Thread: South of the border bias

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... GRV7Q1.DTL

South of the border bias
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., San Diego Union-Tribune
Wednesday, January 25, 2006


San Diego -- DURING MY CAREER, I've eaten my share of crow. Now I wonder how it will taste to critics of Ambassador Tony Garza.

When Garza was tapped by President Bush -- an old friend from Texas -- to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the White House got angry letters from cranks who wanted to know why Bush hadn't chosen a "real American" to represent the country in Mexico.

For the bigoted and narrow-minded, life is never complicated. Their complaint about Garza: Americans of Mexican ancestry will always put Mexico's interests before the interests of the United States.

These folks are clueless. Studies show that Mexican Americans are just as supportive of protecting the nation's borders as any other group of Americans, sometimes even more so. Yet, some continue to believe that Mexican Americans head to the U.S.-Mexico border after dark to try to wave in members of their extended families.

That fear extends to foreign diplomats. When Garza was confirmed by the Senate in November 2002, a right-wing Web site that dabbles in nativism and anti-Mexican rhetoric dubbed the new ambassador a "cheerleader for the Mexican invasion" because he had said that he favored "earned legalization" for illegal immigrants.

Garza was simply repeating the administration's line. In fact, this week during an appearance at Kansas State University, President Bush again made the case for a guest-worker program that would legalize, at least temporarily, undocumented immigrants -- one that acknowledges the reality that the United States is now home to perhaps as many as 11 million illegal immigrants who aren't going anywhere, and we might as well accept it.

Let me spell it out: The reason that Bush and other administration officials can talk about legalizing illegal immigrants without raising many eyebrows is because they're not Mexican American and thus in cahoots with the Mexican government to retake the American Southwest. Not so for Garza.

So imagine how surprised some people are going to be now that Garza has come out swinging on the immigration issue with a sharply worded, commonsense rebuttal to criticism from Mexican politicians and journalists of efforts in Congress to beef up U.S. border security.

In a recent "newsletter" intended to kick off the new year, the U.S. ambassador called the Mexican criticism of recent immigration-reform measures passed by Congress "excessive, often irresponsible and almost always inaccurate." He specifically mentioned House Bill 4437, passed in December and now headed to the Senate. The bill calls for building barriers in certain locations along the border, increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, improving detention and deportation policies and other enforcement measures.

Seizing on the part about building fences, Mexicans made comparisons to the Berlin Wall. Comparing the two, said Garza, is "not only disingenuous and intellectually dishonest," but also "personally offensive." While saying that neither he nor President Bush supports the loony idea of building one big giant wall along the entire 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border, the ambassador highlighted the difference between a wall built by an authoritarian government to keep its own people in, and what is being suggested now, in which a "democratically elected government has proposed methods of protecting its own citizenry and enforcing our immigration laws."

Garza also challenged the idea advanced by some members of the Mexican elite that borders mean little and that illegal immigrants have an inherent "human right" to seek jobs in the United States, even if it means doing so illegally. There is no such right, he said. Rather, it's the right of every sovereign state -- including the United States -- "to control the entry of foreigners."

Drawing a distinction between legal and illegal immigration -- one which is often lost on our friends to the south -- Garza called illegal immigration a threat to the rule of law and an insult to the millions of immigrants who "play by the rules" to come to the United States legally, including those who come from Mexico.

Predictably, the Mexicans hit the roof. One Mexican journalist called Garza's remarks "offensive and defamatory."

Nonsense. They're neither. In fact, they are refreshingly truthful. Garza is simply stating the obvious -- that those millions of immigrants who come to the United States illegally each year from Mexico are breaking the law, and that the government of Mexico is failing its own people by not providing sufficient opportunity at home.

When it comes to immigration issues, Mexicans need a reality check. Luckily for the United States, there's a "real American" down there who is willing to give it to them.

Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.

Maybe we should get Bush and Garza to swap jobs? He couldn't be any worse.