Coincidentally, on the front page of Monday’s Seattle Times was yet another story among innumerable others on immigration, which is guaranteed to remind those so inclined to reboil their blood against “Mexicans.” The Times prints so many stories on immigration, and posts so many on its website, that you’d think the paper was the official organ of the ICE and various hate groups. The story, as many others are, was written by Lornet Turnbull, who apparently is tasked to do this because since although she is the designated authority on "minority" issues, at least on stories concerning Latinos she is “even-handed.” Not surprisingly, I am not of this opinion, and so are the committed xenophobes (the usual haunts of more than a few must be places like Stormfront) on the website’s comment pages, although obviously for much different reasons than mine. This particular story on the problems of farmers and orchard growers finding workers and the “solutions” to their plight might have sounded “fair” to some people, but I found it far, far short of being that.
If I was a reporter for the Times, I would first make an effort to provide historical context, and how events developed from there; why should these backwater plebes and their patrician puppet masters be allowed to be mired in their own ignorance?
For example: Why were there no quotas placed on immigrants from Latin America in the 1924 immigration law? Possibly because the U.S. had a “paternal” relationship with its southern neighbors, much as a parent/child relationship—and frequently feeling free to step in and “punish” wayward children? Is that because they provided a source of ready labor that could be used and discarded at will? Is it because at the time European (particularly Jewish) immigrants, unlike Latinos who suffered routine discrimination, were viewed as the real “threat” to “native” Americans and their “privileges?” Did the U.S. feel that it did not need an immigration policy in regard to Latinos , because it allowed the country to forcibly “repatriate” hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans during the 1930s, and “legitimize” the theft of their homes, businesses, property and financial resources—and even now allows Americans to deny this historical fact of their longstanding policy of discrimination?
I would also suggest that Americans put away their blinders and admit that since after the Second World War, returning veterans who as civilians had worked as migrant farm workers felt that because of their sacrifice, they were entitled to better; in the Oscar-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives, one such former migrant worker told banker Frederick March that he believed that he was “entitled” to a loan to buy his own land, and no doubt many returning veterans took advantage of a generous G.I. Bill and burgeoning industry to leave the fields. And why would they want to return to those fields? Edward R. Murrow’s “Harvest of Shame” showed that little had changed since the days of “Grapes of Wrath.” Someone had to fill the void. “Mexicans” had been doing so for decades in the West, yet their abuse was not acknowledged even by Murrow, and it wasn’t until Cesar Chavez began his farm workers labor movement (something the bigoted James Hoffa Jr. apparently has no knowledge of) and Robert F. Kennedy broke bread with him at the end of his hunger strike for improved conditions that anyone chose to take notice. In that respect I would also inquire of current farmers and orchid growers in the state of how they saw the available labor pool evolved over the decades, and thus their “bemusement” about the hypocrisy of the current anti-Latino labor sentiment. I would also talk to growers about the economic ignorance behind the claims made by anti-Latino immigrant fanatics. How much can they afford to pay workers without losing money and going out of business? What sense does it make to lose jobs here to foreign produce imports? Some people would say what does it matter if only a bunch of illegal immigrants are hurt; well, you also lose local consumers, and jobs peripheral to the industry. Or you might also notice that food prices have been rising dramatically in the past year; low-wage consumers already shying away from high-priced fresh produce will be joined by middle-class shoppers, and stores will simply not buy from local producers.
Turnbull isn’t interested in understanding how from time-to-time this country has singled out scapegoats for its problems from immigrant populations from the very moment it was founded—and some immigrant groups more than others. Instead, she goes on to absurdly search for anecdotal “evidence” that even one “real” American at least is willing to work in the fields at the going rate. Why absurd? Because he sold his failing business and decided he needed something to do; he’s got money in the bank and can leave any time he wants—he just wants to make a “political” point. There are other questions I would ask that she does not: For what reason other than anti-Latino prejudice would authorities rather choose to find “refugees” all over the globe to do the work that “real” Americans still don’t want to do? Why are not Mexicans seeking to escape drug violence not considered refugees—let alone poor subsistence farmers who have lost their livelihood because of the unfair protections that NAFTA allows for U.S. produce? Why are those suffering continuing repression in El Salvador and Guatemala, two decades removed from the mass murders bought and paid for by the Reagan administration, not entitled to refugee status? Along with the failed experiment of bringing in Jamaican guest workers, why are we importing “refugees” who will work for a season and disappear—and then continue to “import” more in order to fill next year’s labor shortfall? Why are you treating workers who have proved reliable so subhumanly? Why are immigration authorities not working with farmers and growers to identify their long-time workers and at least considering giving them at least guest worker status?
