Wouldn’t it be easier for the idiots if we really all did look alike?

It seems we’re back into a “debate” over what a Latino is “supposed to” look like.

I remember when former President George Bush the elder got into “trouble” because he pointed to some of his grandchildren (by son Jeb, who married a woman of Mexican ethnicity) and described them as “the little, brown ones.”

NOW, WE HAVE an aspiring political person putting his foot in his mouth because he supposedly said his kids don’t look Latino.

It has been reported that Brian Sandoval, the Republican nominee for governor of Nevada, was talking with a television station about the actions in nearby Arizona related to immigration and local police. What got him in trouble with some people is that he tried saying such a policy wouldn’t affect his family because, “my children don’t look Hispanic.”

The broadcast station never bothered to air that particular quote (I don’t know why they thought it not relevant, although I do know that reporters often gain more quotes and facts than they have space or airtime to use). But the Las Vegas Sun newspaper says it can confirm that Sandoval said it.

For the time being, I’m taking their word.

IT SEEMS LIKE the kind of rhetoric that would come from a Latino who is determined to be aligned with the Republican Party, which means they have to come up with ways of thinking that their situations are different from the bulk of the growing Latino segment of the population.

Some people are claiming that Sandoval is ashamed to be Latino, causing him to feel the need to make the statement “I am proud of my heritage.”

I’m willing to give him a break on that aspect of this issue.

Because what intrigues me is that we’re going to be forced to confront once again what exactly “we” are supposed to look like.

THE REALITY OF the genetics of Latinos is that we are a mish-mash. In some ways, we’re more of a mix than the self-described “mutt” Barack Obama himself. We literally are a combination of the European Spaniards (who have the Middle Eastern Moors in their background) and the indigenous peoples of the tribes that lived in what we now think of as the Americas.

When one figures that the African slaves brought over to do the labor also get into the mix, it really is obvious that a “Latino” can look like anyone or anything.

So I’ll let you look at the family photograph of the Sandovals that the candidate publishes on his campaign website to figure out what they “look” like. Personally, to me they look like people.

If anything, this fact is a significant part of the reason that I always thought that the Arizona policy that was meant to let local police more aggressively look for people who have issues with Immigration and, thus, don’t belong here, was truly flawed.

I NEVER BELIEVED that those local law enforcement types were going to start checking every individual they encountered to see if they could produce some sort of documentation to justify their residence in the United States.

It was always obvious that people who fit a certain look were going to get questioned more intensely than anyone else – which means that certain lighter-skinned Latinos could have evaded detection regardless of their immigration status.

I suppose that also means the very dark of the Latino population also would be given a pass, and merely subjected to whatever thoughts that particular cop had about “black” people.

Expecting police to figure out who doesn’t belong in large part based on appearance was just opening up so many headaches. The thing I can’t figure out is why any cop would want to undergo this law – unless he truly is some sort of bigot who is looking for a way to legitimize his thought processes.

SO IN THE case of Sandoval, he hopes his family won’t get written off with the Latino masses. In a sense, that is not bad, since we’re all supposed to want to try to elevate our lot in society above everyone else. No one wants to get stuck in a rut.

There’s just one other thing to keep in mind on this issue of what a Latino “looks” like. One of those “little brown ones” to whom George H.W. Bush is grandfather is the man who now carries his name.

If this country ever does get a third “George Bush” as president (middle initial “P”), he’s going to be someone that the ideologues are going to have their hangups over for looking “too” Latino.

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Are “sanctuary” cities vulnerable? I doubt it

In bopping my way about the Internet, I have stumbled across a “theme” lately coming from the nativists who want governments to create laws that crack down on all these foreigners – they’re trying to make the argument against the legal concept of “sanctuary” cities.

The way they see it, if they can’t have their mean-spirited legislation such as what Arizona tried to enact to encourage local police to look for people with immigration issues, then the other side can’t have the sanctuary city concept.

AFTER ALL, THEY argue, if the police aren’t allowed to strictly enforce federal immigration law because it is local government interfering with federal policies, then somehow sanctuary cities also have to constitute an interference by local government with federal policies on immigration.

Anybody who thinks about the issue rationally will realize that logic is absurd.

But I couldn’t help but notice that when U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton this week imposed the injunction that prevents the bulk of Arizona’s new law from taking effect, one of the provisions she left untouched was the part where the Legislature took away the ability of local governments to declare themselves “sanctuary” cities.

As far as I know, the only Arizona city that had taken such action was Phoenix itself. So now, the fact that Phoenix city officials made their symbolic statement on the issue will not matter. I’m sure some will argue that means the attitudes of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who this week said he would lock up anybody who engaged in civil disobedience against his law enforcement agency) now prevail.

THE PROBLEM IS that in reading assorted rhetoric from people who want to take down the concept of sanctuary cities, it becomes obvious that many of these people don’t have a clue what they really are.

There is no one single concept at work. Each municipality that has adopted such action has come up with its own legalese. I am aware of one Chicago suburb (Calumet City, Ill.) that won’t call itself a “sanctuary city,” instead preferring the term “safe space.”

Regardless of the terminology, the basic concept is that local police are specifically told that federal immigration law is not their concern, and that they are not to be questioning people they encounter for various reasons about their immigration status.

Some departments go so far as to refuse to offer up information voluntarily about people to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. They restrict their cooperation to what is required by the letter of the law.

I DON’T SEE how the tentative delay to Arizona’s law somehow means this idea must be struck down as well. If anything, I take the judicial interference with Arizona’s effort to use local police in such a manner as an upholding of the general concept of “sanctuary” cities.

Police shouldn’t get involved in federal immigration issue. They should stay out. That is the basic “sanctuary” city idea. It ought to be the way all local police departments operate, because there are differing jurisdictions and the end result of too much legal commingling is chaos.

The logic behind making a bold statement out of “sanctuary” city status is that it is supposed to make people who might have issues with immigration know that the local cops aren’t going to be out harassing them, nor will there become major immigration issues resulting from a traffic ticket.

When phrased that way, it is so logical. That truly is the way all police ought to be operating, since the local cops usually have enough legitimate issues of their own to deal with. I’m sure most local police across the country would prefer not to have to take on more duties – especially since in these tough economic times, I don’t know of any law enforcement agencies that have more money on hand to pay for the cost of providing extra policing duties.

IF ANYTHING, THE people in Arizona who seriously wanted their local cops to be able to start harassing people and weeding out those without visas so as to pressure the federal government to deport them strike me almost as ridiculous as those political people who in the past decade or so have felt the need to recast their state laws concerning marriage.

States that had never recognized marriage as being legal except for heterosexual couples went ahead and rewrote their statutes so as to make it clear that marriage can NOT be between gay couples. Instead of writing laws to set rules by which people coexist in a society, they’re more interested in telling certain people, “You Don’t Belong!”

That is why the protests are going to continue across the country by people who always saw Arizona’s action as a blow against their existence. Because the fact is that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer already is organizing the effort to try to get a federal appeals panel to overturn Bolton’s injunction.

She’s not as interested in having the courts engage in a legitimate review of the merits of this law, so much as she wants the instant gratification of seeing people get kicked out of the country so she can try to take some credit for it – and gain the votes of the nativists in the process.

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Putting “nativist” measures on hold makes too much sense

The people in our society who were doing countdowns until Thursday as the day that all the “illegals” had to leave the country voluntarily must be feeling bummed out.

The nativist-inspired measures passed by the Arizona Legislature and by voters in Fremont, Neb. – a suburb of Omaha – are not taking effect, as scheduled, on this day.

BOTH GOVERNMENTAL ENTITIES have their mean-spirited measures on their books. But no one is going to be enforcing them anytime soon. Or perhaps I should be more honest and say that any police officer who tries to enforce those measures in the near future will be putting his or her own career in law enforcement on the line.

In the case of Arizona, the federal judge who is going to be spending the next couple of years overseeing the lawsuits that challenge the validity of their law issued the injunction Wednesday that says the bulk of the law must be postponed until the greater issues are resolved.

I have read some Internet commentary of people praising the judge for standing up to the “mob mentality” of Arizonans whom various polls would indicate want this law to take effect. I’m not convinced the judge is so much of a hero as is just doing her job.

Because this is such a complicated issue that is going to go through so many courts (be honest, it will wind up before the Supreme Court of the United States some day) that it only makes sense to hold off until that future date before trying to let police loose to start harassing people whom they might want to suspect “don’t belong” in this country.

