Thread: Immigration reform an inside job

http://www.dailypilot.com/front/story/1 ... 0216c.html

LATIN LANDSCAPE
Immigration reform an inside job

HUMBERTO CASPA

LATIN LANDSCAPE James Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was just a few miles away from Costa Mesa last month to give a speech at the California Coalition for Immigration Reform headquarters in Garden Grove. There's little reason to doubt his love for this country -- but his tactics raise many concerns.

Gilchrist is the man who led the controversial and highly publicized border patrols along the U.S. and Mexican border in Arizona a month ago. He has said he would like to extend his vigilante approach to California. I can imagine a few anti-immigrant groups in Costa Mesa would love to invite his group to secure the Eastside from Westside infiltration.


Instead of making scathing remarks against immigration in Garden Grove, or Costa Mesa or any city in Orange County, Gilchrist and his group should be in Washington, pushing President Bush as well as congressional leaders on Capitol Hill to change our country's economic policies toward Latin America. That's where the immigration issue really resides, not at the U.S. and Mexican border.

During the 1970s and 1980s, people from Central America moved to the United States for political reasons. The Reagan administration's commitment to stopping the spread of communism in the region deepened our involvement in these countries' ongoing civil wars. Little by little, though without officially committing any troops, we got pulled in to the political turmoil in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

At the height of the civil war in El Salvador, thousands fled that country to seek political asylum in the United States. Costa Mesa, like other cities in Orange County, became safe havens for Salvadoran immigrants. A few moved out but most stayed and settled for good. This, in part, explains why the "pupuserias" -- traditional Salvadoran restaurants -- have operated successfully in our city.

Unlike that wave of immigration, people now coming here from Mexico and other Latin American countries are doing so for economic reasons. Since the 1980s, our government has forced Latin American leaders to practice a version of open market economics. And under the International Monetary Fund's insistence, most policies benefit international interests rather than local industries. These policies include privatization, downsizing of the public sector, lowering of trade barriers and other trickled-down economic mandates.

On the positive side, most countries' economies grew steadily during the last two decades and inflation rates also declined.

However, because markets in Latin America ended up unprotected against modern enterprises and cheaper products from the United States and other industrial powers, most local industries lost strength. Economic development never really took off.

Today, unemployment is up, poverty has increased and drug trafficking has risen dramatically because these governments have had little resources to fight criminal organizations and petty thugs. Of course, government corruption has made the situation more difficult.

As a result, many people were left in desperate conditions and with few choices. In short, they had more reasons to abandon their homeland. A lot of them have tried to reach the United States to better their lives despite the risks of crossing the border towns, and of being apprehended by immigration officials and, in April, the Minutemen.

My guess is that sometime in the future, Gilchrist might show up in Newport Beach or Costa Mesa to stage his usual rallies against immigration and also to broaden his political base. I'm sure many people here might agree, and rightly so, with his stance against illegal immigration.

His strategy, though, is a deceptive scheme and accomplishes little, if anything. It only creates animosity among ethnic groups, generates divisions on the basis of race and promotes tensions among Latinos and white Americans.

Illegal immigration is a major issue today; I wouldn't be writing on this topic if it weren't that way. But the best approach in reducing illegal immigration isn't by standing up and getting burned by the intense heat along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Instead, people should press their representatives in Congress as well as President Bush to stop pushing governments in Latin America that implement market economics that hurt local industries. These policies do work for us, but they don't for them.

* HUMBERTO CASPA is a Costa Mesa resident and bilingual writer. He can be reached by e-mail at hcletters@yahoo.com.

I read this with interest, because I can't get this paper to print a letter I sent in support of the protest in Laguna Beach and my opposition to illegal immigration.

And whenever I send letters to the Laguna Beach edition of the LA Times they email back and ask me to provide my actual street address before they will run anything. I highly doubt they ask all the letters to the editor for personal info such as street addresses. Do you think they asked for this guy's home address?