Editor of La Prensa
By Linda Alvarado-Arce
As my first editorial for La Prensa, Inc. I would like to address what I feel is at the root of all the negative rhetoric surrounding immigrants, immigration, and Latinxs. I particularly want to start with the question: Are immigration reform efforts really only a way to covertly institutionalize xenophobia? If so, what does xenophobia mean when (because it will happen) a “minority” population becomes a majority population, and English is the “official” language of the U.S.
Xenophobia, according to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Ed. (2002), is when a person is “unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign people.” Xenophobia is at the root of the fear that the dominant culture has regarding its loss of power, control, and wealth over all other racial and ethnic groups, particularly Latinxs, who will soon become the largest “minority” group in the United States. I prefer the term “historically marginalized” to describe this population.
The Latinx population in the United States is the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country. Latinxs will soon outnumber Whites, who have traditionally held almost all the positions of power, control, and wealth in the U.S. In the southwest and along the southern U.S. border, Latinxs already make up the majority of many communities. Therefore, due to their size and proximity to Mexico, Latinxs in the United States are most targeted and affected by all the recent anti-immigration reform efforts.
This is unfortunate because historically, during our nation’s globalization/NAFTA efforts and as conglomerates deindustrialized and reindustrialized, it was the Latinx and many other immigrants who were hired in large numbers to fill the demands of cheap labor with poor working conditions for so many corporations that were trying to escape unions and taxation. In fact, throughout U.S. history, immigration laws, orders, and programs, such as the Bracero Program or even the H-1Visas, were established to promote the hiring of immigrants, in particular, the immigrants looking for a better life economically for themselves, their children, and their families.
This has been beneficial for OUR current Latinxs. The group of people that, at one time and still today, fit plenty of our needs. They have helped the U.S. or US rebuild New Orleans and other devastated areas. They have helped build our railroads, pick our crops, do our yards, roofs, childcare, and housekeeping, and make and share their culture, food, music, and customs with us. They work hard, despite their loosey working conditions and poor wages. They do the work that no American wants to do because if they did, we never would have had slavery or migrant farm worker agreements, i.e., the Bracero Program.
And now, in the typical American way, we are done with them, they can go back to where they came from. We are now using legal means, threats of mass deportation, objectifying and dehumanizing them by implementing and enforcing detainments and deportation as a means to ensure white America remains in power, has total control, and gets to keep all or more of their money. All rights, responsibilities, and privileges are reserved only for U.S. citizen, even though many of the undocumented are here permanently and legally as they wait for their naturalization process to come to fruition.
By now, with the establishment of English as the “official” U.S. language and the numerous changes made to our current immigration system, immigration reform has covertly institutionalized xenophobia. This has occurred even though Spanish was spoken in the U.S. before English. We are living through a cultural and linguistic war that is levied against immigrants and anyone and everyone who is not white and a U.S. citizen, with families living every day looking over their shoulders, in the shadows, and on guard against Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) or a neighbor who may fear them or think they are here without documents.
For any reason, someone can call ICE to raid a home, bust a door down, and or do an “illegal alien” sweep or workplace raid. All of which involves removing any children in the home and placing them with legally documented family members or children services. ICE is like drug enforcement; however, it confiscates people instead of drugs and holds them until they can prove their citizenship or simply ships them away with no regard for the family or a person’s human dignity.
Therefore, the question becomes, is this an economic issue? Are we doing this because undocumented immigrants are taking the jobs away from us, the American citizens, that they never wanted anyway? And, if the immigrant in the U.S. is taking the American job, why do we have lines of semi-trucks to and from our borders, every day importing and exporting merchandise made by the hands of our Latinx people working in American companies on the other side of our border, the very wall that was built to separate us? If we do not want Mexicans or other nationals to take US jobs, then why do we farm so many of our U.S. jobs out to other countries?
Is this border wall really intended to just hide the high number of U.S. companies we have in Mexico and throughout South America? Because we do not have a wall between the U.S. and Canada, and that border is longer than our southern border, or at airports where “terrorists” smuggle themselves into the U.S. or have used it to terrorize. Until we get to the root of xenophobia and start discussing it and doing something about it that doesn’t dehumanize or separate families, this “unduly” fear and contempt will continue to exist and creep into our everyday lives- citizen or not. I choose to do something, which is read, write, and share my thoughts here through this paper. Education is the only answer.