Hispanic Fanatic

Thanks to Lucifurry and Ankhesen Mie for their recent comments on my posts.

Perhaps they were as surprised as I was to find out that, in 2011, gay soldiers are less controversial than undocumented immigrants.

Yes, in a final burst of lame-duck progressivism, the U.S. Congress rightfully eliminated the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy at the end of 2010. As happy as I am for gay-rights activists, I feel a twinge of jealousy that about five minutes before the Senate decided to give the homophobia a break, these same people said, “But those brown-skinned kids still have to go.

Even though they were willing to deal with President Obama on just about every other piece of last-minute legislation, Republicans squashed the Dream Act as if it were a pesky mosquito.

Clearly, getting tough on illegals is still a resonant theme for the GOP. This is despite the fact that it is long-term political suicide to piss off the fastest-growing demographic in America.

The approach also ignores the fact that “Americans are more inclined to support than oppose legislation similar to the Dream Act.”

So even popular appeal is not enough to pass this most modest of reforms, which “was originally designed to be the first in a sequence of measures to resolve the status of the nation’s illegal immigrants.”

Rather than a starting point, however, the Dream Act became a flash point, proving that “in the age of stalemate, immigration may have a special place in the firmament.”

Indeed, could anyone have predicted, a decade ago, that Republicans would be more willing to say nice things about homosexuals than they are to pass immigration reform that’s actually beneficial to their big-business overlords?

And the miniscule progress that has been made will soon be wiped out, because “when Republican lawmakers take over the House and gain strength in the Senate … a decade-long drive to overhaul the immigration system and legalize some of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants seems all but certain to come to a halt.”

The optimists among us insist that change is still possible. In fact, President Obama recently told Congressional Hispanic Caucus members that “he’ll renew his push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2011 — even though such an effort would face even longer odds in a Congress where Republicans control the House.”

But quixotic efforts aside, no one expects the issue to be resolved in time for, say, the 2012 elections. That means it will once again be open season on the undocumented (and by extension, Latinos) during the presidential campaign.

If only we were as popular and universally beloved as gay people are… yes that’s sarcasm.

We often hear that the United States is a nation of immigrants. The occasional subtext behind this statement, however, is that European settlers founded this country, and that their contemporary descendants are the rightful owners of this land (i.e., the “real” Americans). As such, any other kind of immigrant is bothersome, or even menacing.

However, the U.S. Census Bureau recently revealed that a lot of us hanging out in these amber fields of grain have solid roots in other lands. Approximately 36.7 million of the nation’s population (12 percent) were born in foreign countries. About 33 million (11 percent) are native-born with at least one foreign-born parent.

This means that about 23 percent of the U.S. population (including your most humble blogger) are first-generation Americans or immigrants. As such, it is clear that the immigrant experience — long celebrated so long as the story stopped circa 1920 — is still an ongoing saga.

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I’ve avoided saying too much about the midterm elections, mostly because the results are depressing, infuriating, and mystifying. Also, I don’t think the internet needs one more shrill voice proclaiming how Republicans are going to rape the environment just for the hell of it, burn gay people at the stake, and allow corporate CEOs to legally hunt us for sport.

Still, I have to address one side issue of this grueling election season. Perhaps its just semantics, but I have officially run out of patience. I don’t want to hear one more social conservative bellow, “I want my country back!”

There are 300 million of us living here. This is not your country. Neither is it mine, his, or hers.

It is ours.

As cheesy as it sounds, we have to find a way to live together. And exclaiming (threatening?) that you are going to claim this nation for yourself — and the minority of Americans who happen to align with your political and/or religious beliefs —  is not just selfish; it’s foolish.

After all, if you took the country, where would you keep it?

Of course, those insisting that this is “their” country are furious that so many people look different from them, or speak something other than English, or praise some other deity. This was never an issue back in those fabled good old days when everyone was straight, white, and Christian.

But the times are not a-changing. They have a-changed.

And insisting that there is some way to make it all go away, electorally or otherwise, is just a waste of time. So you can stop now — thanks.

First off, let me thank Festina, Kerstein, and Robin for their comments.

Second, let me backtrack a little by retelling the story of Cousin #6. As you may recall, he came to America when he was a toddler. When he turned eighteen and joined the Army, he assumed his application for citizenship would be fast-tracked. However, even after filling out all the paperwork and following every rule, years later he found himself on the phone talking to an INS official who insisted that he come to the office for an interview.

“But I’m on active duty,” my cousin said. “In Bagdad.”

“That’s not an excuse,” the INS official said.

Yes, Cousin #6 had entered the immigration maze.

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One of my favorite words is “internecine.” Of course, I don’t admire the concept (i.e., hostility or conflict within a group). I just like the sound of its syllables clanging together.

