Illegal is Illegal

That stupid tautology is what passes nowadays for thinking in today’s debate on illegal immigration.  It’s stupid, because instead of explaining or justifying anything, that tautology glosses over the complex context of undocumented workers in the United States, and how many of us benefit from their work.  With such glibness, we wash our hands of understanding their plight.

It’s good to be a hypocrite in this country on illegal immigration.  It’s rare anybody calls you on it; it’s rare self-satisfied hypocrites do any reflection.  Illegal is illegal.  That’s it.  Case closed.  I’ve even seen that slogan trumpeted on political placards in upstate New York.

I was in Missouri last week, staying at a nice hotel, paid by the school which brings me in to conduct writing workshops.  As I was editing and grading stories and essays from my students, there was a knock on the door.  Two women with cleaning carts smiled sheepishly as I opened the door, and said in heavily accented English they would come back later.

I beckoned them in, saying it was okay.  As I worked, I heard them chat in Spanish about Mexico defeating France in the World Cup.  I introduced myself in Spanish, told them my parents were from Chihuahua, and saw their jaws drop.  Yes, we were all Mexicanos, the guy in the oxford shirt with the Macbook in front of him, and the ladies who were cleaning the toilets and vacuuming.

I spoke to ‘Julia’ for a while, from Guerrero.  She told me she desperately wanted to learn English, but had no time.  “Trabajo dos trabajos.  Diez y seis horas seguidas, y no me da tiempo.”  That is: “I work two jobs.  Sixteen hours back to back, and I don’t have the time.”  She smiled a toothy smile while she said this, and my heart wanted to break.  I asked her how they treated her at this hotel, and she said the manager was extremely nice to them.  Julia told me she sends money back home every month, to her family in Guerrero.

What is remarkable to me is how often this scene has been repeated in about every hotel I have stayed in America.  A few months ago, I was in Denver at an annual conference of writers.  At one of the fanciest hotels in the Mile High City, again an undocumented worker was cleaning my room.  I chatted with ‘Maria Teresa.’  As we spoke on the second day, she was almost teary when I handed her a signed copy of my first book, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories.  I told her to have her children read her the stories.  I almost lost it myself when she responded, as we said goodbye at the door’s threshold, that she wanted her children to become like me.

These are the people who are the overwhelming majority of the undocumented workers vilified by the idiots in Arizona, and elsewhere, as illegal immigrants.  They are the salt of the earth.  Many of them are desperate to be Americanos.  But Americans already in power, many of Italian, German, Irish and Scandinavian descent, have forgotten how their grandfathers and great-grandmothers arrived in the New World.  We want our hotels clean, and cheaply, so we can profit from the labor of Latin American workers.

We want our strawberries and apples picked beautifully, without bruises, and cheaply.  But we turn the other way and somehow don’t hear when someone explains how this is possible at high-end markets like Fairway or Zabar’s in Manhattan, or across the country at Stop & Shops.  Who is in the fields picking our fruit, for hours under the merciless sun?  Who cares!  Illegal is illegal, they say happily, as they stuff another strawberry in their faces at the Marriott.

I instead talk to undocumented workers, especially if I see them working diligently to make our country better.  I ask them how they are.  I listen to their stories.  And I can only respect them in return.  That’s the decent thing to do.  That’s the right thing to do.  When did we become so callous?

Again, this week as I walked on Broadway, in front of giant photographs of voluptuous supermodels at a Victoria Secret mega-store, who was rebuilding the sidewalks?  With sweaty headbands, ripped-up jeans, and dust on their brown faces?  Their muscled hands quivered as they worked the jack-hammers, and lugged the concrete chunks into dump trucks.  Two men from Guanajuato.  Undocumented workers.  They both shook my hand vigorously, as if they were relieved I wasn’t an INS officer.

I imagined how much money Victoria Secret was making off these poor bastards.  I wondered why passersby didn’t see what was in front of their faces.  We use these workers.  We profit from them.  In the shadows, they work to the bone, for pennies.  And it’s so easy to blame them for everything and nothing simply because they are powerless, and dark-skinned, and speak with funny accents.  Illegal is illegal.  It is a phrase, shallow and cruel, that should prompt any decent American to burn with anger.

Arizona

Obama won the last presidential election, but Latinos are facing the political backlash from conservative whites, who see, more clearly than ever, that their days are numbered as the ethnic majority in this country.  That’s one conclusion I can draw from recent news and events.  I am felled by an awful spring flu, with a fever and an achy body and a nose that gushes as if it were the well of the Deepwater Horizon. But this is too important a day to be a bystander.