TO ME, IT only made too much sense that an injunction would be issued at this point. Which means that the judge here gave in to common sense by putting this law (the parts that are being allowed to take effect are mostly bureaucratic details that don’t change much in the day-to-day operations of law enforcement) on hold.

If anyone comes closer to showing courage on this issue, it is the City Council of Fremont, Neb. – the town whose voters forced approval of a new law making it illegal for local landlords to rent to people who don’t have citizenship or a valid visa, or for companies to employ them.

It is true that the latter is already an offense for which employers can be punished – but on the federal level. This truly isn’t an issue for the City Council to involve itself with.

Fremont itself is the subject of lawsuits by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund challenging the validity of the voter action. The council went so far Tuesday night as to hire Kris Kobach, a Kansas City-based attorney and law school professor who helped craft the controversial Arizona law, to defend them against the MALDEF lawsuit,.

KOBACH, WHO IS running for secretary of state in Kansas in this year’s elections, stands to gain a lot of attention from conservative voters by being so active in this particular issue.

Yet even he sees the point in holding off on trying to enforce such laws until the issue is resolved. Fremont city attorney Dean Skokan told the Fremont Tribune newspaper that Kobach was the one who recommended that the City Council suspend local enforcement of their law until that lawsuit (which also will endure years of litigation) is resolved.

So it wasn’t so much noble intent by Fremont officials as it was practicality that made them hold off – although it must be acknowledged that city officials were NOT the ones who tried to implement their law. It was the failure of local officials to approve a nativist-inspired measure that caused a determined batch of local ideologues to pursue this issue all the way through a process for voter referendum.

I don’t doubt that those people in Fremont are now upset. In fact, I would guess that everybody who was pushing for these measures (including those people – or maybe it was one person using several different e-mail addresses and identities – who were sending me daily “countdowns” until foreigners could be pursued by police) is now peeved.

THEY’RE PROBABLY FEELING much worse, but decorum prevents me from using the vulgarities that more accurately describe their mindset.

I would like to think that within a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, they will find some other issue to be upset about (it probably will involve Barack Obama). Because now that we’re at the stage where this can become a legal fight and we can engage in serious discussion of the issue, perhaps now we can put aside the overly hostile rhetoric.

Because that is the first step toward coming up with the serious reform of the nation’s immigration laws that truly is needed. How else to explain the fact that it is the bloated bureaucratic jumble of the Immigration policy that causes the problems with people being unable to get that visa.

In fact, there are times when I think of that line Ronald Reagan once said that the conservatives like to spew – “Government isn’t the solution to our problems, government is the problem” – and think to myself, he must have been thinking of our immigration laws.

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A few final thoughts

We’re at the day before the day that local police across Arizona and landlords and employers in a suburban Omaha town will be required to implement their own idea of who they think belongs in this country.

Thursday is the day that the Arizona Legislature’s law giving police greater authority to question people about their immigration status is set to take effect. It also is the day that Fremont, Neb., can start enforcing a law that was approved by voter referendum despite local officials’ attempts to block it.

THAT LAW IS the one that penalizes landlords for renting apartments or other housing to non-citizens without a valid visa, and also calls for local penalties for companies that wind up employing people in that same category.

There is one catch to both of these. They are the subject of lawsuits challenging the validity of the new laws. Those lawsuits will take years to resolve. Yet attorneys who oppose both measures have asked for injunctions that would prevent them from being enforced.

Which means it is possible that by the time you read this commentary, a judge may have ordered the the law’s implementation delayed. In the case of Fremont, Neb., local officials are considering suspending the new law – all so that people aren’t hurt by its ill effects while the court fight over the larger issues is pending.

Anybody who has read this weblog in recent months knows very well that I view Arizona’s action as a blatant political move meant to shore up support for the local Republican establishment among those voters with a nativist ideological bent. I remain convinced that, long-term, it was a drastic mistake because it boxes them into a stance on immigration that is so counter to the direction our society is taking in the 21st Century.

OF COURSE, THE people who most support these kinds of measures are the ones with their own hangups about our society, and who seem to think the power of government ought to be used to preserve their own vision of a nation that was not quite so inclusive (a significant understatement, to be honest).

There are the various polls that show majorities of people somehow favoring what is happening in Arizona and in Fremont, Neb., although I’d argue that is just the nativist element doing a good job of trying to shout down those people who would prefer to look at the immigration issue with a calm, rational perspective.

I noticed the Gallup Organization on Tuesday came out with a new poll – one that says a plurality still favors immigration laws that that decrease the numbers of new people coming to the United States. But officials compared the latest results to a poll they did last year on the same question – and found that the number of people who want immigration decreased has itself decreased (from 50 percent last year to 45 percent this month).

For the record, 17 percent want increases in immigration (which I’m sure the nativists will spin by saying it is so much less than 45 percent). But another 34 percent, according to the Gallup poll, want to maintain the present level.

WHICH MEANS THAT a slight majority aren’t in line with the idea that we need to step up the deportation process to “save” our society. The number is shrinking.

I’d like to think the reality of these new laws and how paranoid they make us look as a society is starting to sink into the public consciousness. Could it be that now that we’re only a day away from these new laws actually taking effect, people are realizing how ridiculous they are?

That probably is an oversimplification of what is really going through the public’s mindset – although not nearly as simplistic as the notion I keep hearing that “illegal Mexicans” are somehow behind all the drug and streetgang problems we have in this country, and that getting rid of “those people” will resolve all our problems.

I heard that latest bit of rhetoric Tuesday from somebody who lives in Arizona who got his few seconds of attention being interviewed by CNN. (If it had been Fox News Channel, that statement would have come from one of the featured commentators).

IT IS THE level of dialogue that this issue has sunk to.

It also is the reason that my thoughts on this “day before” are focused on whether or not judges in Phoenix and Omaha are pondering whether the potential for damage from these new laws is so great that they should be halted before they ever take effect.

From an activist’s standpoint, it would be better to leave them in place and let them take effect. Having a real live person whose life gets wrongly ruined would bolster the long-term chances of success in winning the actual lawsuit years from now.

But we’re supposed to be about protecting people, whenever possible. That is what gives our society the moral high ground we like to claim for ourselves, and which is chipped away at by these very new laws.

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Non-Latinos willing to work with Latino soon-to-be-majority

It’s what passes for local news in the South Texas town of Corpus Christi, although it actually is a sign of progress for our society as a whole.

For it seems that the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce picked a new member for its executive committee, and that member is not a Latino.

ACTUALLY, HE’S A white guy. His name is Chad Magill, and the Caller Times newspaper of Corpus Christi reports that his qualifications include being the director of the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce – a position he has held for the past two years.

Now what is so significant about this? To me, it is the sight of a business-oriented person who sees the changing demographic, particularly of his home region (CNN’s John King recently said on-air that there would be more Latinos than white people in Texas within 10 years – and maybe as soon as five years), and decides the way to cope with the change is to become a part of it.

There are all too many people in our society now who would view the changing demographic as a problem that must be fought off – instead of an opportunity to continue doing business to a changing society.

If it reads like I’m writing that we need more people like Magill, rather than some of the ideologues who are spouting off in recent months with the rise of immigration reform as a political issue, you’d be correct.

MAGILL IS SOMEBODY who got himself included in the local Hispanic business organization because he wants to help his home region grow economically, and doesn’t see the changing demographic as a reason why it won’t.

In fact, I got my kick out of reading the Caller Times’ account of his new position, where he says he will try to use his post with a statewide Latino-oriented organization to try to shift more emphasis to his hometown of Corpus Christi.

That is encouraging, because it is accepting of the reality of the Latino population growth, where people with ethnic origins in Latin American nations or Spain itself will be a significant part of the overall population – about one-third by the year 2050.

Of course, some places won’t take that long. I know in my hometown of Chicago, it is expected to reach a population of one-third each Latino, black and white by 2020, while New York currently is 27 percent Latino, 26 percent black, 35 percent white and nearly 10 percent Asian.

THEN, THERE IS Texas, which once was a state in Mexico, along with being a one-time part of the New Spain colonies on this continent.

The state had a 52 percent white population in 2000, but by 2008 that was estimated to have shrunk to 47 percent (we will get a much more precise number when the results of this year’s population count are announced sometime next year).

