino Miami as a "third-world country" despite the fact that the vast majority of its Latino population is made up of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. And in a statement that would have pleased segregationist predecessors like Theodore Bilbo and Ross Barnett, 2007 Mississippi Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Arthur Eaves stated that, without what his opponent referred to as the "Spanish people" (no reference made to immigration status), "we'd have record employment" and "could be leading the region in job creation and recovery." Eaves still lost the election by a landslide, but his last-minute focus on immigration--which included an immigration-focused commercial full of ominous-looking video shots of Latino workers--demonstrates the degree to which even the Democratic Party has embraced racial prejudice.
The marbling of the anti-immigration and white supremacist movements is also a serious cause for concern. The Southern Poverty Law Center has long documented the degree to which the anti-immigrant movement is bankrolled by the same people who pay for the white supremacist movement, as well as the degree to which the immigration issue has fueled increases in hate group membership.
It's possible to have conservative views on immigration reform without playing to racist sentiments, just as it was once possible to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on a legitimate anti-regulation basis, but meaningful policy debate is being drowned out by an increasingly racism-based anti-immigration movement to which politicians pander, and which most Latinos, regardless of immigration status, have learned to fear.
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Comments
I feel what the politicians have done to this country and to the Americans is a crime. We have given up alot for the sake of the immigrants coming here, which is not our choice. Why??? For the votes. I for one will not speak spanish. I’m not spanish. I’m tired of being forced to accept losing my job to them and having them picked over me.
I agree with author of the article. The immagration problem is not about people taking American jobs. In fact the republican party, who’s voter base is largely becomming more and more upstart small buisness owners, rely on the low cost source of labor. President Bush has his hands tied on this issue because although on the face, everyone is acting like they want immagration reform, the bickering stops were the profit shribbles. There would be an outcry if this cheap labor source is cut off. Besides, most of the jobs that are being taken over by immigrints are jobs we dont really want. The immagration problem is really about Whites who have still not learned to love anyone except them selves. I only offer that you don’t hear the Asian community complaining. The African American Community hasen’t really protested, The American Indians have not asked for the immigrints to be kept out. Its just the Whites. We (Whites) came to this country, murdered our host (millions of American Indians), Then we disgraced ourselves with slavery(Scholars estimate in 250 years of slavery, over 60 million African Americans were murdered or worked to death and it has gone down as the most
horrific act in human history). Oh yea, lets not forget the internment camps of World War Two. Now I guess that it only stands to reason that our neighbors to the South are next. You know, if anybody should be standing on the outside asking for forgiveness and re-admission it should be the White man. Were living in a stolen country supported by 250 years of stolen Afican American labor. Lets face it. Many of us had ancesters who directly benefited Its time we started treating our neighbors like neighbors. Find the courage to love someone who isn’t the same color or religeon as we are. These are our neighbors. We need to find a way to work through this like neighbors. I read another comment that said, ” I will not speak spanish”. If all I had to do to fix the race problem was learn a second language, I’d already be in class.
We should not command a spanish man to learn english, We should ask ourselves,” were can I go to learn a little spanish”.
Mike
Mike, I commend you for owning up to the damage whites have done based on race, as a white male. But you also demonstrate a near-complete lack of understanding of the anti-immigration sentiment as well as how other races view immigrants.
First of all, it’s not just whites who don’t want to open the gates. Blacks do complain about immigrants; we’re the main ones worried about job opportunities because we’re already the main ones who have difficulty obtaining employment. And it’s not the menial jobs that “no one wants to do” that we’re worried about. Look at Asians and their progress–immigrants don’t just come here and remain in low-end jobs; they work their way up. That’s exactly why they do come here. They want the American Dream. In record time, the waiting room for a job interview for a position as a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, a businessman, etc, includes those people who were doing menial work merely years before. Who gets the short end of the stick? Blacks.
Asians and Latinos hate “fresh off the boat” people of their background because they represent everything they’re trying to get away from. They can barely speak English and are always bringing smelly food to school/work, and the “Americanized” Asians and Latinos don’t want to be lumped in with that. No, after all the hard work they’ve put into convincing whites that they are “American,” i.e. “white,” too, they don’t want immigrants around.
And why should any of us run out to learn Spanish? Why change our nation for people who don’t come here legally? Why must we follow the rules when they can break them? And, most importantly, why do you think solving the language problem will make racial issues, at least with respect to immigrants, go away? As I’ve partially described above, language isn’t the only issue. Being forced to know Spanish to have better job opportunities makes things harder for us, not easier. We shouldn’t have to accommodate people; we were already here. If they want to take advantage of the country/culture, they need to adapt. I wouldn’t go to Spain, France, Germany or Mexico and expect those people to change everything around for me. It just makes no sense.
That someone has already taken a poll on how disappointed Obama voters would be if he didn’t win the nomination shows the dangers that the Democratic Party is cultivating - threatening to send America back 50 years into civil rights riots - with 92% of voters disgruntled. The Democratic Party has no business stirring up the country like this; nor does the Obama campaign, and it could backfire. No American wants to allow Democrats the privilege of bullying the public to get Obama into office. All Americans should be concerned about this.