http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3825969.html

April 28, 2006, 1:14AM

IMMIGRATION DEBATE
La raza not united on border
One Hispanic Minuteman says it's matter of law, not a race issue
By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Al Garza says he's proud of his Latino heritage, his race. La raza, he calls it, shifting easily from English to Spanish.

But he said he's not about to join the protesters who have taken to the streets of Houston and other cities in recent weeks in demand of amnesty for illegal immigrants.

"Personally, I'm very disappointed in our own raza at what they're doing," said Garza, a Texas native who wants to end the flow of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Just because I'm Hispanic doesn't mean I'm going to allow complete strangers trampling over property, vandalizing people's homes and ranches," he said.

Garza, former Texas president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and now the group's second-in-command, is one of the nation's most prominent Hispanic anti-immigration activists.

Ten percent of the Minutemen's 8,000 members are Hispanic, he said.

"This has nothing to do with race," said Garza, who was born in Raymondville in South Texas. "Anyone that has any racial agenda is not wanted in our group."

What matters, Garza says, is enforcing the law and getting control of the border. His view of illegal immigrants, some experts say, underscores long-held differences between American-born Latinos and foreign-born newcomers.

"There is a major divide between the immigrant community and the native community," said Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., a history professor at the University of Houston. "From the very beginning you see these differences, but over the years our differences have been maintained."

Indeed, some polls show that American-born Hispanics are more critical of immigrants than newcomers.

While the foreign-born are nearly unanimous in their belief that immigrants strengthen the U.S. with their talents and work ethic, native-born Hispanics are more divided.

Sixty-five percent say immigrants are a plus, but 28 percent say they are a burden, according to a 2005 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a research group in Washington, D.C.


Differing opinions
Latinos' views vary widely depending on their socioeconomic status, country of origin, time in the U.S. and state of residence, said Rogelio Saenz, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University.


Some Hispanics try to "prove to society at large that they themselves are different, that they are not associated with immigrants," Saenz said.

While Hispanics tend to express positive attitudes toward immigrants, most do not support increasing the flow of legal immigration from Latin America, the Pew Hispanic Center said.

Spring resident John Martinez, 39, said that "when people think of Mexicans, they don't think of people like me." They think of the immigrant and the laborer, not someone who went to college and listens to pop radio, he said.

And when Houston students walked out of classes to protest a federal proposal to make illegal immigrants felons in late March, he said he was embarrassed by their defiance of the law, and said they in no way represented him.

Martinez said he was born in the U.S. and didn't have to go through the process of getting residency, "but I know that it's there and that people do what has to be done. I just think it demeans everything when those people are out there and they're expecting to have all the civil liberties and rights" as everyone else.

"This is not their country. What gives me the right to go to Mexico and demand those things that they're demanding?" Martinez said.


'There has to be a limit'
Another Hispanic who opposes increased immigration is Charles Esquivo, 87, a native Houstonian.


Esquivo, a World War II veteran and member of a group called Texans for Immigration Reform, said his main objection to illegal immigrants is he does not "want a group of people who are going to change the society."

His family's ancestry — his own ethnic background — was never important to him, he said. He's been to Mexico before, and "I don't see anything over there that I want," he said.

"There has to be a limit to the number of people who we are taking in. We can't take in all poor people, people who are being repressed," Esquivo said.

Absent a sizable, organized group of conservative Latinos who favor restrictions on illegal immigration, the rift among different segments of Latinos won't have much of a political impact, San Miguel Jr. said.

"In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a large segment of the (Mexican-American) community that saw (the Chicano movement) as too radical. But the movement still made gains," Saenz said. Moreover, today's immigrant movement has been national, versus regional, in focus and with a great deal of participation, he said.


Sentiment not new
During the Chicano movement, even the farm workers and Cesar Chavez were opposed to illegal immigration. They later changed their view and incorporated illegal immigrants into their fight.


Anti-immigrant sentiment among Hispanics isn't new.

The League of United Latin American Citizens opposed the Bracero Program, a binational temporary contract labor program initiated between Mexico and the U.S. in 1942, because of the exploitation of workers.

In 1954, LULAC supported Operation Wetback, the federal government's push to deport undocumented workers.

And the American G.I. Forum, a Mexican-American veterans-based group, had little sympathy for illegal immigrants, co-producing a study titled "What Price Wetbacks?" which maintained that these immigrants displaced American workers, damaged the health of the American people, harmed retailers and posed a security threat to the nation, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

These organizations later shifted their positions as civil rights advocates pushed to incorporate all Hispanics.

Saenz said that while third-, fourth- and fifth-generation Hispanics may try to distance themselves from immigrants, divisions in the community won't likely hurt the pro-immigrant movement.

"The majority of Latinos tend to oppose the most restrictive parts of the immigration bill," San Miguel Jr. agreed.

"Many people really believe undocumented people are here because of U.S. actions, immigration policies" and a demand for cheap labor, he said.

"People know the United States' (foreign) policies in Central America and Latin America have contributed to disruptions, and that's why they leave."

cynthia.garza@chron.com