By comparison, the Latino population went up 5 percentage points – from 32 percent to 37 percent. That is what had King makign the guess that the trend will continue, and that the switch from smaller share to larger share of the population for Latinos will occur sometime about 2020 – unless political people persist with trying to push for policies meant to interfere with the natural trend.

But even then, it is one of those trends that simply is going to occur. There simply are too many Latinos who are fully vested in this country (don’t forget all those Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens by birth, and Mexican-Americans who were born here) and aren’t about to leave – no matter how much the nativists have their wild fantasies.

PERSONALLY, MY WILD fantasies involve images of Penelope Cruz, but to each his own, I guess.

Which is why I find my bit of joy from a short story in a South Texas newspaper about at least one person who sees the future and doesn’t fear it. Now if only we could get more people to think like him, we truly would be better off as a society.

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What will the proposed Museum of the American Latino wind up celebrating?

Among the "deep" issues being pondered in Washington these days is whether we need to have a new museum developed in the nation’s capital to properly celebrate our society’s experience.

Specifically, we’re talking about a proposed Museum of the American Latino, that would be a separate facility devoted to telling the story of how this nation is just as culturally indebted to the Spanish, as it is to the English.

IN THE PAST, I have suggested that it would be more accurate to include examples of Latino contributions in the existing museums that make Washington an interesting place to visit. I’d particularly like to see the museum devoted to U.S. history have to acknowledge the role my ethnic brethren have played.

Somebody like United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez needs to be understood within the context of the society he was trying to change – not isolated into his own building where people who resent his influence can ignore him by never setting foot in the place.

If anything, a separate museum almost strikes me as segregation.

Not that everybody agrees with me. The Washington Post reported on the latest developments related to this project, which has been going on since the George W. Bush years. Come September, we’re going to get a commission making its own report to Congress on whether the museum is feasible.

YET IT WAS in that same Post story published Sunday that some observers brought up a legitimate point – what exactly will constitute a “Latino” some four decades from now.

The year 2050 has significance because it is expected to be about that time that the Latino population will peak in its growth, and will have become so big that it will be truly laughable to think that Latinos were ever a minority.

That is the time we’re expected to comprise about one-third of the nation.

Yet the big unanswered question is to what degree will Latinos be a separate entity from the rest of society? Are we really going to remain completely separate?

OR ARE WE going to mix in with the masses to the point where being “Latino” will mean having some sort of Latin American ethnic identity mixed in with a whole batch of other nationalities?

I remember once working as a reporter-type person who covered a Lutheran church’s annual Santa Lucia festival. You know the image that turns up on television news every Dec. 13? A pretty, blonde, Swedish girl in a white robe walks down the aisle while wearing a crown consisting of lit candles .

When I covered it, sure enough the girl who portrayed Santa Lucia had Swedish roots in her ethnic background. It made for a unique mix with the Mexican ethnic origins from her mother’s side of the family.

Santa Lucia was a Latina.

SOMEHOW, I THINK she is typical of what many Latinos (by the year 2050, she will be in her mid-50s) are going to be like in the future.

What will such a population think of a separate museum devoted to the American Latino? Or are we going to memorialize a segment of the Latino population that, for whatever reason, did not assimilate into the society?

I can already hear the tacky jokes about lowriders and spraypainted murals. If anything, I can’t help but think this project has the potential to marginalize the Latino contribution even further.

Plus, we also have the fact that we might very well go with the “wrong” name for this project. Will we have settled the “Hispanic versus Latino” debate by then? Will we have moved on to some label that is even more awkward than African-American can be at times?

WILL WE GET stuck with the “Museum of Latino/Hispanic/Chicano/Boricuan/every other label imaginable” to try to appease people to the point where no one is appeased?

In short, I can’t help but think this is one museum project that could wind up being so obsolete long before the facility ever opens.

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NOTICIAS de LATINO: Gay marriage splits Latinos based on religion

Some people seem confused about the split amongst Latinos when it comes to the idea of gay marriage. I guess they think we all think alike.

The Public Religion Research Institute released a poll this week that tried to get at the heart of where people stood on the idea of allowing gay couples to have the same legal benefits of marriage as do heterosexual couples.

ONE OF THE tidbits that came out was the idea of a split when it comes to Latinos – when it comes to the idea of how they have assimilated their religious beliefs into the overall scheme of our society.

In many Latin American nations, the Catholic church is all-dominant, and is so intertwined with many ethnic customs that even in this country, assuming that a Latino is Catholic is not the stupidest assumption one can make.

Some 80 percent of Latinos are Catholic, with the remainder often converting to various protestant faiths, often because they settle in rural communities where those churches are more a part of daily life than the local Catholic church.

If anything, they assimilate their religion too. And it shows when it comes to gay marriage, when it comes to this poll.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH has its rhetoric about how many issues, including homosexuality, are sinful, but few people who call themselves Catholic agree with the church on every single point. When it comes to Latino Catholics, 57 percent said they could support laws letting gay couples marry (51 percent of white Catholics feel the same, according to the poll).

By comparison, Latino Protestants largely hate the idea of gay marriage being legal. Only 22 percent support it, according to the poll. Seventy-three percent of Latino Protestants oppose it, which is even greater than the 58 percent of black Protestants or 71 percent of white evangelicals.

The split even applies to whether gay people should be able to adopt children. Fifty-one percent of Latino Catholics support the idea, as opposed to 27 percent of Latino Protestants.

What other items are popping up in the news these days with regard to the growing Latino population?

IS THE GOP TRULY MAKING INROADS AMONG LATINO POLITICOS?: An interesting thought was included in a recent commentary published by Slate – one that wondered if the Republican Party was coming up with higher-quality Latino candidates than the Democratic Party.

I’d question that thought, but I will admit that in the southwestern states we do see some Latinos running for office on the GOP label, including Susana Martinez – who wants to be governor of New Mexico.

The rhetorical dance many of them do is similar. They express sympathy for Latinos in general, but then throw on some rhetoric meant to appease those nativists who want to think their bigotry is purely a “law and order” mentality at work.

The website found a political consultant who said, “when (Latino candidates) say thinks like that he supports the Arizona law, Hispanic voters just assume he’s lying to get elected.” Of course, the bottom line (according to the commentary) is that 90 percent of Latino elected officials are Democrats, and the reason that more Latinos are voting is because there are more Latinos – period.

IS OBAMA LOOKING AHEAD TO 2012: Call it the Canadian conservative viewpoint, but the magazine MacLeans published a commentary recently giving aid and comfort to the idea that President Barack Obama’s support for serious immigration reform is nothing more than a political ploy – one that will backfire because it will anger the nativists into voting for people to oppose him.

Yet I have to give the commentary some credit. It acknowledged the Latino anger over the issue and that Obama would have been in even more political trouble if he had done nothing on the issue. Which makes the magazine wonder if Obama is trying to bolster his personal standing with Latinos when it comes to the next presidential election in 2012.

That is something that the conservative ideologues ought to keep in mind, if they seriously have dreams of forcing in a mass of like-minded public officials to run roughshod over Obama and his policies in the next two years before replacing him with one of their own.

They could easily find themselves turning off the moderate middle of our society to the point where people find themselves voting against anyone two years from now that they were stupid enough to vote for this year. Which means the hard-hearted trash talk of now could wind up being the proverbial gun they use to shoot themselves in the foot in the future.

OH, PIPE DOWN!: Can somebody put a gag on commentator Glenn Beck, whose latest diatribe is too absurd for anybody to take seriously, but remains quite ignorant in content.

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What constitutes reverse discrimination?

Shirley Sherrod is the “flavor of the month” for those people who want to argue about whether our society today, in trying to ensure that all people have a shot at success, somehow discriminates against white people.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if in coming weeks, the situation in the Census Bureau offices in Fresno, Calif., are going to become more prominent.

THAT WILL BE difficult, since Sherrod is the federal Agriculture Department employee whose dismissal due to a 24-year-old videotape on the Internet has made her such a cause celebre that President Barack Obama felt the need to call her Thursday, apologizing to her during a 7-minute conversation about whether she would return to a government job.

If anything, Sherrod’s story ought to make us realize how simple-minded some people are when they try to scream about reverse discrimination. Sherrod admitted during a speech that was recorded on video that she once let race affect her dealings with white people, but later made amends to the people whom she singled out.

Of course, the conservative ideologues who started up that fracas are like the Mighty Oz, they don’t want us to look behind the curtain and pay attention to the latter part of the story. They want to over-simplify it.