More questions: Why is the media (and the ICE) treating the existence of perhaps as many as 2 million illegal immigrants of Asian extraction as if they don’t exist? Why are Latinos carrying the burden of the nation’s hate? I’ve referenced a racist website that claims to keep “in real time” the number of illegal immigrants entering the country; it claims (the last time I checked) that there were 24 million illegal immigrants in the country, of which all but 600,000 were “Mexicans.” Racism and unreality reach their illogical terminus. I’ve already referenced reports that put the number of illegal immigrants of Asian extraction at 1.5 million in 2006; why shouldn’t those numbers have increased since then? An AP story in 2006 noted that most of these illegal immigrants have come not through overstayed visas, but by stowing away on foreign cargo ships, particularly those docking in Canada. The few who are caught are either given refugee status or simply allowed to disappear into the population. Why doesn’t Turnbull ask immigration officials why these illegal immigrants are allowed to roam free without a hint of hindrance? The answer, of course, is both political and cost: Asians are the favored minority, and it’s too much “hassle” to deport them anyways.
The list goes on: Why hasn’t Barack Obama given Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr. a call and told him to cool it on the anti-Latino rhetoric? It isn’t helping his re-election chances to alienate Latino voters. Hoffa recently referred to Mexican truck drivers in terms that can only be descriptions of a subhuman specie; Canadian drivers have been allowed to go anywhere they want since 1982, and under NAFTA Mexican trucks were supposed to be permitted to enter the country as well—albeit restricted only 50 miles inside the border. The Teamsters fought this tooth-and-nail, and despite the fact that the Obama administration only recently approved such onerous restrictions on Mexican truck drivers that it is next to impossible for Mexican drivers to receive the required credentials anyways, Hoffa has railed the presence of even one Mexican truck as the end of civilization as we know it. The hypocrisy of this country is simply mind-boggling, and fills me with nothing but contempt not just for the purveyors of hate talk, but the “silent” majority that allows to continue unimpeded. The U.S. has not ceased to be a “good” neighbor, but one that not only aids but abets the oppression of millions—and has had at least an “invisible” hand in the murder of tens of thousands of Mexicans in support of a so-called drug war since 2006. Instead of addressing failed anti-drug policies in this country, the U.S. would rather have Mexico save the U.S. from itself, and Mexico has paid the bloody price.
These and many other questions I would seek the answer to, but the Times (and the media in general) doesn’t want to answer them because it would reveal too much of American hypocrisy and racism, as well as the Times own racial agenda, given that it has no Latinos on its staff—or at least none who have a desire to “risk” their careers by speaking to anti-Latino prejudice. The same goes for national coverage of Latinos issues; outside of Geraldo Rivera—who went toe-to-toe with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News concerning the scapegoating of Latinos by the media and politicians, and publicly condemned Michelle Malkin and her hate propaganda—Latinos in the have kept a low, white man’s strumpet-like profile. The Associated Press’ so-called “Hispanic Affairs” reporter, Laura Wides-Munoz, is a white Cuban-American who writes as if her “expertise” goes no further than the white Cuban community in Miami where she lives, and this is symptomatic of the lack of seriousness that the national media takes in covering Latino concerns from the Latino perspective.
And yes, I do blame what happened to me on Monday at least in part to certain local media’s relentless efforts to “confirm” the belief in many people that they are dealing with “vermin” and “pests” who need to be “exterminated.”
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