SECRETO A VOCES

My column in The News of Mexico City

Three headlines that sprang up over the past few weeks sum up the insanity of illegal immigration politics in the U.S. quite nicely. “Man who shot officer is illegal immigrant” “Boy whose mom died in wreck saved by illegal immigrant” “Studies: Immigration rhetoric hateful” I like these kinds of short news headlines, the kinds that tell the whole story in just a few words. You barely have to read the story itself, but in case you missed them: A 22-year-old gang member, Erik Jovani Martinez, wrestled Phoenix, Ariz., officer Nick Erfle to the ground during a jaywalking stop last September, then pulled a gun and shot the cop dead. Martinez had been deported back to Mexico in the past, then managed to make his way back across, unbeknownst to federal border agents. In the second, this past Thanksgiving, Jesus Manuel Cordova, an illegal immigrant from Sonora, found a nine-year-old boy wandering the desert along Arizona’s southern border. The boy’s mother was still alive, trapped inside her crashed car. With night approaching fast – and it gets damn cold out in the desert in November – Cordova built a bonfire to keep him and the boy warm. He stayed with the child, giving him a jacket and comforting him. A group of hunters found them the next morning. What’s curious about these juxtapositions is the kind of play each story received in the court of public opinion. While Erfle’s murder turned into a cry of “seal the border” the border security … enthusiasts stayed quiet about Cordova’s rescue of a kid who very well may have died out in the Sonoran desert. Now why would that be? The same parameters apply, don’t they? If the border was secured and everybody who comes across it were carefully checked out, perhaps Erfle wouldn’t have been murdered during something as routine as a jaywalking stop. But then again, Cordova wouldn’t have rescued a nine-year-old kid. All this leads into a study commissioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League in October. The study, "Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves Into the Mainstream,” tries to make the argument that the anti-illegal immigrant warbles on AM radio talk shows and the Internet are getting scary. Now, let’s be fair here. To call this thing a “study” is a stretch. What the ADL found is that whackjobs tend to refer to illegal immigrants as “third world invaders” “swarming” over the border to “attack our way of life.” Sorry, if you’re going to refer to a political hit-piece as a “study,” you damn well better show me some numbers, stats, something, anything that backs up what you say. Instead the “study” cherry-picks succinct quotes like this one: “Illegal aliens in this country have set up ethnic cleansing zones, ethnic cleansing zones where if you walk past the wrong sign post, the invisible line, you’re under the threat of death,” to make their case that the haters are getting scary. I contend that people have been spewing radical hate speeches since we first learned to talk, and maybe before that. But, like the groups the report focuses on, the two organizations mainly survive off donations, and it seems to me that there’s no better way to host a cash-grab than attacking the opposition (see: presidential elections). Nevertheless, I do think there’s something to be said for throwing out the obvious, even if you do have to frame it in the disguise of a study. Rarely does a day go by that someone doesn’t blame illegal immigrants, or just plain immigrants in general, for something. One Web site whose name will never appear in this column, published an op-ed piece that blames immigrants for over-populating California, causing last month’s southern California fires to be much more destructive than they should have been. Another group that likes to collect money from supporters, shoots video of Mexican military soldiers on the Arizona border then puts them up on their Web site, claiming these soldiers are running dope loads across the border. Some Congres-istas like to use illegal immigrant bashing platforms to get themselves re-elected. Others (big surprise) like to throw out incredibly silly stats to show enforcement is succeeding, or failing, or whatever they think their constituents want to hear. On the flip side, some Hispanic organizations love to play the race card while others enjoy dropping the word “illegal” and instead referring to all foreign nationals as, simply, immigrants. Everybody’s collecting donations while nobody’s addressing the proper issues. But going back to the child-rescuer, Cordova. Nobody’s asked him what he thinks of all this. There wasn’t time to; he was unceremoniously dumped back in Mexico.

-- Michael Marizco