Which is why I must admit to being somewhat skeptical about the initial reports of complaints filed by two senior Census Bureau staffers in northern California who lost their jobs earlier this year. Although as the Sherrod case showed us, no one should be jumping to any conclusions yet.

THE FRESNO BEE newspaper reports that the complaints they filed claim it was a combination of ethnicity and race that caused them to lose their jobs. Their supervisors were Latino, and the lawsuit says that the now-former employees believe that the supervisors favored for prime assignments other Latinos over older, white workers.

Just what we need, the ideologues believing that the black people are favoring other blacks at the Agriculture Department and the Latinos favoring other Latinos at the Census Bureau.

For what it’s worth, Census Bureau officials denied any wrongdoing to the newspaper, which quoted one of them as saying, “we always follow the rules by the book.”

Now I don’t know firsthand the specifics of what was happening in Fresno, Calif. So when one of the workers says “the discrimination was blatant,” I’m not going to make a bold pronouncement and say it wasn’t.

BUT WHAT I have to wonder is if this is a case where some older staffers are having trouble seeing the need for some change in the way things used to be done. Particularly with regards to the Census Bureau, which made a priority of trying to get as accurate a count of Latinos as possible to enhance its purpose – which is to count how many people lived in the United States on April 1, 2010.

That goal may very well result in the need for more Latinos working in key positions, because I could see some circumstances where Census workers of other ethnic backgrounds could get intimidated out of performing the kind of effort needed to venture into some places where the locals will view them suspiciously, and may not even comprehend the language spoken.

Could this be what was behind efforts in Fresno? Could it be just an effort to do a thorough account that resulted in more Latino workers being needed for the population count?

That sounds so sensible. Yet I’m sure it offends the sensibilities of those who became used to doing things an old way, where this “Latino” emphasis just wasn’t a priority.

THE FACT IS that we now have such a growing Latino population that it would be ridiculous to think that the numbers of Latinos involved in various segments of society will not grow.

But as we saw with Sherrod, there will be some who will long to keep the older generation’s way of thinking who will perceive this change as coming at their expense. They’re going to want to view anything that a Latino person winds up with as somehow being taken from them.

Which means that such attitudes are just as much a part of the problem as any other aspect of the issue.

Now I know some ideologues try to claim that these kinds of cases are examples of affirmative action run amok. Somehow, the best-qualified people aren’t getting the jobs, and that lesser qualified people are because of ethnic factors that once would have held them down in our society.

I ALWAYS TAKE the existence of this attitude as being evidence of why we still need some sort of affirmative action, and why we’re nowhere near the point in time where we can start thinking of scaling back those laws.

After all, these ideologues seem to associate “best-qualified” with white, which means the only way we get the “best-qualified” people hired is for policies that force them to go beyond their personal hang-ups when making decisions that affect us all.

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Will we get an Arizona delay?

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton is about to become a nationally-known name.

She’s the judge who will hear arguments Thursday, and will decide whether Arizona will be permitted to enforce their attempt to get their local police involved with federal immigration enforcement.

THEIR LAW TO allow local police to detain people if they think they are lacking a legitimate visa is the subject of a legal challenge by the Justice Department, which is making the very legitimate argument that only the federal government should be involved in enforcing immigration policy.

That lawsuit is nowhere near to being settled. It is going to be years before we get the final word about whether the courts are willing to permit Arizona to have its way when its Legislature gave in to the nativist sentiments that are too dominant these days when discussing this issue.

But that federal lawsuit against Arizona will come up in Bolton’s courtroom. She’s going to be the judge who has to decide whether or not an injunction ought to be issued to prevent Arizona from being able to enforce the law, while the lawsuit challenging the law’s validity is pending.

If no injunction is issued, the new Arizona measure takes effect one week from Thursday. Which would mean police would gain the authority to start questioning people they suspect of not having a visa, while also having the authority to detain people whom are suspected of transporting people without visas to jobs.

I WILL BE the first to admit that an injunction sounds all too logical in this case. Hold off on trying to enforce this state law until a definitive court ruling upholding it is reached. If the law truly is found to be as flawed as I (and many others) believe it is, then an injunction prevents anyone from suffering harm as a result of a law based on mean-spirited political ideology.

But I am not about to predict what will happen in court. Which means I will be among the many who will be watching Bolton’s courtroom for clues as to what direction this case is headed in.

For those who like to use such factors to try to predict legal actions, Bolton was appointed to her current judicial post 10 years ago by then-President Bill Clinton. But she got the presidential appointment at the recommendation of Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., who has been one of the most outspoken backers of conservative changes in immigration policy.

He’s the senator who just last month tried stirring up resentment against President Barack Obama by claiming the president was refusing to support border security measures desired by the nativists in an attempt to pressure them to support more sensible immigration reform measures (ones that acknowledge that there is no logical reason to deny visas to many of the undocumented).

OF COURSE, THOSE people who got all worked up over video of Kyl telling a Tempe, Ariz., gathering of his meeting with Obama have moved on. They’re now getting all worked up over video of Shirley Sherrod admitting she once gave less than her best effort on behalf of rural white farmers who needed federal Agriculture Department assistance.

Those people don’t want to have to acknowledge that there is more to that particular story, just like I would guess they’re not going to want to have to engage in serious discussion of the flaws that exist in our nation’s immigration policy.

How will Bolton rule? I don’t know. I do find it interesting that she previously has ruled to accept a legal brief from the government of Mexico that supports the groups that want Arizona’s law struck down. She wasn’t obligated to consider it, and many would prefer that she ignore it.

Then again, Bolton said last week during a court hearing that she wasn’t going to guarantee she’d have a ruling on an injunction before the July 29 date on which the new law will take effect.

SO WE WILL have to wait and see how she rules, since she is a long-time Arizona resident and member of the legal community. Before becoming a part of the federal judiciary in Phoenix, she was a superior court judge in Maricopa County (metro Phoenix), and was an attorney in private practice in Arizona for more than a decade before that.

Will those facts shut up those ideologues who want to claim that the federal government is somehow running amok and forcing its views on the local thought process? Probably not, even though they should.

Because immigration is a federal issue. This is one of those issues where it is appropriate for the United States to impose a single policy to maintain consistency with regards to a national immigration policy.

I would think only the most irrational of people believe that our nation would be better off with 50 differing immigration policies, and with each governor having to appoint a Director of Immigration to decide who should be allowed to think of themselves as a resident of any particular state.

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What is assimilation?

A new poll commissioned by Univision and the Associated Press shows a desire by Latinos to become a part of the larger society of this country – regardless of those who try to throw roadblocks in our path.

For the reality is that by becoming a part of the society, some of our older ways become a part of the greater number. That is what I sense bothers some people – such as the nitwits who in recent days have taken to running countdowns to the date that Arizona’s new law takes effect (such as, “nine more days for Latinos to leave Arizona voluntarily”).

THAT CERTAINLY EXPLAINS the fact that 54 percent of Latinos said assimilation is important, while 66 percent said it is important to maintain elements of our ethnic backgrounds. The two goals of assimilation and cultural maintenance do not have to be exclusive to each other.

Which is how I judge a pair of actions taken by certain Latinos in the southwestern United States who seem to want to be a part of the Republican political apparatus.

We have Texas, where the new group Hispanic Republicans of Texas is creating itself to try to encourage Latinos interested in running for political office to run under the GOP banner.

It’s not such a radical idea. In fact, the future political empowerment of Latinos would be better off if both of the major political parties had significant numbers of people with ethnic origins in Latin American nations or Spain itself.

THIS GROUP GETS its influence from the fact that one of its founders is George P. Bush, the son of one-time Florida Gov. Jeb and wife Columba. Yes, the next generation’s “George Bush” is of Mexican ethnicity on his mother’s side of the family.

It means we have the grandson of a president and nephew of another president in a position to be a prominent Latino Republican, largely because there aren’t many. That is because the Republican Party in recent years has become a place that seems more interested in catering to the nativist segment of our society – which in recent months seems interested in supporting those people with irrational hangups with regards to Mexico and the rest of Latin America (which they’re too lazy to want to distinguish).

Which means I will wish Bush the younger (he’s 34) success in boosting the Republican ranks of Latinos, because if he succeeds it means there will have been a serious change of attitude within that political party.

With many of the conservative attitudes on social issues due to the large numbers of Latinos who are Catholic, it would make sense that large numbers of our ethnic ranks would be willing to give the GOP a chance – in large part because of that desire to assimilate that does exist.

