Thread: Mexican immigrants caught in backlash of terror anxiety

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Posted on Sun, Sep. 10, 2006

Mexican immigrants caught in backlash of terror anxiety

By Katherine Corcoran
Mercury News

Pedro Hernandez came from Mexico with a sixth-grade education and not a word of English. Ten years later, he is completing his business degree at San Jose State after mastering a new language, earning a GED and getting his associate's degree at DeAnza College -- all while working full time.

With drive and ambition that mirror countless immigrants', Hernandez wonders why he now is linked in the public discourse with the so-called war on terror.

``For some crazy reason this thing is focused on people from Latin America,'' the 26-year-old San Jose man said. ``I'm being seen like an enemy.''

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had an outsize effect on the longstanding immigration debate in America. Literally the day before Sept. 11, the news was full of accounts of President Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, drafting an amnesty plan for Mexicans already in the United States.

When the World Trade Center towers fell, talk of an immigration plan ceased this side of the border, only to re-emerge four years later in the form of a congressional bill aimed at blocking and deporting undocumented workers.

It was drafted in part in the name of fighting terror, despite the fact that the Sept. 11 terrorists were from Arab countries and entered the United States for the most part legally. And to date, not a single terror act or plot has involved a Mexican immigrant.

But many say the national climate of fear after the attacks made it easy for people to link a new security threat with an old one: the social and cultural impact of undocumented immigrants, who stream over the Mexican border at an estimated rate of 500,000 a year.

Sept. 11 was a ``freebie'' to those who favor cracking down on undocumented immigration, said Heather Mac Donald, a fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute, who favors tough border enforcement.

``Most Islamic terrorists are not going to take their chances with a coyote on the Mexican border,'' Mac Donald said. ``But it's not specious or in bad faith for people who otherwise want strict border controls and stricter immigration policy to raise the terror issue.

``If you can't keep day laborers out,'' she added, ``you can't keep terrorists out.''

The implied links are everywhere. Late last month, both Democrats and Republicans came under attack for inciting voter emotions by associating Latino immigrants with terror threats in campaign ads.

In one case, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pulled an Internet ad after Latinos complained that it put images of people presumably running across the Mexican border next to Osama bin Laden and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and asked ``Feel secure?''

In another, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sponsored an ad on behalf of Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The ad accused Chafee's opponent of being soft on terror because as a mayor, he allowed police to accept identification cards issued by the Mexican Consulate.

``Your ad shamefully demonizes Latinos by falsely implying that Mexican immigrants will carry out acts of terrorism against government buildings and airplanes,'' the Democratic National Committee's Hispanic Caucus wrote to Republican committee chair Elizabeth Dole. ``Such divisive, misleading innuendos recklessly incite fear for what can only be a calculated attempt to win an election by scapegoating.''

Latinos, whether illegal or U.S. citizens, report an impact from such connections.

In a recent poll by the National Council for Community and Justice, Latinos were the only ethnic group besides Muslims to report more incidents of discrimination since 2000.

``They have to find someone to blame, and the easiest are the weakest who don't have a voice or a vote,'' said Juan David Garcia, 30, an alcohol and drug counselor in East Palo Alto.

Imelda Rodriguez, also of East Palo Alto, runs her own cleaning business, works part time at Planned Parenthood, volunteers for an anti-domestic violence group and studies English and nursing at Cañada College.

``I'm not a criminal. I'm all those things,'' she said. But the security debate has made her feel her status as a foreigner more than ever. ``Because of appearance,'' she added, ``because of my accent.''

While some link Mexican immigrants with terror, to many, the real ``threat'' is a cultural one, with 12 million undocumented residents and more coming every day.

``Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves . . . and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream,'' Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington wrote in Foreign Policy in 2004 as an excerpt from his book, ``Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.''

``The United States ignores this challenge at its peril,'' Huntington wrote.

While some Americans already feared outsiders, Sept. 11 allowed them to express the feeling more freely, critics of the current environment said.

``The idea that Mexicans are a threat to the prevailing culture is exacerbated when we are at war or there's an outside threat. `We have to be united,' '' said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado of the New Americans Immigration Museum and Learning Center in San Diego. Sept. 11, he added, brought forth notions of how we think about our country and who's a good citizen or not. ``Minorities and immigrants especially bear the brunt of that.''

The 2000 U.S. Census data, coincidentally released in the summer of 2001 just before the terror attacks, highlighted a significant demographic shift with the rapid growth of Latinos. The nation percolated with talk of the ``browning'' of America. Today, America's Latino transformation, confirmed in an August census update, has usurped all race conversations of the past.

``The rise in racism and xenophobia is real because people have the right to voice their fear of other people in the most egregious terms,'' said Bart Charlow, executive director of the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice.

But others say Sept. 11 gave border restrictionists a platform to discuss the social and economic implications of undocumented immigration without being assigned ugly motives.

``Talking about security makes it easier to talk about immigration without being called a racist,'' Mac Donald said. ``It does allow you to have cover against what is an unfortunate charge.''


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Contact Katherine Corcoran at kcorcoran@mercurynews.com or (40 920-5330.

In the United States of America is under attack, Congressman Ted Poe states that 28,000 Americans have been killed by illegal aliens since 2003. That is more than was killed on 9-11, the war in iraq and Afghanistan, if this isn't a terrorist threat then what is? And a threat of ReConquista? An invasion into the country of 20 million or more?

Couldn't help myself. Just sent this email to the author:

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?nam...wtopic&t=40593

Ms. Corcoran, re the above article:

I would ask you, please, to do a complete and researched article on the crimes committed by illegal aliens, in addition to the fact, that just by choosing to come here illegally, they are breaking our laws. They continue to do so, every day they choose to stay. Then there's the ID theft or forged documents, the actual criminal element, murders, rapes, gang rapes, DUI's, the robberies, etc.

Then there's the cost to we citizens and legal immigrants...not only in quality of life, that we've worked hard for, the overcrowding of our schools with resultant poor education for our children, the burden on our medical facilities, indeed closure of hospitals along the border states, the 3rd world nature of some of our over run cities, the overuse of social services, the loss of jobs for citizens, the diminishing of wages, the refusal of assimilation (which you touched on), etc.

No one has a right to come here, just because they want to. They should go back home and work as hard as we and our parents and grandparents did, to make THEIR countries a good place to live.