Thread: More than just Latinos illegally call U.S. home

http://www.signonsandiego.com

More than just Latinos illegally call U.S. home


Nearly one-quarter are from other nations
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 10, 2006

Driving around San Diego, an undocumented nanny nervously checks her rear-view mirror, hoping she isn't about to get pulled over. She has no driver's license, but she needs to get to and from work and to shuttle around the children she cares for. So she drives anyway, always looking over her shoulder.

In a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, an undocumented bartender wonders when he will see his family again. He has made a few visits home in the seven years he's lived here illegally, always managing to sneak back into the country. But security has grown tighter. If there is a family emergency and he has to go home, he's not sure he can return.

Home isn't Mexico, though. The bartender is Irish.

So is the nanny.

They are among the estimated 2.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States who are not from Latin America but from Asia, Europe, Canada, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. They make up nearly a quarter of the nation's undocumented population, yet in the current immigration debate, they have been all but invisible.

In Congress, the focus has been on stopping illegal immigration at the southern border, where most illegal entrants are from Latin America. In the anti-illegal immigration lobby, most of the ire has been directed at Latinos, primarily Mexicans, with activist groups scouting the Mexican border and some recently picketing the local Mexican consulate.

In the wave of pro-immigrant activism seen in recent months, most non-Latino immigrants have kept a low profile. There have been exceptions, such as the Irish immigrants who have rallied in Washington, D.C. Asian and Middle Eastern immigrant organizations have also lobbied for a comprehensive immigration overhaul. But relatively few non-Latino immigrants were visible in the spring's massive marches in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and other large cities.

Some reasons for this are more obvious than others. More than three-fourths of the nation's undocumented immigrants are from Latin America, making them by far more visible and, as a result, most frequently associated with illegal immigration by the media and politicians.

Because of the size of the nation's Latino population, a greater number of Latino organizations have been engaged in lobbying and outreach than non-Latino groups. Immigrants from some countries have kept mum for fear of government reprisal if deported, some immigrant advocates say. They also say that the focus on Latin America and Mexico has left some non-Latinos unsure of how the debate affects them.

For many Latinos, who feel they are in the bull's-eye of the debate, this association is a stigma. For others, it is both a blessing and a curse. Some non-Latino undocumented immigrants, especially white Europeans, enjoy an added layer of anonymity they say helps them escape detection. Yet they are in the same boat as the rest, living and working in the shadows, afraid to visit home and hoping they can eventually be legalized.

“A lot of people say 'You should be OK – you're not Mexican, and you're not from the Middle East,' ” said the Irish nanny, a tall, blue-eyed woman in her 40s who did not want her name used for fear of deportation. “But it doesn't console me too much.”

The reforms these immigrants hope for vary depending on where they come from. For example, many Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants are not so much concerned with guest worker programs, which don't affect them, as they are with access to political and religious asylum. Others want easier access to work visas. Some, including Filipinos, want to speed up sometimes decades-long waits for family reunification.

And although it seems unlikely that a new law will be passed this year, all are worried about House legislation that would make it a felony to be in the country illegally, rather than the civil offense it is now.

Advocates lobbying on behalf of these undocumented immigrants say the misperception that illegal immigration is a Latino issue sometimes prevents them from obtaining the support of their own ethnic enclaves here.

“This is not a Latino issue, but the mass media frames it as such,” said JoAnn Fields, a Filipino community activist from San Diego who helped organize a pro-immigrant march April 9 that drew at least 50,000 participants, but relatively few Filipinos. “People see it as a Mexican issue. This is why our community doesn't get involved.”




Majority from Mexico
The nanny arrived in San Diego with a tourist visa in December 2003 to visit her aging parents, both of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens.
“When I came here on vacation, I thought of illegal immigrants as Mexican,” she said, until she made the decision to become one herself.

She found her father in very poor health, needing constant care for heart and lung problems. Her mother was not well either, so she decided to stay here to help them. She applied for a visa extension, but it was turned down. Her parents have since sponsored her, but it will take years just to process the paperwork.

Now working, she has become active in a local church and made friends. She recently had to out herself to some fellow parishioners making a charity field trip to Mexico, explaining why she couldn't go along. But most people who hear her lilting accent ask no questions about her status, even those she hears complaining about illegal immigration.

“I hear people talking about the immigration issue, and they don't realize I'm one of these immigrants,” she said. “They say it in a put-down sort of way ... they are talking about Mexican people, but I'm thinking, 'You know what, I'm one of those people they are talking about.' ”

The bartender, a 35-year-old Irish immigrant from Cork who has illegally worked in a San Francisco Mexican restaurant for seven years, believes it is people such as his undocumented Mexican co-workers who are the targets of public ire, not illegal workers such as himself.

“As you can imagine, a lot of my colleagues are in the same situation as I am,” he said, but “people who are opposed to illegal immigration are specifically opposed to Mexican and Hispanic immigration, saying they have to learn English and learn the words of the national anthem.”

However discriminatory some public attitudes might be, the media and political focus on Mexico is not unfounded. Mexicans alone account for 56 percent of the nation's undocumented population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and a higher percentage of Mexican immigrants tend to be undocumented. Out of the estimated 11.6 million Mexican immigrants in the United States, about 6.2 million are undocumented, said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the nonpartisan center in Washington, D.C.

