Thread: Racist fringe darkens debate

Racist fringe darkens debate
Threats to state politicians; Web sites filled with hatred
- Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2006



Displays of anti-immigrant and anti-Latino anger in California and across the country have increased in the six weeks since massive immigrant rights rallies began, and they’re injecting a new note of vitriol into the nation’s immigration reform debate.

This ire — in radio commentaries, a computer game, Web sites and other venues — gained visibility last week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicized “disturbing and hateful death threats” received by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and other Latino officials. The attacks, none physical, have darkened the backdrop for boycotts and protests planned Monday across the country against a proposed new restrictive immigration law.

The angry messages don’t sit well with many mainstream immigration restrictionists, including leaders of the Minuteman Project, whose members will depart from Los Angeles on Wednesday on a cross-country lobbying tour for tougher border control. And the elected officials on the receiving end downplayed the anonymous messages, saying they get death threats from time to time on a range of issues.

But immigrant advocates say taken all together, the hostility is an ominous intrusion as Congress grapples with the steady flow of illegal immigrants that has amounted to an estimated population of 12 million nationwide.

“It is a definite sharpening of the debate and making it much more ugly than we’ve seen in some time,” said John Trasviña, interim president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It does become a dangerous situation … . I’m glad the governor raised people’s sensitivities about this.”

Bustamante received a pair of typed postcards early this month postmarked in Pasadena that called him a “dirty Mexican” and other slurs and said “The only good Mexican is a dead Mexican,” according to his press secretary Stephen Green, who faxed one of the cards to The Chronicle.

“That’s a death threat, as far as we’re concerned,” Green said. This and other threats against Bustamante have been turned over to the California Highway Patrol for investigation.

“They seem to think he’s a Mexican,” Green said. “Both he and his parents were born in the San Joaquin Valley.”

State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Villaraigosa were targets of an anti-Latino attack by a New York radio program. But Nuñez, D-Los Angeles, said last week: “We don’t feel any threats by anyone. I just think it’s just people who have a misguided view of the world.”

In Phoenix, a radio talk show host on KFYI lost his job this month for suggesting on air that listeners “pick one night — every week — where we will kill whoever crosses the border.” Brian James later told the Arizona Republic that his remarks had been taken out of context. “I do not in any way advocate shooting illegal immigrants,” James said.

Bloody computer game

A computer game called Border Patrol, which can be found on a white supremacist group’s Web site among its “Racist Games,’’ has alarmed Trasviña and others. Players watch crudely animated illegal immigrants, including a pregnant woman with two children in tow, run across the desert. When they shoot the figures to win points, blood splatters across the screen.

On April 9, the day before an estimated 2 million people marched throughout the country for immigrant rights, Laine Lawless and a dozen members of her Arizona group Border Guardians burned a Mexican flag outside the Mexican consulate in Tucson.

“Any time they take to the streets, we’ll burn a Mexican flag,”

Lawless, once the leader of a wiccan coven in Daly City, told the Associated Press. She allegedly sent an e-mail to a leader of a Nazi organization, the National Socialist Movement, a week later suggesting that his “warriors for the race” intimidate, rob and attack illegal immigrants, including children. The message was posted to a Yahoo bulletin board used by neo-Nazis. Lawless did not respond to requests for confirmation and comment.

Several groups have noted an increase in hateful postings about immigrants on blogs and in chat rooms. The Anti-Defamation League reported last week that “America’s Latino immigrant population has become the primary focus of hateful and racist rhetoric and extreme violence.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks groups it considers racist, found that rallies of immigrants and their supporters in Chicago, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and numerous other cities spurred the new activity.

“The biggest spike came right after the rallies,” said Heidi Beirich, a spokeswoman for the center. “When a Nazi or a white supremacist sees 100,000 Hispanics out on the streets of their city, that really ticks them off. Some of the postings are pretty violent.”

The threats are the work of a small number of angry people on the fringe of the anti-immigration movement, according to Stratfor, a private investigative agency.

Historical treatment

“Surges in the numbers of immigrants or migrants often produce certain kinds of political and collective actions, sometimes mob attacks,” said Susan Olzak, a Stanford University sociology professor. “That has happened against the Chinese, Southern and Eastern Europeans and black migrants moving to the north.”

Groups that advocate tighter restrictions on immigration have distanced themselves from calls for violence.

