Recently as I walked next to the curb of a quiet residential street in my neighborhood, a fast-moving pickup came close to hitting me, whizzing by only two or three feet away. The street is wide and there was no oncoming traffic that would have forced the driver to pass that close. I thought of a Maryknoll Sister killed years ago in Chile when struck by a truck's side-view mirror.
Back home I opened a letter from the National Council of La Raza, a national civil rights organization, telling of a video game called Border Patrol where the player tries to kill as many illegal immigrants as possible. The letter, by NCLR's president, Janet Murguia, said that Pat Buchanan, while on CNN hawking his book, said Latinos and immigrants will bring about the "final act of our civilization" and a "savage culture war."
"The immigration debate has led to inhumane and degrading treatment of immigrants, including millions of Hispanic Americans," Murguia says. In the recent Las Cruces diocesan assembly, where I gave a workshop, people petitioned for an end to summary deportations, saying immigration agents even invade homes to make arrests.
I'm not and never was an immigrant. My ancestors came to New Mexico, then part of New Spain, in 1693. We did not come to the U.S.; it came to us in 1847 when it conquered the Southwest. But I learned many years ago that strangers sometimes see me as a foreigner.
I was then working as an editor for George A. Pflaum Publisher in Dayton, Ohio. One Saturday afternoon I flew into Philadelphia to give a talk at a Catholic school. While ascending to the main concourse on an escalator, I saw about 20 men and women waving expectantly at the top. I turned back to see whom they were meeting, but no one was behind me. When I got there the crowd surged around me and a man put out his hand and said: "Welcome to America, Amram."
Suddenly everyone was trying to shake hands or hug me. A woman kept saying: "Don't be frightened, Amram. We are your friends." I finally got a chance to speak. Later, after I calmed down, I thought I should have asked who Amram was and where he came from.
This election season, politicians --- local, state and national --- weighed in against immigrants. In one forum convened by a candidate for the New York State Assembly, immigrants were described as vectors for head lice, mumps and tuberculosis. At a Washington, D.C., conference on overpopulation, a college professor said immigrants are destroying California. Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm said the way to destroy America is to be bilingual and multicultural. At another meeting, on the state of the church, held at The Catholic University of America, a sociologist said Hispanics are not getting naturalized.
All these statements brim with unsubstantiated generalizations and falsehoods. Dr. David Hayes Bautista, who as director of the UCLA Medical School's Center for Latino Health and Culture made a study of Latinos covering 50 years, found they have the highest rate of participation in the labor force, use less public assistance than other groups, smoke and drink less and have a lower incidence of drug use than the general population. What's more, they have healthier babies and live longer. Hayes Bautista asks, "So what's the problem?"
It is simply that truth and facts are no antidote for what ails us or a malice serious enough in my case to stir the paranoia, or accurate feeling, that the driver who came too close was sending a chilling message. Moises Sandoval is a former editor of Maryknoll magazine and founding editor of Revista Maryknoll. |