Thread: Showdown shouldn't take place at border (opinion)

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Excerpts:

Immigrants aren't animals or aliens, they're humans.

Same song, same dance. What does the writer not understand about LAWBREAKING? Is "illegal" torn from the pages of her dictionary? What does she not understand about "alien?" (perhaps an e-mail should direct her to the "'Lectric Law Library's Legal Lexicon On * ALIEN *" at http://www.lectlaw.com/def/a037.htm.)

ALIEN - A resident of a country who was born outside that country and who has not become a naturalized citizen; any person not a natural-born or naturalized citizen or national of the United States. 8 U.S.C.

One born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, who has not since been naturalized uuder their constitution and laws. To this there are some exceptions, as this children of the ministers of the United States in foreign courts.

They shouldn't be apprehended by vigilantes with loaded guns

As a reporter, ma'am, you should check your facts before you opine. It has been repeatedly stated by Jim Gilchrist that the MinuteMen will only "spot" ILLEGAL ALIENS and report them to border patrol. MM is ordered NOT to apprehend. They aren't planning on anything of the sort, I can personally guarantee you that, because they are respecting the guidelines of the project and know that if they stepped over the line even a quarter-inch the media sharks would be onto them like ants on a picnic.

or described as plunderers when most simply seek jobs that Americans won't take

There's no way to spin this. They are plunderers, not only of our land and resources, jobs, the desert they cross, the services they arrogantly demand and expect ... our tax dollars.

If there's to be any showdown, it should be in Washington, D.C., not at the Arizona border.

Haven't you read ... surely you, as a reporter, keep up with the "news" .. since Washington chooses to do nothing, the American people who believe in the future of this country merely decided to form a neighborhood watch on the border to spotlight what the "leadership" in DC chooses to overlook. And, so far, MinuteMan has already caused Washington to take some action. But you wouldn't want to cover that part, now would you?


YVETTE CABRERA
Register columnist
ycabrera@ocregister.com

It shouldn't come as a surprise.

In fact, in many ways we're to blame. The media, that is, for creating the showdown taking place at the Arizona border this weekend.

On one side you have the Minuteman Project, launched by co-founder Jim Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo to patrol the Arizona border in search of undocumented immigrants.

On the other, you have the human-rights activists, immigration experts, and even the Border Patrol concerned that untrained and armed Minuteman volunteers are a disaster waiting to happen.

"Does it (the Minuteman project) help us? Absolutely not," says Andy Adame, spokesman for the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

"These are people who are old, overweight and out of shape. This desert will have a toll on them," he says. "If (the project) goes through it will probably have some detrimental effect on our operations when our concentration needs to be on the border."

How did we get to this point where Orange County residents and others across the nation are so ticked about illegal immigration that they're willing to travel hundreds of miles to patrol the desert?

Part of the blame lies with the media, which contributes to the hysteria by not doing a responsible job of covering this issue.

Last December the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I'm a member, issued the Network Brown out Report 2004.

The report examined the nightly news coverage by the major news networks and found that of all the news stories that aired in 2003, less than 1 percent (131) were about Latinos. Of those stories, 44 percent were about immigration and crime.

"When it's overwhelmingly this narrow perspective it's a really big problem," says Joseph Torres, NAHJ's deputy director, communications and media policy.

Take CNN's Lou Dobbs. On a regular basis, says Torres, Dobbs features guests espousing anti-immigrant views.

"It's just one show, but it's a symptom of a much larger problem," Torres says. "The majority of America receives news from broadcast television.

"This is the only image they're seeing and it fails to show the totality of Latino life in the United States.

So when the media does cover stories about undocumented immigrants, how do we do?

Poorly, according to UCLA professor Otto Santa Ana, who analyzed the mainstream media's coverage of the U.S. Latino population in his book "Brown Tide Rising."

Santa Ana found that the metaphors used by the media to describe illegal immigration created negative public perceptions of Latinos.

Analyzing hundreds of newspaper articles from the 1990s, he found the consistent use of phrases like "massive northward influxes," "a sea of brown faces," and "an overwhelming flood" to describe undocumented immigrants.