IT IS LARGELY because of the hostility toward Latinos that gets expressed in the GOP ranks that many of us wind up turning to the Democratic Party, which at times seems to wish they didn’t have to deal with our concerns.

Which means this is something that Democrats should take seriously. Having to rely on your opposition’s perpetual stupidity is not a long-term strategy for success. Eventually, they’re going to get a clue – perhaps after they see how severely all this xenophobic rhetoric harms their interests (or maybe they will become the party solely of nativists, and those people will get bored with each other).

This is not the only move of support being billed as Latinos preferring Republicans.

There also is the fact that the Arizona Latino Republican Association plans to join later this week in a lawsuit against the United States government. The association is challenging the Justice Department for filing a lawsuit against Arizona’s law giving local police greater authority over federal immigration enforcement.

IN SHORT, WE have a group of Latinos so interested in “assimilating” into the mass that they’re willing to take up sides against the federal lawsuit that says states and local police have no business interfering with federal immigration policy. They’re billing themselves as the “first Hispanic organization to publicly challenge the Justice Department’s” lawsuit that was filed earlier this month. They plan to officially announce their challenge on Thursday in Phoenix.

I’m sure some political observers are going to try to use this fact as evidence that Latinos themselves see the wisdom of Arizona officials in expressing their frustration with the federal bureaucratic mess that is immigration policy by letting the nativists have their way.

All it really means is that the Univision poll is correct about the desire by Latinos for assimilation, and the willingness of some Latinos (who will probably send me nasty messages telling me they’re Hispanic, NOT Latino) to say or do anything to make it look like they’re part of the larger group.

The rest of us will focus on actually making a legitimate place for ourselves within the larger group. Ultimately, that is true assimilation.

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Utah officials trying to nudge immigration debate back to rational thought

A nation getting all worked up into a frenzy whenever the issue of immigration reform is brought up ought to set their eyes to Utah, where on Tuesday officials are attempting to try to shift the partisan rhetoric back into a sensible conversation.

In some ways, it is odd that Utah would be the place where common sense would start to prevail.

AFTER ALL, UNTIL a week ago, the rhetoric coming from the Beehive State centered around whether they would be among the 20 or so states across the nation that would follow the lead of Arizona in terms of giving local law enforcement greater authority to enforce federal immigration laws.

That is, until the list came along. The list is a compilation of about 1,300 names, along with detailed information about where those people live and how they can be contacted. The list portends to be a collection of people who do not have valid visas, and is put together in a way that makes it possible for the public at large to single these people out for harassment.

Somebody put this list together thinking that the public would rise up in anger and pressure these people to leave the United States.

Instead, the blatant mob mentality of such a list (not all that different from the lynch mobs of old) has managed to offend so many people, both in and out of Utah. If anything, it probably illustrated in as blatant a manner as possible just how mean-spirited much of the rhetoric of the immigration opponents truly is.

WE DON’T HAVE police using the list to find these people. We don’t have local newspapers printing the names of addresses on the list within their circulation area so that readers can know which of their “neighbors” don’t belong.

Instead, we have state officials conducting serious investigations, because it seems that the information was compiled from Utah state government resources. It may well have been Utah state employees using their jobs to gain information to try to advance their ideological idiocy.

And they’re getting a summit – one put together by Gov. Gary Herbert (above, right), who told the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper that about 30 community leaders will gather on Tuesday for a two-hour discussion of the issue of immigration.

Some of these people are going to be the immigration opposition – the people who believe that a definition of immigration reform needs to focus on increased deportations, and not venture any further.

BUT UNTIL ABOUT a week ago, those people probably would have been given free reign to rant and rage as they saw fit. Anybody who seriously opposed them might well have felt a sense of political intimidation and been inclined to keep quiet – or else issue lame statements that don’t come out and oppose them.

After all, we can’t have anything that would offend the nativist spirit that has taken over the immigration opposition debate.

Now, we’re getting a discussion where people are going to be more inclined to speak out, because we sense just how absurd it would be for the “American Way” to include anything as mean-spirited as lists of people meant to be singled out for abuse.

It will be interesting to see what direction the debate in Utah takes after Tuesday. But it seems like there is potential for a proper direction, and it will be intriguing to see if other states follow the lead of Utah when the immigration issue is brought up.

IT IS EVEN encouraging to see that Utah’s attorney general is talking state-sanctioned programs to allow non-citizens to work in the United States, and even have options for citizenship.

Not that I’m saying Utah state government should be adopting those goals by themselves. I’d have the same objection I have to Arizona’s actions – citizenship and immigration is a federal issue, and the matter should be addressed by the federal government.

But if it means that Utah officials will start pressuring their members of Congress (two senators and three representatives, including long-time Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah) to get off their duffs and take action toward immigration reform.

Actually, that is the step that all states should be taking. The sooner the better.

BECAUSE IF REPUBLICAN officials in Washington want to quit getting blamed by President Barack Obama for interferring with the passage of immigration reform, they’re going to have to come up with a proposal of their own on the issue.

For without an alternative, they are guilty of political obstructionism, just like Obama has said.

-30-

If Will has his way – through Puerto Rico, the GOP can split up Latinos

Divide, and conquer!

That is all I could think when I finished reading a commentary published by the Washington Post by columnist George Will – one in which he gives some attention to the governor of Puerto Rico, who has his own idea about how the Republican Party can reach out to the growing Latino population for votes in future elections.

LUIS FORTUÑO, WHO got elected as governor of the U.S. commonwealth in 2008 and is one of the few GOP partisans to ever hold that political post, thinks that the Republican Party should continue to push for tougher restrictions for immigration and greater security measures along the U.S./Mexico border.

But as a sop to Latinos, he thinks those Republican officials should take up the cause of statehood for Puerto Rico. By combining the two issues, they could get significant numbers of votes.

As Will sees it, Latinos are becoming a generic mass – in part due to the influence of Spanish-language news media in this country that attempts to create the idea of a unified mass out of people whose ethnic origins come from some two dozen countries in the Americas, along with Spain itself.

The reality is that such a stance would not bring over significant numbers of Latinos to backing a nativist vision of immigration reform – out of hopes of getting a long-standing desire approved into law.

ALL IT WOULD do – at most – is ensure that the Latino population would be split. Which may well be the desire of the more conservative ideologues on this issue. Split up the Latinos so that they quit thinking of themselves as a unified mass, and their potential for becoming an electoral bloc is diminished.

Which could go a long way toward letting the conservatives get their way, without having to make any serious changes in their political approach or concessions in terms of what vision they have for our society.

For the fact is that immigration is an issue that affects differing people of Latino ethnic backgrounds in different ways. It is evidence that Latinos are turning into a single group that these differences are not tearing apart the ability of Latinos to unite against Republicans who push a closeted view of what they think our country should be.

Another piece of evidence is the fact that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor gained the overwhelming respect of Latinos when she went through the confirmation process in 2009 – even though she is Puerto Rican.

IF ANYTHING, I can’t help but think that having Republicans appeal to Puerto Ricans on a “pet” issue would be seen as a craven attempt by the GOP to play politics with the issue. It might unite us even more.

For the truth of the issue is that Puerto Ricans themselves aren’t even in agreement on the whole statehood/commonwealth/independence issue. For every person who wants to think of Puerto Rico as the 51st State, there are others who are more than content to keep commonwealth status.

Residents of the island, after all, do not pay income taxes to the federal government, yet that same government is required to prop up Puerto Rico financially as a semi-independent entity, which means they can still have a Miss Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe competition and national teams in the Olympics and in international baseball competitions.

Sound trivial? Think that doesn’t matter? Guess again!

THERE ARE MANY people of Puerto Rican background who would not want to give up those symbols of a separate entity – which is what would happen if the Caribbean island commonwealth became a Spanish language version of Hawaii. The statehood/commonwealth/independence issue doesn’t even come close to unifying Puerto Ricans.

So pushing this would split Boricuans among each other, meaning it cost cost the GOP as many votes as it would gain them. In addition, it could create a rift between Puerto Ricans and the rest of the ethnicities that comprise Latinos.

For after all, immigration technically is an issue completely irrelevant to Puerto Ricans (they’re U.S. citizens by birth). It also has little bearing to anybody from Cuba – because our antagonistic federal policy toward that Caribbean island nation means we tolerate, if not outright encourage, behavior from would-be Cuban exiles that the nativists denounce as “criminal” if someone from Mexico, or any other nation, tries it.

