Racist Hate Aimed At Latinos, Not Immigrants [View All]

Hate Aimed at Latinos, Not Immigrants
By Ruben Navarette, AlterNet
May 16, 2008.

Latinos condemn the hypocrisy of a society that is addicted to illegal immigrant labor but looks for others to blame for the addiction. U.S.-born Latinos in America are fed up. They're tired of the ugliness in the immigration debate, and they're not buying the argument that it does not concern them.

You might live in Colorado or New Mexico or Arizona and come from a family that has lived in the United States for several generations. And yet, your citizenship is being challenged by nativists who paint with a broad brush. All they see is your skin color or surname and, from this, they conclude that -- unless you go along with every harebrained scheme to combat illegal immigration -- you're, as one reader recently informed me, "an American in name only."

Part of the problem is that the right-wingers weren't content to just attack illegal immigrants. They had to attack an entire culture, which is shared by legal immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics. And so, a discussion that should have been about exactly three things -- improving border security, smoothing the path for legal immigrants, and deciding the fate of 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States -- became about outlawing taco trucks, limiting the number of people in a home, blasting pizza parlors for taking pesos, banning Spanish language library books, and other nonsense.

"We will not be demonized," she said. "We will not be scapegoated. And we will not be ignored."

That's what I'm hearing from many U.S.-born Hispanics. When they talk to me about the immigration debate, they condemn the hypocrisy of a society that is addicted to illegal immigrant labor but looks for others to blame for the addiction. As for the claim that much of this is about national security, they wonder why no one talks about building a wall along the U.S.-Canada border. They worry about racial profiling as authorities become more aggressive in rounding up illegal immigrants. They recognize the racism, and the assault on their culture, and they resent that they're being lumped together with recent immigrants. But at the same time, they find it easy to identify with the immigrant plight -- through their parents or grandparents. Most of all, they scoff at the claim that, as U.S.-citizens, this debate doesn't concern them and that the attack is limited to illegal immigrants.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.alternet.org/immigration/85506/