In any case, “internecine” describes the situation whenever ethnic minorities beat up on each other. It’s most famous application is “black-on-black violence.”

I have yet to hear about brown-on-brown violence, but perhaps it is only a matter of time. For example, a few months ago in Staten Island, a Mexican immigrant became one of the borough’s recent victims of a hate crime.

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The Dream Act may not be dead. But it is most certainly on hold, and no one is sure for how long.

The U.S. Senate did not directly kill the bill. Rather, Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill. The reason was that the Dream Act, as well as the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, were amendments to the legislation. These two bits of conservative wolfbane were too much for Republicans to stomach. So they voted, en masse and without exception, to deny the bill’s passage.

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Recently, I wrote about the concept of self-loathing among immigrants. My thesis was that some immigrants want so badly to be considered “American” that they will join in on hatred aimed at newcomers.

As we know, all immigrants are not Hispanic, nor are all Hispanics immigrants. However, it’s safe to say that immigration and Latino culture are closely linked. Therefore, you will be delighted to know that self-hatred can transcend citizenship status and careen right into questions of ethnicity and race.

For example, a few weeks ago, the GOP candidate for governor in Nevada, Brian Sandoval, endeared himself to his fellow Latinos during an interview with Univision.

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Recently, I wrote about the Republican Party’s attempt to kill itself.

Specifically, I talked about how the GOP stance on immigration is increasingly being viewed as intolerant to Latinos.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss the harsh rhetoric coming from the right wing as the toxicity of a few racists, many of whom have found a home in the Tea Party or other conservative organizations.

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In a recent post, I asked if assimilation was truly a positive goal, or if it is often used as a justification to push around new immigrant groups. I think the answer is that it’s a bit of both.

Still, let’s dwell on the positive aspects of this tricky, amorphous concept. Rates of assimilation are down among today’s immigrants, which has caused no shortage of alarm among many Americans.

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Just to be clear, nobody should yell “Nazi” at people unless there are, you know, actual Nazis present.

I make this clarification not just because it’s the truth, but because so many people have had their sensibilities offended during the arduous debate over immigration.

Judging from reader comments to several of my posts, it is not illegal immigrants and their supporters who have been slandered. No, this coalition of liberals and minimum-wage workers — outnumbered by at least two to one in many opinion polls — are the aggressors.

Yes, the “Nazi” label has apparently been tossed at people who support laws such as SB 1070. Now, even if you’re in a privileged position of economic power and numerical supremacy, and the person yelling it is near society’s bottom rung, that’s got to sting (although it would be nice to acknowledge that dynamic).

For the sake of argument, let’s call it even, and forget about all the racial slurs and threatening vitriol aimed at illegal immigrants. We’ll also let it go that much of people’s defensiveness (“I am not a fascist!”) is just the attempt to counter-attack uncomfortable accusations of racism.

It’s impossible to measure how many individuals on each side are acting like lunatics and to what degree. So let’s just call it unsightly all around.

However, I would ask that if you send me hyperbolic emails detailing crazed behavior by illegal immigrants, as one person did, that you at least keep it timely.

You see, I recently received a forward about the Montebello flag-raising incident. If you don’t recall, some Latino teenagers in California got out of hand during a demonstration. They raised the Mexican flag, and hung the American flag beneath it, upside-down.

It’s certainly a striking image. Perhaps that’s why it’s still flying around the internet as proof of a Latino insurrection, despite the fact that it happened in 2006.

Now, it would seem to me that if nothing more egregious than raising a flag has happened in the last four years, then the Hispanic overthrow of our government is not quite the threat the right wing is presenting.

At the risk of becoming defensive myself, I’d like to bring up an image from a demonstration that resonated with me. Granted, the protest was about healthcare, not immigration, but it at least occurred within the last year or so.

You may have seen this gentleman, and others like him. They believed it was a good idea to carry assault rifles to venues where President Obama was speaking.

The response from conservatives was praise and the usual pontificating about Second Amendment rights.

So if we’re keeping track: A bunch of unruly teenagers come up with a tacky way to protest, and it becomes a horrifying sign of revolution. However, grown men show up with firearms in a clear attempt to terrify their political foes, and it is a sign of patriotism.

The kids were disciplined for their idiotic prank. The guys with guns, however, went about their lives just fine, with the biggest burden probably the hassle of digging through the fan mail they received.

I could also point out that many of those teens have been told, sometimes overtly, that they are subhumans who have no rights. This is contrast to the adults with guns, who tend to be at the top of the American pecking order. They should also be – and let me phrase this delicately – old enough to know better.

So by all means, if the emotional response of teenagers is more of a threat to you than the aggressive tactics of adults, make your case. The odds are, however, that you will lose that competition.