Not that I expect the kind of people who are willing to give Will a moment of consideration (I realize he comes off as “too intellectual” for many on the ideological right) to get concerned about acknowledging the differences in the mass of people that comprise the country’s growing Latino population.

AS FORTUÑO TELLS Will, “Republicans cannot continue to oppose every Hispanic issue.” That is true. Yet the answer to gaining support is to go about the process of inclusion; by accepting the fact that Latinos are a significant part of our society in this century.

What the answer is NOT is coming up with measures to try to split the Latino ranks in a lame attempt to diminish their influence so that an Anglo segment of society can overpower it.

-30-

¡That’s quite a clarification! ¿Will anybody buy it?

I remember once hearing Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, explain how natural it is for would-be elected officials to alter their stances on issues from the primary to the general election season.

As Madigan put it, political people don’t change, or flip-flop. They “clarify” their views. “It happens a lot in politics.”

NOW IN THE case of the Illinois gubernatorial candidate to whom Madigan was specifically referring, that candidate didn’t change many of his views on issues. He wound up losing. Yet even if one accepts the idea that candidates alter their stances, one has to wonder how much of a flop it is for Meg Whitman, the woman who won the GOP nomination for governor of California.

Whitman was the candidate who got dragged into taking many hard-core conservative (if not outright nativist) stances on issues related to immigration policy, because she had a primary opponent who wanted to make those stances the centerpiece of HIS campaign.

Whitman didn’t want to get beat out by being “soft” on immigration, so she tried to match him on many points. She wound up winning.

But now, she has Latinos wondering how much of a nit wit she truly is, because of her stances. So now, she’s trying to appear more friendly, without losing those conservative ideologues who backed her in the primary – and would turn on her in an instant if they thought she was going soft.

THE SACRAMENTO BEE newspaper reported Friday about how Whitman is now publishing campaign literature that offers her stances on various issues. One of those stances is her primary election claim that she would use the power of the governor’s office to send officials into businesses to do “raids” to find people working in this country without a valid visa.

California state government would become an alternate to La Migra when it comes to showing up at the workplace and picking out people they think don’t belong in this society of ours.

But as an attempt to make her appear somewhat sympathetic, Whitman (according to the newspaper) is now saying she wouldn’t actually begin such a policy until a definitive method is found for employers to be able to verify someone’s status with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency prior to their being hired.

If one does not try to put those statements into the context of the real world, they would sound like no change at all. After all, what kind of fool would want to start going after businesses for hiring non-citizens without the proper work permits if there is no real way of those businesses being able to figure out who is, and is not, “illegal” in the eyes of Immigration?

ACTUALLY, MANY OF the people who want to view immigration “reform” as something that bolsters the number of deportations, that’s who.

Because we’re talking about e-Verify, which is an Internet-based system by which companies allegedly can type in the social security numbers offered up by a prospective employee, and receive a quick warning if there is any reason to be suspicious of the individual seeking a job.

The problem is that e-Verify is relatively new, and as many new programs go, it has its flaws. There have been many cases of people who got their social security numbers “flagged” by e-Verify, only for it to turn out that there was no legitimate reason to suspect them.

In short, it doesn’t work. Yet that doesn’t matter to the more hard-core ideologues on immigration. They often approve platforms that call for businesses to be required to use, and abide by, the results of e-Verify, even if there is a legitimate reason to think they’re not worth much.

WHICH MEANS THAT Whitman, by now saying she’s going insist that a valid program be implemented before she starts cracking down on employers, is risking offending all those ideologues who will think she is being “weak” on the issue. I am sure she will try to spin it as an attempt to “clarify” her stance on the issue to show some sense of compassion to those with an interest in the well-being of immigrants – whether visa’ed or not.

But I can’t help but think many Latinos, when they study the issue more closely, will refuse to see this as any kind of real gesture for our benefit. If anything, she wants it to sound like she is still hard-core supportive of the ideologue stance on the issue. That is the side she has come down on, regardless of how she tries to “clarify” herself into seeming more compassionate to others.

Which may be why the election is shaping up thus far – a new Field Poll says that 78 percent of Californians surveyed who generally favor Arizona’s approach to meddling in immigration enforcement prefer Whitman, while 69 percent of people who are opposed to Arizona favor Democratic opponent Jerry Brown.

And on the whole, 49 percent of Californians “approve” of Arizona, compared to 45 percent who “disapprove.” Which means that California is fairly well split on this issue, and Whitman may have to live with her original stances from the primary, because no one will believe her if she tries to change now.

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Utah shows why Latinos are skeptical about people who want more “enforcement”

It used to be a staple of the conservative ideologue rhetoric that Latinos who are U.S. citizens aren’t as worked up about immigration reform as activists would want us to believe. The economy and improved education were our top concerns.

If this were a theoretically ideal world, those issues would still be at the top of our list of concerns. But there’s a new poll that shows the reality I have seen in recent months – immigration has worked its way to the top of the list.

THE POLL PUT together for the League of United Latin American Citizens puts immigration reform as issue number one for Latinos, with one-third saying we believe that the reason people are pushing for reforms such as what is happening in Arizona is that the people with ethnic hangups about the growing Latino population want laws that reinforce their nativist beliefs.

Another poll put together for the National Association of Latino Elected Officials questioned Latinos in four southwestern states, and that too puts immigration at the top of the list of issues that we consider a priority.

It really isn’t hard to comprehend why this shift has happened. We hear the rhetoric and rants coming from the people who want to back Arizona’s measure requiring local police to get involved in federal immigration enforcement, and we also hear the people in other states who want their local political officials to mimic Arizona.

What we hear are people who want a reduction in Latinos, and either don’t want to distinguish between those born in the United States and those born elsewhere – or they want to believe that the changes in the law ought to eliminate any distinction between them.

IF IT MEANS that we born in the United States are realizing that it is in our best interest to look out for our foreign-born ethnic brethren, then so be it. If it also benefits our society by providing people willing to work who really have no legitimate reason to deny them a visa and residency in this nation, then that is another plus.

What I find interesting about these two new polls is not what they say, but rather their timing. For it is at the exact same moment that we learn Latinos are taking a stronger interest in immigration that we also learn of the mess that has arisen in Utah – where some state officials are talking about copying Arizona, while other officials in Salt Lake City (the only city of significance in that state) are doing what they can to knock down such trash talk.

Somebody managed to compile a detailed list of 1,300 people living in Utah who allegedly are not U.S.-born, or in possession of a valid visa giving them permission to live here. They’re sending it out anonymously to various entities that they think will use the list and its information – including addresses and various telephone numbers (home and cellphone) meant to make it possible to just go out and pick these people up.

Or maybe they just want to create a mood by which people start singling out those on the list for abuse – meaning they might very well decide on their own accord to leave.

NO MATTER HOW much the nativists want to believe that it is their viewpoint on immigration reform that prevails in our society, I must admit to finding the official response to this “list” to be encouraging, and not just because one Utah newspaper editor's first reaction to seeing a copy of the list in his mail was to want to toss it as a "hoax."

Official people are using their official investigatory powers to try to figure out who put this list together. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday that officials have determined the information was compiled from data in the possession of the state Department of Workforce Services. If it turns out that some state employee put together something meant to be a “hit” list using their state resources, or provided the state information to someone so they could put together such a list, then we’re talking about the possibility of a criminal charge.

Not that I expect anyone to receive prison time for such a stupid stunt. Although the idea of someone losing their job, getting hit with a fine and having the matter dog his (or her) work record for quite a while, strikes me as completely appropriate. For the record, it is a misdemeanor offense punishable in Utah by up to six months in a jail, along with a fine up to $1,000.

I find it completely believable that some of the names on the list are turning out to erroneous. Not that I would guess whoever put the list together would be the least bit concerned. They probably want to believe that everybody on that list is either “illegal,” “ought to be illegal,” or only got their legal status through some sort of scam.

FOR THOSE WHO want to deny how mean-spirited this list is, consider that there were children on the list, along with special designations indicating which of the adult women on the list were pregnant. Perhaps the nitwits thought that was a priority to get those women out of the country so that their children would be born elsewhere?

This is the “true” mood of those people whose idea of immigration reform focuses around removing people from this country, and the idea that they’re somehow concerned about the national security of the United States is little more than a lie – unless you really want to believe those kids on the Utah list are a threat to this country by being so exposed to our society that they’re going to assimilate fully into it.