Arizona’s new law, SB1070, has been given an acceptable façade with the argument that it’s only against illegal immigrants and that it won’t result in racial profiling.  But what is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that someone is an illegal immigrant?  What does an illegal immigrant look like?  Like John McCain?  Sarah Palin?

It’s a law that the rogue cop who already hates all things Mexican, illegal or not, will easily abuse to jail a poor mother and father who don’t happen to be carrying their birth certificates in their back pockets.  I suspect that even if American Latinos have their birth certificates when they sleep, that the Arizona birthers will assume these documents are fraudulent.  They simply don’t like Mexicans, whether they are here illegally or not.

I conclude this not because I am paranoid, or because I see every political issue through an ethnic or racial lens.  I do not.  Read my blog, witness my marriage, see how I raise my children, examine my voting record.  What you will see, I hope, is a person who was given great opportunities in this country, who is conservative on some issues and liberal on others, who is proud of his Mexican heritage, yet still criticizes and tries to change practices within our community to make it more successful, more powerful, more open-minded.

But when I see that yesterday the Arizona state legislature also passed a bill that “prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” I know that this legislative majority in Arizona does not like Mexican-Americans.  Imagine, a Mexican-American studies program in Arizona is being compared to treason.  What kind of mentality makes that irrational link?  The Arizona Department of Education is also trying to fire teachers with accents who teach English classes.  What is happening in this crazy state?  This weekend, the ‘education’ bill is awaiting the governor’s signature.

So I don’t draw my tough conclusions on anything but the evidence of idiocy that are the actions of the Arizona state legislature.  I can only wait for those legislative Caesars in Texas to also take up racist and xenophobic causes, or Oklahoma and Alabama.  Are we about to start a new Confederacy in the South?  What happened to giving opportunity to new strangers to this country, to helping them become Americans, which they so desperately want?  What happened to being open-minded about someone who doesn’t look like you, who doesn’t sound like you?

For Latinos, we must organize.  We must protest.  We must register to vote in huge numbers, and then vote with our neighbors and friends at the ballot box.  We must get involved in politics locally, seek alliances with those who will help us.  We should never stay silent, and allow others to do the work of fighting for causes we care about.  That’s what this country is about: getting involved, gaining our voice, getting a chance to fulfill our highest potential.  These days should prompt a new grito for freedom, respect, and self-determination.

The Texas Board of Ignorance

I left Texas to educate myself.  At Harvard College, one of my greatest shocks was how little I knew about my heritage and Mexican history.  I was born and lived in Ysleta, less than half a mile from the Zaragoza International Bridge, yet I knew nothing about where I was from.  So I spent four years at Harvard College studying Latin America with visionary teachers like Peter Smith and Terry Karl; I learned Mexican history from John Womack.


I imagined one day life would be different for a young and eager high school student from Ysleta, one who was proud to be an American citizen yet who also wanted to know more about his roots.  But the recent vote on textbook standards from the Texas Board of Education shows that Texas is going backward, not forward.  Close-mindedness is winning.  Ignorance is trumpeted.  Isolation and indoctrination are the new watchwords for those afraid of a changing world.

To recap: last week, the Texas Board of Education, led by a conservative majority, voted to call into question concepts like the separation of church and state and the American Revolution as a secular revolt.  The majority voted to emphasize the political contributions of Phyllis Schlafly, while minimizing Thomas Jefferson, apparently too democratic for their tastes.  In fact, the United States, according to these conservative activists, should not be studied as a ‘democracy’ anymore, but as a ‘constitutionally-based republic.’  Guess who decides what’s in the Constitution?  Previously this conservative majority had attacked the historical contributions of César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

This is what happens when people hunker down.  When your state is becoming too Mexican-American and African-American, when you feel you are being left behind, when perhaps you see the day when you will not be the majority anymore, then you retrench and attempt to rewrite history.  But what happened to thinking?  What happened to understanding that many Latinos, including my mother, hold deeply conservative values, yet simply do not want to be mistreated or disrespected?  What happened to studying the fact that the Constitution counted a slave as two-thirds of a person, while also being a unique founding document that created checks and balances between branches of government to control their powers?  Why can’t we study the failures of our history as well as our triumphs, and still appreciate that we live in a great country?

