Thread: LAT:Readers share thoughts on immigration

Hector Tobar:
Readers share thoughts on immigration

March 16, 2009
When I was a boy growing up in Los Angeles circa 1970, I did something that brought dishonor to my people.

I tossed a hamburger wrapper onto the parking lot at a fast-food restaurant. This caused my mother to snap that I should never litter because "when people look at you and see black hair and brown eyes, they think you don't have any manners."

The word Latino had not yet entered the California lexicon. Hispanic or Hispano was used only by bureaucrats and academics. But my mother and I were not Mexican Americans, the only ethnic label most white Angelenos might have attached to us.

My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.

A generation or two later, with waves of immigration under our belts, we guatemaltecos, mexicanos, salvadoreños and other sons and daughters of Latin America are way past making first impressions.

Some people think we're strutting around Southern California as if we own the place. They are intimidated by our great numbers, our seemingly exotic ways and the Romance language that often flows from our lips.Your humble columnist, with his surname and annoying tendency to quote people who speak Spanish, is seen by some as a symbol of this "foreign" presence. Never mind that I am, like millions of other Latinos, a proud citizen of the United States.

In the eyes of one Times reader, I am this paper's "de facto Mexican columnist."

I can almost feel the keyboards and smart phones vibrating rage as people compose the missives they send me, unburdening themselves of frustrations with Latino neighbors they assume to be undocumented immigrants.

Many of the messages are impassioned but reasoned pleas for restraints on immigration. Some are laced with stereotypes and insults.

"Why do you waste print on a dump like East L.A.?" one reader wrote after I penned a column about that community. "This is a crime infested Mexican [expletive]! ...These are illegal immigrants, you racist. They are an inferior subhuman race... How many murders did you animals have this week?"

When Dan from San Diego County wrote me to say that he believed I would be perfectly happy in "Third World California," I wrote back and asked why he was angry.

He told me he had grown up in Long Beach but moved to a "decent area" in northern San Diego County, far away from what he called the "border town" culture of certain San Diego County cities. Still, he said, one day he looked out his window to see "two carloads of Mexicans" pull up in front of his house, change the diapers of their children and toss the diapers in the street.

"Is this the behavior of an educated cultured person?" Dan wrote. "This is Third World behavior of someone with no regard for the environment or pride in their surroundings."

If there had been a Mexican mother near the diaper throwers, she might have said: "Mensos! Por eso no nos quieren!" (Loose translation: "Idiots! That's why they don't want us here!") Instead, Dan chased down the litterbugs himself and made them pick up their trash. Then he hurled his anger at their entire ethnic group.

"If that makes me a racist, then so be it," he wrote. "I'll wear it proudly."

It's unfair, of course, to judge an entire people by the behavior of a few knuckleheads. Some would call it racist. I'm hopeful that only a small minority of Southern Californians think that way.

Still, I listen to Dan and hear nostalgia for the Southern California that was. He is a native Californian, like me, and he feels a sense of loss when he compares the timeworn and stressed-out region of the present with the more optimistic place of his youth.

In that California, the schools were among the nation's best. The freeways and thoroughfares were empty of graffiti, there wasn't much crime. Or at least, that's the way we like to remember it.

Thinking about those days, I summon the words of one of my favorite writers, Denis Johnson, as he grappled with memories of 1970s America: "That world! These days it's all been erased, and they've rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere."

Can we really blame immigration for destroying so much that was good in our city? What about the 1970s tax revolt and the money that disappeared from our schools and libraries? Was it open borders that doomed us? Or was it our long embrace of a culture of self-interest?

For some people, it's a lot easier to gloss over the complexities of our recent history and just blame the guy next door named Pepe.

There is a vast American subculture out there swallowing all sorts of conspiracy theories involving shiftless Spanish-speaking immigrants seeking to drain our public coffers.

I even got an e-mail bemoaning immigration when I wrote about the beauty of our Southern California winters. After thanking me for reminding him of L.A.'s enchantments, one writer lamented how crowded the city has become and wrote, "Did you read how 1,400 illegals get kidney transplants/dialysis for free?"

Most of these writers share a vision of Latin America, and especially Mexico, as a place of poverty, peril and dysfunction. They worry that the regionis exporting its sicknesses to the United States. A series of stories in this paper labeled "Mexico Under Siege" has stoked those concerns.

"Your country is imploding," someone e-mailed me last week, "and your silence is deafening." He was referring to Mexico, which is not my country -- though I'm happy to say I once lived there.

Earlier, I had promised the writer of that e-mail that I would one day address the root causes of illegal immigration. Fulfilling that promise was long overdue. So the other day I hopped on a train and headed south.

I crossed on foot into Mexico, that land next door that many Californians have come to fear. I'll tell you what I found there in this space tomorrow.

hector.tobar@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 167.column

My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.