It is an absurd thought.

It is all of those absurd thoughts that are causing Latinos to put more emphasis on immigration reform. One other fact I couldn’t help but note.

THE LOS ANGELES Times reported that the LULAC poll showed that 80 percent of those surveyed are so disgusted with the nativist rhetoric that they will make the effort to vote come Nov. 2. Two-thirds of them are looking for candidates to back who will stand up to the immigration opponents.

The bottom line is that there’s an excellent chance that many of those Tea Party-types who think they’re going to lead a conservative takeback of the United States are going to find many of their votes cancelled out by Latinos infuriated by the nativist rhetoric they often spew.

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Only 362 more days until we learn if baseball has a backbone

Now that the All Star Game in Anaheim, Calif., is complete, we baseball fans can now obsess over the issue that the Latino activists want to be forefront in our minds – will Major League Baseball have the gall to keep next year’s All Star Game in Phoenix, Ariz.?

Activists this week stepped up the rhetoric that baseball officials ought to yank the 2011 mid-season exhibition from Chase Field in Phoenix and should locate it somewhere, anywhere, else as a show of solidarity for the large number of Latinos who play baseball these days.

FOR THE RECORD, about one-quarter of all major league ballplayers are foreign born (most from Latin American nations) and about 40 percent overall are either Latin American or U.S.-born of Latino ethnic backgrounds.

Personally, none of the rhetoric from the Latino activist groups who want baseball to boycott Arizona surprised me. Nor was it shocking to me that baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was as non-committal on the issue as he could be – saying nothing that could be perceived as support for the Latino activists but also saying nothing that could be seen as a hard-core rejection.

Everybody was playing a part, spewing the “lines” that they feel their side needs to play. I’m sure in Selig’s mind is the desire that the issue of how inappropriate Arizona’s political behavior of late will fall so far to the background by next year that nobody will be getting worked up over the issue.

If so, he gets away without having to take a stance – although I, and many others, would argue that doing nothing is support for the Arizona status quo. Doing nothing is a political stance, in and of itself.

THE PART OF this that intrigues me is the ballplayers themselves. I would expect most of them will be just like Commissioner Bud – they will try to say as little as they have to, and may come up with some doubletalk that does not take a firm position either way on the issue.

Yet we are getting some of those masses of Latinos and Latin-Americans who play in the major leagues who say they would boycott the 2011 game – IF they are chosen to be on either the American or National league teams.

Yovani Gallardo of the Milwaukee Brewers went so far as to use the B-word (as in “boycott”), while Joakim Soria of the Kansas City Royals said he would support Latino activists out of a sense of ethnic solidarity.

Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays told reporter-types in Anaheim (the “home” city of the Los Angeles Angels, who hosted the ’10 game) that the issue was “delicate,” but said, “we have to back up our Latin communities.”

ARE WE GOING to get the same split in baseball clubhouses for the next year that we’re getting throughout our society?

One uncertainty is that most of the players who are speaking aren’t the biggest Latino stars. St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols says he opposes what happened politically in Arizona, but is non-commital about what act, if any, he could do. Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees won’t even go that far.

I’d say we probably won’t know for sure until July 12, 2011 (the date of next year’s All Star Game) whether there will be any significant shortage of Latin American ethnics on the field when baseball has its annual celebration of its top stars.

I could see a lot of ballplayers just wanting to play ball, if by chance they get chosen to appear in the game. If anything, the baseball-themed protests against Arizona’s attempt to take a nativist stance on immigration are likely to take place elsewhere.

SUCH AS THE Arizona Diamondbacks having to deal with the fact that all of their games on the road are picketed by Latino activists and their supporters (although I would expect many of the ballplayers arriving at the stadiums early enough that they don’t have to directly confront those protesters).

Insofar as my thoughts of an All Star Game shift for next year, I’m almost inclined to agree with Florida Marlins infielder Jorge Cantu (who has played for the Mexican national team in the two World Baseball Classic tournaments that have been played), who says he doubts the game would be shifted from Phoenix because there also are a “lot of people who would want it” held there.

Besides, I still believe that taking away from the Phoenix area a three-day extended baseball holiday weekend in mid-July 2011 would not be the worst thing professional baseball could do to Arizona.

That lowest-of-low blows would be to start shifting spring training camps out of Arizona. Those month-long economic jolts that 15 major league teams give to various municipalities in and around Phoenix and Tuscon would cause much more financial damage to their communities – particularly since many of those towns put themselves in serious hock to build the athletic facilities desired by the teams themselves.

HAVING THOSE FACILITIES sit empty, except for the occasional game by a local junior college’s baseball program, would be the most effective way for professional baseball to show displeasure with Arizona – that is, if they are inclined to show any displeasure at all.

So for all those who want to spend the next year protesting that baseball should move the All Star Game, I’d argue that time would be better spent trying to persuade the Chicago Cubs (who are looking for a new facility in their spring training city of Mesa, but had a deal to build it fall through earlier this year) to move to Naples, Fla.

Naples officials themselves are easing up their pressure to get the team every March, saying they want to see what happens in Arizona. But actually seeing a team move training camp from Arizona to Florida would be the step that would attract more attention than losing next year’s All Star exhibition.

-30-

We’re working! Is that a threat?

Among the pieces of rhetoric often spewed when the fact of the growing Latino population in this country comes up is the line of thought that we’re working at jobs that no one else wants.

The bottom line, it would seem, is that we’re working, engaging in labor to try to earn a living. Eventually, our numbers increase in the educational aspect of society, where we are doing the kinds of things that will strengthen the situation for Latinos as a whole in this country.

THAT OUGHT TO be seen as a positive for the United States – a batch of newcomers that wants to work, and who once they are established will be capable of climbing the economic ladder.

The reality, of course, is that some people insist on perceiving the issue through a nativist, if not outright xenophobic, lens. They’re the ones who want to insist that we’re “taking” jobs away from people who are somehow “more deserving” of them, although I would say a job is best given to the person who will work hardest at that particular labor.

Could it be that these people throw up their rhetorical roadblocks to assimilation because they realize it has the potential to leave their individual ranks on the side of the economic roadway?

It was with that thought in mind that I read the Census Bureau’s latest estimates of business ownership. Released Tuesday, it offered up stark totals of the number of businesses in this country, and how much revenue they generate.

IT ALSO COMPARED the totals from 2007 (the most recent year for which complete information is available) to 2002. The end result is that the number of businesses run by so-called “minorities” are significantly on the increase – more than double the rate of increase for businesses overall.

That includes the number of businesses owned specifically by Latinos – 2.3 million non-farm businesses across the country, up by 43.6 percent compared to 2002. In all, those businesses accounted for 8.1 percent of all businesses in the United States, providing 1.1 percent of total receipts and 1.6 percent of total employment. Nearly 2 million of the Latino businesses were those who were “self-employed.”

Many Latinos are putting themselves to work. Isn’t that supposed to be a plus?

But then, people in certain places see the large percentage of Latino-owned businesses and feel fear, which truly is sad. Perhaps if they tried working as hard as they felt fear, they’d be better off.

IT SHOULDN’T BE a shock that the U.S. Southwest, whose territory was once part of Mexico and the Spanish colonies before that, would have the largest share of Latino-owned businesses.

More than 560,000 Latino owned businesses are in California, accounting for one-quarter of all businesses in the state. Texas had 19.2 percent of its businesses owned by Tejanos, doing $62.1 billion in revenues (18 percent of all receipts statewide) in 2007.

That’s a huge economic boost. Doing anything to tamper with that would be a huge economic blow.
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That is something to consider for those places that insist on thinking that politicians in Arizona have somehow latched onto the “secret” of controlling immigration. Because their new law that requires local cops to more aggressively enforce federal immigration laws also has its provisions meant to reduce the amount of Latinos who work in that state.

TAKE THE PROVISIONS of that law that make it a crime to pick up migrant workers and take them to their jobs – on the grounds that the driver is interferring with traffic by making the stop. It would be a joke, if the punch-line weren’t so mean-spirited!

For the record, Arizona in 2007 had 52,663 Latino-owned businesses, up 50 percent from five years earlier. Those businesses generated $8.03 billion in receipts. That is what Republican politicians, who like to think they’re pro-business, are willing to tamper with for ideological concerns.

For that is what this issue ultimately comes down to. Work.

