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Article published May 13, 2006
Dobbs does not present historical face of America or Americans
George Benge
Gannett News Service

In the beginning, Cesar Chavez, the charismatic Mexican-American farm-union leader, was the face of the Latino civil-rights movement.

Now, regrettably, the person most associated with the Latino civil-rights movement is Lou Dobbs.

Dobbs is the xenophobic, jingoistic and chauvinistic demagogue whose biased pronouncements from his CNN bully pulpit demean and demonize undocumented Latino immigrants on a nightly basis.

Using the term “illegal aliens” as his mantra and sword, anchorman Dobbs has made demagoguery — the obtaining of power by impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace — his ticket to notoriety and better ratings.

Dobbs is not alone in his misguided determination to promote divisiveness and suspicion among America’s richly diverse people.

The so-called Minuteman Project is a quixotic mission to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing the United States’ Southwestern border with Mexico. The men and women of Minuteman fantasize about barbed-wire barriers and James Bond-style surveillance missions to round up “illegal aliens” like so many long-horned cattle.

But let’s get real: Undocumented immigrants are here to stay, and they are taking the tough, dirty jobs in slaughterhouses, poultry mills, the farming and forestry industries, high-rise projects, construction and restaurant chains that nobody else — repeat, nobody — really wants.

Most Asian Americans and Native Americans aren’t complaining.

Undocumented people aren’t taking away many jobs in Indian Country, where soaring, double-digit unemployment is the norm, and there are few jobs. If anything, undocumented people are contributing to the workforces at Native American casinos and resorts.

And please remember that North America’s Indian people share a common ancestral history with millions of undocumented immigrants.

There was a time — before the arrival of the pilgrims, Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors — when native people of the Northern Hemisphere and native people of the Southern Hemisphere formed an unbroken chain of indigenous nations stretching from the Bering Strait to Cape Horn.

This is why so many undocumented Central and South Americans look more like North American Navajo, Cheyenne and Sioux and less like Lou Dobbs.

Clearly, the millions of undocumented people in the United States aren’t going anywhere, nor should they.

The reality is they’re here, they’re staying here and their numbers will continue to grow — despite Lou Dobbs, despite the Minutemen and despite congressional babble about walls, criminalization and deportation of “illegal aliens.”

Benge: gbenge@gannett.com.