So is he legal or not?

Originally Posted by WorriedAmerican

My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.

So is he legal or not?

He is WA:


Never mind that I am, like millions of other Latinos, a proud citizen of the United States.

Some people think we're strutting around Southern California as if we own the place. They are intimidated by our great numbers, our seemingly exotic ways and the Romance language that often flows from our lips.

Well, they are strutting around, running people out and claiming they do own the place. It's not like people make this up. It was printed on signs, this is our land, angelos get out. Exotic ways? Romance language? That's pretty much a personal preference. I do admit I had to look up the word exotic......not that I don't know what it means, I just had a higher standard placed on the word. Never realized tossing dirty diapers in someones lawn is considered exotic......but according to the defination, it qualifies. Foreign. Just me but I don't consider Spanish, in the Mexican form, a romantic language. Then again, I guess it depends on who's doing the talking and if romance is in the air. But it's no more "romantic" sounding than any other language. From what the majority have to say, I don't care how flowery the language, insults don't sound romantic.

It does depend on the person, I do agree with that. Unfortunatly when the majority are being rude and causing issues, the good ones get the fall out as well. Happens with all groups, no matter who you are. But one has to take a look when ALL others are fleeing their long time homes, or desperatly wanting to, not to mention states, because living there has become intolerable and they all have the same issues and problems across the board. I saw my old neighborhood totally crumble in no time....it wasn't just whites, it was blacks, asians, young and old, and even latino citizens fleeing. It wasn't a color they were running from, it was the impossible behavior. Now when even your own want to go and not be around you, maybe there's something to consider.....the problem isn't everyone else or racism or anything....it's you. You are impossible to live around and not a good neighbor.

So here we have another propaganda piece that refuses to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration! We have 3-5 million illegal invaders (with more entering on a daliy basis) living in California and yet this Hector Tobar refuses to even admit that this might be a problem!!!

Instead, we get this piece which seems to romanticize the illegal invasion of California! Of course, one can never be fullly sure since Hector Tobar (like so many of his colleagues) fails to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. There is not even a hint of the possibility this illegal invasion might actually be a problem for this state, as well as this country!

What do you expect from the LA Times!!

It's unfair, of course, to judge an entire people by the behavior of a few knuckleheads. Some would call it racist. I'm hopeful that only a small minority of Southern Californians think that way.

Et tu Hector? It's also unfair and erronous (sp?) to call illegal immigration a racial issue, so why do "your" people persist in doing so?

Anyone who comes here illegally has no honor and no respect for the "host" aka invaded country. Do you really expect Americans to welcome and accept people like that? Do you expect Americans to accept non-assimilation by foreigners?

Some people think we're strutting around Southern California as if we own the place.

It's because you do strut around like you own the place!! I don't think this, I know this to be true as I see it every day!!

It's unfair, of course, to judge an entire people by the behavior of a few knuckleheads.

It is......but unfortunatly it's not just a few. Just a few whites owned slaves, but we all catch the backlash, still, generations later.

My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.

As long as I've lived, the first hispanics did make a first impression, for the most part it was good. The idea that they were hard working and family oriented and other things wasn't made up. I never remember any of the issues happening now, ever happening before. Never saw the violence and attitude and blatent racism that is so prevalant now. It wasn't until this invasion that things changed. I never recall drugs or guns or anything being in the forefront for them. Never had issues of rapes and kidnappings and all this going on. Atleast for me, it was a shock......where is all this hatred and attitude comming from? What do you mean "Latino rights"? In all honesty, where haven't they been able to do the same things I have all along? What have they been denied that wasn't there if they worked for it? I was used to seeing well maintained yards and the only thing exotic was pretty flower beds around a statue of the Virgin Mary. Big family gatherings with cook-outs and kids laughing and playing.....quite touching. Not trash and drunks and 15 cars and music till the wee hours of the morning. They HAD a respectful reputation as a whole for a race. Most were good decent people. Then the scales tipped. I didn't tip it. They did. When you have your spokes-people speaking for you claiming you are all in agreement based soley on your ethnic group, and this is the way you all feel, well, unless enough stand up against it, what do you expect?

When I was a boy growing up in Los Angeles circa 1970, I did something that brought dishonor to my people.

The biggest "dishonor" that Hispanics can bring to "their people" is coming to America illegally. Just look at all the problems it has caused for everyone. We have millions of illegal Hispanics here and you wonder why Americans are getting angry and frustred? And then you all shout "racial profiling" or call us racist when we complain about it. Americans didnt cause this problem. Illegal Hispanics are to blame.

Originally Posted by WorriedAmerican

My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.

So is he legal or not?

judging from the picture on the webpage. it was taken in Angeles National Forest in 70. so even if he was illegal then they were given amnesty in 86