One conservative board member, in an interview, said the majority’s vote was “the return of American exceptionalism.”  But sadly, the conservative vote of the Texas Board of Education shows exactly the opposite.  The United States was an exceptional, historically unique country because it was pluralistic, because you had freedom of speech and freedom from a state-imposed religion, because unlike hierarchical Europe you could achieve whatever you wanted to achieve regardless of class, religion, and then later, race.  We have always been a work-in-progress; that's the root of our greatness.

The United States remains exceptional as long as we correct our mistakes, as long as we keep confronting our problems head on.  That’s what a democracy does, at least when it functions well.  The problems get aired out, confronted, and eventually fixed more or less.

But when you trumpet some weirdly nostalgic ‘America’ that never existed, without the messy conflicts, without the democratic debates, without the will of the people manifesting itself through blood and protest, what you are holding high is an ‘American absolutism.’  You are saying, in effect, stop thinking.  Stop including the newcomers, like Latinos, and stop turning them into Americans.  You are saying stop the potpourri of religions now in America; let’s all be Christians.

You are saying, without saying it, that we are not confident anymore.  We are not pluralistic anymore.  We must close shop.  We must bar the doors.  This scary new world is too much.  Let’s teach our children to hide.

The only saving grace is that I learned about the vote of the Texas Board of Education in El Paso.  At least El Paso is barely part of Texas.  I don’t have to explain myself in El Paso, and I don’t have to endure suspicious stares or seemingly polite comments about my accent in Ysleta.  As Texas becomes more like El Paso, maybe one of these days, before I die, I will feel at home in the rest of Texas too.

Anger Magnus

There is so much to comment on, and so little to comment on.  I thought about Obama’s ‘slow-burn’ of political advocacy, as one friend described his style.  I had just criticized our president for not defending, more aggressively, the kind of change many of us voted for last year.  Obama, lay it on the line, and punish those who don’t support you, from the left or the right.  Be practical, be bold, but please don’t be gone.

I thought about the Senate-election debacle in Massachusetts, and how ‘democracy’ is not the great ideal it’s held up to be.  Do right-leaning Democrats truly think going back to George W. Bush’s deregulated, ‘pirate economy,’ as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson aptly described it in last Sunday’s business section, will help this country create jobs, protect consumers, lower the boom on banks, big pharma, or wasteful government?  I don’t like high deficits either; what was Bush’s record on deficits, anybody remember?

It’s incredible to me the myopia, the forgetfulness, the stupidity of much of the populace, as well as the ‘news’ that isn’t news anymore, but loud and ignorant opinions.  I mean, is anybody else with me on this one?  What happened to not being a Democrat or Republican first, to not thinking about just ‘winning,’ or ‘us’ versus ‘them’?  What happened to us?  We’re on this death cruise together, and China’s eating our lunch.  They’re not the only ones.  Anyone want to stand together and fight back?  I am patriotic, and I do love this country.  But our politics are dysfunctional, Congress is a joke, and how we talk to each, the vapid ‘news’ of cable, talk radio, and the like, simply foments the same idiotic behavior that got us into this mess.

That’s right, I’m pissed.  We need practical people.  We need to stop the moronic dog-chasing-its-tale on television and radio.  In fact, if it were up to me, as a dictator, I would destroy all the television sets and radios, and force people to read.  Even the New York Post is thoughtful compared to cable.

The problems with our culture go beyond the national politics and media.  I see what's wrong on the street every day, whether it’s El Paso, New York City, Kansas City or LA.  I am often the strictest parent in their schools, my kids don’t fail to remind me.  What do I do?  I make sure my kids do their homework, every night.  I am there to help them, if they need it, every night.  I encourage my kids to read books, every week.  Friends who are wild, disrespectful, they are not welcomed in my house.  Period.  These are the values of my father and mother, Mexican immigrants.  These values work.  My kids are excellent students.  They work hard and achieve the highest grades.  They are proud of themselves, not for false accomplishments, but for true ones.  Isn’t everybody like that?  What happened to us?  Jeez.

I am angry at the Supreme Court.  What the hell is wrong with them?  The majority just made the little guy feel even smaller than before.  What happened to ‘non-activist conservative judges’?  These hypocrites just overturned decades of precedent, in favor of mega-corporations with billions of dollars.  Wave the flag for ‘free speech.’  Lower the flag for more influence for lobbyists and for rampant political corruption.  The little guy doesn’t matter to these clueless Solomons.  Sotomayor, you matter.  We just need more of you.

Work hard.  Take care of your family.  Save money.  Pay your mortgage religiously.  Love the variety of people you see on the streets of Manhattan every day.  And get kicked in the ass.  What a week.