“Mexico is sort of in a different ballpark,” Passel said. “For example, basically there are about 300,000 illegal Chinese immigrants out of about 1.9 million, one out of six. For Mexico, it is more like one out of two.”

In addition, the majority of undocumented Asians, Europeans and others did not cross a land border clandestinely but, like the Irish nanny and bartender, entered legally on tourist, work or student visas, then stayed when their visas expired. According to the Pew center, about 45 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the United States arrived legally in this manner.


Relatively little visibility
The perception of illegal immigration as a Latino issue is not the sole reason why non-Latino immigrants have been only marginally involved in the debate.
“The organizations that were out front mobilizing people for the demonstrations were really people that cater to Latinos,” said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego. “It's not much of a mystery.”

Among those groups that have kept the lowest profile are those that fear reprisals that go beyond deportation.

This includes immigrants from countries such as China and several Middle Eastern and African nations with repressive regimes, where being sent home could involve fines, imprisonment or more extensive punishment, immigrant advocates say.

In recent years, it has been increasingly difficult for many of these immigrants to obtain asylum. This includes Iraqi Chaldeans, thousands of whom live in the San Diego area. According to immigration attorneys representing them, these Christian Iraqis, some of whom have entered illegally through Mexico, are having a harder time obtaining asylum on grounds of religious persecution since the U.S.-led invasion, though with Sunni and Shiite Muslims fighting for control of Iraq, they face as much peril now as before.

“If Latinos are worried about being rounded up and deported, Middle Easterners are worried about being put against a wall and shot in their home countries,” said Ali Golchin, a San Diego immigration attorney who often represents Middle Eastern clients.

Middle Eastern immigrants are also reluctant to speak up for fear of being singled out by U.S. authorities in the post-Sept. 11 climate, Golchin said.

Some Chinese immigrants have been fined or jailed after being deported, said Stan Mark, program director of the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Not only do these immigrants fear government retaliation, but they also fear retaliation from smugglers, to whom some owe upward of $50,000.

Misleading images and sound bites in the mainstream media, coupled with a lack of community outreach, also take a toll.

In San Diego, home to the nation's second-largest enclave of Filipino immigrants, activists such as JoAnn Fields have struggled to get the local community involved in recent pro-legalization rallies, even though there are an estimated 175,000 undocumented Filipinos in the U.S, according to the Pew center.

“All you hear is 'Si se puede,' ” Fields said, referring to the popular Spanish “Yes we can” chant often heard at rallies. “I don't want to put this down. But people don't read the newspaper. They think it's not our problem, and that they don't need to get into it.”

Siu Hin Lee of the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, which helped organize a massive pro-immigrant rally in Los Angeles in March, has found similarly low interest in the immigration debate within that city's large Chinese immigrant population, and he doesn't put all the blame on fear.

Recent Chinese immigrants have been steadily bombarded with confusing media images such as Mexican flags waving at rallies, he said. Also, in the Latino community, radio personalities and other prominent figures have engaged in community outreach. But little such outreach has occurred among Asians, he said.

All of this combined has left many Asian and other non-Latino immigrants in the dark about just what is being discussed in the nation's capital, he said, and how its outcome, if any, stands to affect undocumented immigrants from all countries.

“We're saying we have to emphasize this as a multi-ethnic issue,” Lee said. “It is not just a Mexican issue. This is a Chinese, Asian, African, even European issue. This is really important to everyone.”


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Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com

I'm not sure what point the writer is trying to make exactly. What ever is decided to do or actions taken will apply to all illegals.

I also dispute the writers implications that ~25% are non Latino. I'd like to see her back up of those numbers. Everything I read says otherwise. About 85+% are Latino with the overwhelming part of that being Mexican.


Leslie Berestein is well liked by the California Chicano News Media Association so I am sure she has no bias whatsoever.

http://www.ccnmasd.org/news0603lapluma.shtml

Well let's see. While your at work a 2000 pound bull enters your house, and also a 5 pound possum. When you open the door and step in do you have a bull problem or a possum problem? Both, but which gets your attention?

Funny, I didn't see that a single Irish flag being waved in the streets when the illegals and their supporters marched earlier this year. Also, I haven't heard any Irish calling for parts of the American continent be given back to Ireland, saying it was stolen from them. And I never turn on the news at night hearing about masses of Irish getting into DUI car wrecks and fleeing afterwards. I have never heard of huge numbers of rapes, molestations, kidnappings, murders or machete or hatchet slayings commited by the Irish. I never seen masses of Irish pregnant women clogging up ER waiting rooms. Although there may be some illegal Irish gang members, I have never seen any Celtic gang grafitti covering every exposed surface in my hometown.

Although there may be some illegal Irish gang members, I have never seen any Celtic gang grafitti covering every exposed surface in my hometown.

However, we don't know that the Irish illegals weren't part of terrorist orgs. in their homeland. We just shouldn't have to even wonder about who's is here after 9/11!

I don't care where they are all from. If they are here illegally, they need to leave.

That being said, there is a reason why the Mexican illegals are getting more attention. Maybe it is because they are the ones marching in the streets, calling everyone racist, threatening to take back their land, etc.

I don't care where they are all from. If they are here illegally, they need to leave.

Amen to that!

I second that dlm.