“We think people who threaten elected officials should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Tim Bueler, a California spokesman for the Minuteman Project, who said his group’s volunteer border patrols, cross-country caravan and other actions aim to change national policy.

“Video games that promote killing innocent people coming across the border are wrong,” he went on. “We’re a law-abiding group.”

Rick Oltman, western regional director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the threats were an insignificant distraction from national security breaches at the border and economic competition from illegal workers.

“I’d like to see an investigation of it and see the proof of it and if they can find out who’s done it, apply the law to them,” Oltman said. “But I haven’t seen any proof that they’re true. And it’s not the most important part of this debate. The most important part is that Americans want the law enforced.”

Growing importance

Public opinion polls show that the issue has gotten a lot more important to everyone, regardless of what people think about it, said Steve Camarota, director of research for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stricter immigration controls. Camarota said immigrants and their supporters have displayed bigotry as well, by carrying placards at rallies saying

“America is ours. Get out of the Southwest.” “If some guy living in his basement is sending hate mail to the lieutenant governor or some kook carries a sign saying, ‘Go back to England,’ I don’t know if I put much into it either way,” Camarota said. “No side in this debate is free from ugliness.”
CHART (1): The Chronicle

Sources: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2004 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION

In 2004 about 700,000 people illegally made the United States their
home, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, whose estimates are relied upon by
the State Department. In the same year, 946,142 people won permission to stay
in the country temporarily or permanently, according to the U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services. Illegal workers made up about 4.3 percent of the
American workforce in 2004, according to Pew estimates.
.
Number of immigrants

In thousands
Unauthorized legal

immigrants immigrants
1980s 140 650
1990 to '94 450 670
1995 to '99 750 660
2000 to March '04 700 610
.
Where they're from
Mexico 5.9 million
Other Latin America 2.5 million
Asia 1 million
Europe and Canada 600,000
Africa and other 400,000
-- Total unauthorized immigrants in U.S. for 2002-2004: 10 million
.
Level of education
(Percent of each group's population, ages 25-64, that completed various
levels of education, 2004)

-- Earning a living
Unauthorized immigrants represent a significant
percentage of all workers in these sectors:
Farming, fishing, forest 19%
Building cleaning and maintenance 17%
Construction 12%
Production 11%
Food prep and serving 8%
Transportation and material moving 5%
All other occupations 2%
,
Unauthorized immigrants, by state

California 2.4 million
Texas 1.4 million

Florida 850,000
New York 650,000
Arizona 500,000
Illinois 400,000
New Jersey 350,000
North Carolina 300,000
All other states 3.1 million


CHART (2):

New
citizens and legal immigrants 1995-2004
About half the people who became U.S. citizens or won legal permanent residence
in
the last decade were from Latin America. Legal immigration spiked - most
dramatically
among Latinos - just before immigration restrictions Congress passed in 1996
went into effect in in 1997.

'95 '04
Africa
60,951 100,840
Europe 191,787 216,683
China, Philippines
and Vietnam 219,361 227,634
Other Asia 238,775 322,244
Mexico 171,587 239,204
South and Central
America and Carribbean 298,287 340,203



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Bustamante received a pair of typed postcards early this month postmarked in Pasadena that called him a “dirty Mexican” and other slurs and said “The only good Mexican is a dead Mexican,” according to his press secretary Stephen Green, who faxed one of the cards to The Chronicle.

I think Buster enjoys sending hate letter to himself, doesn't he?



Several groups have noted an increase in hateful postings about immigrants on blogs and in chat rooms. The Anti-Defamation League reported last week that “America’s Latino immigrant population has become the primary focus of hateful and racist rhetoric and extreme violence.”

I guess that means us, 90% of Americans??


A computer game called Border Patrol, which can be found on a white supremacist group’s Web site among its “Racist Games,’’ has alarmed Trasviña and others. Players watch crudely animated illegal immigrants, including a pregnant woman with two children in tow, run across the desert. When they shoot the figures to win points, blood splatters across the screen.

I'm still trying to find this game? Anyone?

Take it for what it is from bunch of Sodomites.

I'm still trying to find this game? Anyone?

It's amazing, isn't it?

The open borders types always seem to find (or claim to find) these things, while we so-called racist, anti-immigrant bigots can't.

Perhaps they're lying, since lying is always a major part of their argument.

It's not too hard to find anti-Gringo stuff out there. The media doesn't seem to want to cover that do they?