Reporters often dehumanized these immigrants by using terms like "hunted out, targeted, herded and preyed," said Santa Ana, founder of UCLA's César E. Chávez Center for Chicana/o Studies.

"These metaphors are not merely rhetorical flourishes, but are the key components with which the public's concept of Latinos is edified, reinforced, and articulated," writes Santa Ana in his book.

Fast-forward to Tombstone, Ariz., 2005. On the Minuteman Project's Web site you'll find similar metaphors.

The Web site describes the project as a grass-roots effort and "a reminder to Americans that our nation was founded as a nation governed by the "rule of law," not by the whims of mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who endlessly stream across U.S. borders."

In another paragraph in the "Welcome" section, the group describes the United States as being "devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens."

Tens of millions?

That's a lot of people.

Let's go back to Adame of the U.S. Border Patrol.

In the last fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2003, to Sept. 30, 2004), the Border Patrol apprehended 491,000 migrants crossing the Arizona border, according to Adame.

Since Oct. 1, 2004, there have been 217,000 apprehensions.

The nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center's most recent statistics show that Arizona had a population of 500,000 undocumented immigrants for the 2002-2004 period, while overall the United States has an estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants.

Jorge Chapa, professor and director of Latino studies at Indiana University, sees the Minuteman movement as a result of many forces, from post-Sept. 11 security concerns to immigration reforms that keep the issue at the forefront of public attention.

Immigration is an issue that should be discussed by Americans, but let's not continue to make the same mistakes.

Immigrants aren't animals or aliens, they're humans. They shouldn't be apprehended by vigilantes with loaded guns, or described as plunderers when most simply seek jobs that Americans won't take.

If there's to be any showdown, it should be in Washington, D.C., not at the Arizona border.


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Register staff writer Michael Coronado contributed to this column from Tombstone, Ariz.
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CONTACT US: (714) 796-3649 or ycabrera@ocregister.com

Great article Watchman! I like your comebacks.

I can't argue much with the sentiment of the article, but the slant, as usual, was off target. I did send her a polite response starting with:

You wrote:
"Part of the blame lies with the media, which contributes to the hysteria by not doing a responsible job of covering this issue."

Then you proved your point by writing:

"They shouldn't be apprehended by vigilantes with loaded guns, or described as plunderers when most simply seek jobs that Americans won't take."
If you did any homework at all about the Minuteman Project (which I support 100%), you would have found that they have no intention of "apprehending" anyone. Illegals cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars a year. Since you live in California, you should be well aware of the cost. Should we call illegals a "supplemental cost factor?" You left off the last part of the "jobs that Americans won't take," which is "at what they want to pay." Talk to a few economists if you don't believe me. Labor rates here are getting depressed.
For the most part, the mainstream media in this country ignores the issue, probably because of a bad case of misapplied political correctness. Or they just lack the guts.

I also pointed out that the Hispanic community often refuses to acknowledge the difference between legal and illegal immigration, and
there is a huge difference.

Originally Posted by butterbean

Great article Watchman! I like your comebacks.

Well, Butterbean, thank you for those kind words. I think I'll send my comeback to the reporter. No sense talking back to her without letting her in on it. :P Wonder if she'd be open-minded enough to consider, even for a minute, that the people she calls "humans" are both "human" and alien? Nah... probably not. But miracles do still happen.

And I like those really strange crime stories you find. What kind of list are you on? You really come up with some unusual ones .. and that's a good thing.

Dataman,

I referenced her "opinion piece," provided a link to the discussion and sent her my post.

Since I was talking "to her," I thought she might want to know.

Or would that be "talking back to her?"

Mama always told me not to talk back!

Gee, all I got was a boilerplate canned response. Dataman, is this what you received?
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Thank you for taking the time to write and share your thoughts. I
appreciate the feedback.
Best regards,

Yvette Cabrera
The Orange County Register
625 N. Grand Ave.
Santa Ana, Ca. 92701
714-796-3649