Certain people in this country want to think they can achieve their “ideal America” by cutting off labor, thereby making this country not so desirable for all those funny-talkin’ brown people. The sad part of this equation is that too many otherwise rational people are willing to give these blowhards the time of day – instead of writing off their rhetoric as ridiculous.

THE FACT IS, the Latino numbers for work are growing. Nothing is going to stop this, particularly since such a large share of the Latino population in the U.S. is either native-born or naturalized (it’s those nativists in their most ridiculous moments who want to believe that we all ought to be illegal).

Because for all the borderline racist rants I hear from people who claim all these Latinos are dragging down our society, I can’t help but believe that the loss of a share of the population willing to work this hard is the factor that truly would cause the United States to deteriorate into a third-world country.

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Who’s playing partisan politics?

The latest Republican partisan line on immigration reform is that, not only will nothing happen this year, that failure will be solely the fault of President Barack Obama.

GOP observers want us to believe that the growing Latino population will wind up placing the blame on Obama for trying to politicize the issue – and doing a bad job of it.

ANYBODY WITH SENSE realizes this is a stretch. Not so much that Obama hasn’t bungled the situation with his staff’s inactivity earlier on, but the idea that we’re going to somehow think the Republican partisans would be better off for us.

We are capable of seeing that the reason this issue hasn’t advanced is because of the GOP opposition from the segment of that political party that wants a certain sense of isolationism to dictate our nation’s laws on immigration.

That is what I found most ridiculous in a commentary published Monday by the Washington Post by a member of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington. The commentary was a summarization of all the various voter blocs typically supportive of Democrats whom Obama has allegedly irritated.

That is supposed to mean that Obama is driving down the vote for Democratic candidates for elective office this year. We Latinos are on the list – with the Gallup Organization poll from earlier this year cited as evidence. That was the poll that put favorable ratings for Obama among Latinos at 57 percent – a 12-percent drop from a year before.

THAT IS A big drop, but it still showed a solid majority of Latinos preferring Obama. The drop itself reflects the inactivity – a sense that Obama was more interested in appeasing conservatives by doing nothing rather than trying to address the issue of an immigration bureaucracy so bloated that it complicates the issue of otherwise-qualified people being able to get a visa (which is why that 12 million “illegal” figure is so high).

Recently, Obama gave a public address at American University in which he stated the obvious – he can’t move forward on immigration reform until Republican partisans with a nativist streak either pipe down or are ignored by their GOP colleagues. We also have seen the Justice Department file its own lawsuit with regards to the situation in Arizona.

What makes me laugh the most about the institute’s commentary was the implication that these actions by Obama are preventing any bi-partisan political cooperation from occurring on immigration reform.

“These actions were designed to bolster Hispanic support, but they doomed any hope of bipartisan cooperation on immigration,” the commentary reads. “Democrats appear more interested in posturing to win Hispanic votes than getting something accomplished for Hispanic voters.”

BEFORE OBAMA’S SPEECH and the federal lawsuit (which could be the first of several that Arizona state government will have to face on the issue in coming years), there was no hope of “bipartisan cooperation” on this issue, or on any issue, which is the reality addressed by Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs when he said Democrats could suffer significant losses in Congress in this year’s elections.

In fact, it has been the most outspoken Republican operatives who have screeched and screamed the loudest that this is a “dead” issue and that any discussion of it is a waste of time.

Not that Latinos were ever counting on bi-partisan cooperation in Congress to get something achieved on this issue. Our ranks always included people who knew who el enemigo was, and that it likely would take some hard-core politicking on Obama’s part to push real reform into law.

If anything, I’d say the federal government actions have been an effort to force the issue to continue to be talked about, and is a step in the direction that many Latino activists had desired all along. If only such energy had been expounded earlier in the process, we might have had a chance of forcing something significant to occur.

OF COURSE, IF Obama and his administration had taken that Latino-desired action earlier, we’d have really heard the GOP partisans screaming for blood – similar to how they whined when they realized they had been defeated on health care reform.

I also find it humorous to think that it is the Democrats who supposedly are pandering for votes by bringing up this issue, when if anything I’d question the GOP’s motives for being so willing to give in to the nativists among their ranks to define the larger question. I’d say that is blatant pandering, particularly since many Democratic Party officials have been reluctant to go along with it. Such as the governors who over the weekend are trying to blame this issue for bringing down their political chances of victory later this year.

Too much of the rhetoric created by this issue sounds to me like bullies who want to provoke a fight, then don’t want to accept blame for the mess they started, which I find ironic because of all the GOP talk about how they are the party of people who accept “personal responsibility” for their lives.

Which is why many Latinos will wind up sticking with Democrats for the near-term future. We might not think much of all of them, but siding with the bullies instead is just stupid.

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So-called majority doesn’t like Arizona lawsuit? Feds will do it again

I’m sure that some political pundits of a conservative ideological bent are thinking that Attorney General Eric Holder is committing professional suicide.

There are polls that claim a majority of people do not like the fact that the United States government is challenging Arizona’s attempt at immigration enforcement. So Holder says not only is there no chance he will back away from the lawsuit already filed, we may well get another one.

HOLDER USED AN appearance on the CBS “Face the Nation” program on Sunday to say that his staff is considering a second lawsuit against Arizona because of the law that state’s Legislature imposed back in April that requires local police to more vehemently try to enforce federal immigration laws.

The lawsuit filed last week challenged the legitimacy of the state law purely on the grounds that it would be a local entity meddling in federal affairs – after all, individual states don’t have their own immigration policies (even though some local governors like to act as though they do).

Now, Holder told the government geeks and few other people who actually watch the Sunday morning news analysis shows that a second lawsuit would focus on the issue of whether such laws encourage local police to behave in discriminatory ways.

The Arizona law that technically is set to take effect July 29 (but may get stalled by the courts while the first lawsuit is pending) has many provisions.

BUT AT ITS heart, it requires local police to inquire about a person’s immigration status, and detain them if they cannot prove their citizenship or legal residency status to a cop’s satisfaction. Defenders of the law say it would only affect people who already had come to the attention of police for something else.

But there are those who have so little faith in local police (and also cite provisions of the Arizona law that make it easier for people to sue police if they suspect their local cops are not enforcing the law vehemently enough) that they are convinced certain peoples whose ethnicities are actually native to Arizona would wind up being the ones most often singled out and checked.

There are people who suspect it is just a matter of time before some U.S.-born, but of Mexican ethnicity, person gets deported after being detained by a local cop in Arizona. Police themselves, as part of the brief training they are getting in how to handle the new law, are being warned that their actions will be watched very closely.

With his comments on Sunday, Holder basically made it clear that the attorney general and the Justice Department will be among the people doing the watching.

WHICH ALSO MEANS that these future lawsuits are likely to be filed once the law actually takes effect, and Arizona officials manage to bungle something up in its enforcement.

I’m sure that approach will offend this law’s most vehement supporters – who have been all too effective in imposing their nativist thought processes on the mainstream debate on the immigration reform issue.

The Gallup Organization just last week came out with a poll claiming 33 percent of those surveyed like the idea that the federal government is suing Arizona – while 50 percent are opposed to the idea. Another 17 percent have “no opinion” on the issue, which makes me wonder what hole in the sand they’re sticking their heads into.

That saddens me, although it doesn’t surprise me.

I AM SURE there are people who are desperate to hear a court issue a ruling, no matter how legally weak an unreliable it may be, that could be perceived as shooting down the federal government. For then they will engage in cheap rhetoric claiming that this shows the justice of their position.

All it really does is delay the day when we will have to get serious about the issue and engage in true debate and discussion. The partisan rhetoric and the way it has come to dominate the issue IS the problem.

If anything, that is what I see as the benefit of federal officials making it known that this one lawsuit already filed is not the end of the issue. This is the type of legislation that ought to be subjected to so much review.

Because the more people actually study what is in the measure (I still burst out laughing at the thought that Arizona political types seriously passed a law making it a criminal act to pick up a migrant worker – on the grounds that stopping one’s vehicle interferes with traffic), the more likely they are to realize how ridiculous and petty, if not outright mean-spirited the measure truly is.

SO I HOPE that the Justice Department continues to be vigilant in overseeing the situation, and is not swayed by the cheap polls that claim a majority of people want this type of act. Even if they do, it is still wrong.

I honestly believe the day will come when most of these people are going to look back on their current actions and rhetoric and wind up having to spend the rest of their public lives apologizing for just how petty and narrow-minded they allowed themselves to become.

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