It’s Time to Engage the Hate Mongers!

SOURCE:

AILA Leadership Blog

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Just a couple days following my election to AILA National Secretary, I received a phone call from a good friend directing me to a website for an organization describing itself as a champion of American values. After a cursory review, it was obvious the entity was composed of immigrant bashers blaming Hispanics for everything from a depressed housing market to global warming. The site had a vast archive of articles, each ranting about the demise of America because of the “Mexican Invasion.” (Guess someone forgot to tell these people Mexico was already part of America.)

Scrolling down the pages, I noticed a reference to my election from a press release posted on the site. Below were numerous threats and comments describing me as a traitorous, idiotic socialist apparently leading an effort aimed at making Mexico City the next US Capitol. My mother would have been proud - her son right up there with the Anti-Christ. Not bad for a cowboy boot wearing redneck Baptist Republican from Oklahoma City.

I found similar references on other sites and discovered that our AILA President, a fellow conservative Republican, was also the target of several mischaracterizations. I thought, who were these people and why did they hate me? I have never published my views on border policy, enforcement, and quotas. I next reviewed nearly a dozen of these anti-immigrant websites. It didn’t take long to realize these groups not only hate me; they hate you; they hate their neighbors; and they probably hate each other.

It’s obvious that the culture of hate is thriving in our country, but just how bad is it? The Spring 2009 Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) gives us a clue. http://www.splcenter.org/intl/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1027. The report, titled, “The Year in Hate” identifies immigration as a focus point for these groups. The report concluded that there were “926 hate groups active in the U.S., up more than 4% from 888 in 2007. That’s more than a 50% increase since 2000, when there were 602 groups.”

SPLC’s Intelligence Project, originally called Klan watch, was created in 1981 to gather information on the Klan but has now evolved into an effort to monitor domestic hate crimes and hate groups throughout the nation. The SPLC Intelligence Project is recognized as an acknowledged expert on U.S. hate activity.

These hate groups seem to be everywhere, many hiding behind the electronic mask of the internet, not subject to complete discovery by the hate trackers. One thing is certain, the anti-immigration movement has become a foundation for the existence of these extremist and white supremacist groups.

For an interesting read on what SPLC has to say about the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), go to http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2007/12/11/fair-crossing-the-rubicon-of-hate&splcnewsletter=panewsgen-121107/.

There are also those who spew venomous attacks on immigration advocates in comment and discussion sections following internet media stories. While we certainly guarantee the right to free speech in this country, it’s often difficult to distinguish between their hate messages and legal extremist opinions. They live on the edge of illegality, they are loud and they are being heard.

I previously believed we could eradicate hate through education. Unfortunately, even some of the educated are falling prey to the message of the hate mongers. I am now convinced we must be more vocal and louder than those with twisted minds. We need to post our messages of tolerance, loyalty and compassion to this country and the principles upon which it was founded. We need to blog, publish and be heard. It’s time for each of us to engage the hate.

T. Douglas Stump

Posted by T. Douglas Stump at 9:30 PM

Other Posts at AILA

Treating Immigrants Worse than Criminals

Unfairness, Damn Unfairness, and the Immigration and Nationality Act

Hate Groups' Rise Fueled by Nativism

Sent by Porfirio Q.

Source: CHANGE.ORG

by Dave Bennion

Published March 05, 2009 @ 04:53AM PST

Dee at Immigration Talk with a Mexican American has been blogging on the murder last week of two young Chileans studying in the U.S. The killings were apparently motivated by nativism and carried out by an unbalanced man whose neighbor said he had asked her if she was "ready for the revolution to begin and if [she] had any immigrants in [her] house to get them out." Dee's latest update takes a look at how Dannie Baker's hatred of foreigners filled an otherwise empty life, and how he may have believed the murders were his way of contributing to society by ridding it of foreign influence.

As regular readers of this blog will know, hate crimes against Latin@s have become a regular feature of life in the U.S., as people like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, and Tom Tancredo build their careers on inspiring fear of immigrants.

New York Times: Nativism in U.S. is alive and flourishing.

SOURCE:



EDITORIAL - The Nativists Are Restless

From: Mark R Day day <mday45@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 7:45 AM

Published: January 31, 2009

The relentlessly harsh Republican campaign against immigrants has always hidden a streak of racialist extremism. Now after several high-water years, the Republican tide has gone out, leaving exposed the nativism of fringe right-wingers clinging to what they hope will be a wedge issue.

Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.

This is nonsense, of course. For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, “anti- amnesty” hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions. The wedge did not work for single-issue xenophobes like Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., or the former Arizona Congressman J. D. Hayworth. Nor did it help any of the Republican presidential candidates trying to defeat the party’s best-known voice of immigration moderation, John McCain, for the nomination.

Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance. Unless you can find a way to get rid of all the Latinos.

What was perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis.

So far, so foul. But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube. Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous.

And it takes only a cursory look at a worsening economic climate and grim national mood to realize that history is always threatening to repeat itself. Last week on Long Island, the authorities in Suffolk County unsealed new indictments against a group of teenage boys accused in a murderous attack against an Ecuadorean immigrant, Marcelo Lucero. Since that crime last year, many more victims have come forward with stories of assaults in or near the same town, Patchogue. The police in that suburb seem to have made a habit of ignoring a long and escalating trail of attacks against immigrant men, until the hatred rose up and spilled over one night, fatally.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on February 1, 2009, on page WK8 of the New York edition.

Nashville Rejects Hard-line English Ordinance

SOURCE:

IMMIGRATION '08

In "English Only unites seemingly unlikely allies," Nashville's City Paper reports:

It's not every day that Nashville's business leaders rub elbows with progressive activists. Hispanic and Kurdish teenagers aren't always found mingling with Nashville's most influential movers and shakers of local politics.

But a surprising cross-section of Nashville demographic groups and political orientations crowded together in a Loews Vanderbilt Hotel event room Thursday to celebrate a shared victory. Far from an unholy alliance, this group celebrated together the defeat of the English Only ballot initiative. Volunteers said Nashville is a better place for having grappled with English Only.

Indeed, volunteers from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) took to the streets to talk to voters about just what the English-only ordinance would have meant to their communities in Nashville.

TIRRC's website talks about why eliminating translations of government documents would be such a terrible idea:

When an English-only amendment passed in Arizona, school districts were prohibited from translating important announcements to parents, and the Office of Tourism was prohibited from publishing promotional brochures in French, German, and Japanese. When English-only passed in California, city officials in Monterey Park began removing foreign language books from public libraries. When English-only passed in Florida, state agencies began to receive increased discrimination complaints, as many interpreted the law to be a license to repress foreign languages.

If Nashville passes an English-only amendment to the Metro Charter, no one fully understands the impact it will have on services or the harm it will cause the immigrant community. We do know that Nashville would be the largest city in the nation to approve such intolerance, forever tarnishing our reputation as a friendly, inclusive, and welcoming city.

TIRRC has helped form a broad and diverse coalition committed to defeating English-only called Nashville for All of Us. Thousands of individuals and dozens of groups have already spoken up about the need to defeat English-only-also known as Amendment #1-and a further assault on our Metro Charter-Amendment #2. You can find out more at www.nashvilleforallofus.org.

Congratulations to the staff and volunteers at TIRRC, who worked tirelessly to bring immigrant and refugee community members together to ensure that those most affected by English-only turned out and voted.

By voting down the English-only proposition yesterday, Nashville rejected extremism and unrealistic solutions on immigration. It has shown its best values as a welcoming city instead of giving into its worst instincts.

Posted: 01-23-09 By Paco Fabian

NOTES:

"Voters are not duped anymore," said Maria Rodriquez of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. "They know when they see bad policy that is going to be costly and that's not progressive. I guess brown can stick around in Nashville."

At a time when other cities and states are instituting anti-immigrant measures, the people of Nashville spoke for diversity and inclusion.

It’s likely that the election of Barack Obama underscored the argument of the opponents of the English First measure was “mean-spirited” – as Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said – and not worthy of a city that values and promotes its diversity.

The day after the landmark vote in Nashville, ProEnglish with its Liberty Bell logo still had a running banner proclaiming that “Official English is sweeping the nation.”

ProEnglish, the organization involved in the Nashville campaign, is part of a closely linked network of “official English” and anti-immigration organizations that are based in the Washington, DC area and are involved in local and national campaigns to restrict immigration and to institute English as the official and only language for government business.(See TransBorder Profile: ProEnglish)

A central figure of these groups is John Tanton, who was a founding director of ProEnglish and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Among the other groups in which Tanton, a former president in the 1970s of Zero Population Growth, are English First, Immigration Reform Law Institute, and Numbers USA. As the principals of these groups readily acknowledge, the movements to restrict immigration and to restrict the use of languages other than English are closely connected organizationally and ideologically.

If the Nashville vote is any indication, the issue of the increasing presence of other languages in the country may be losing its emotional and ideological hold on Americans. Both at a national and local level, diversity not uniformity has a new power in American politics.

Why so many anti-immigrant bigots?

Published: Monday, December 22, 2008

In Houston, Marvin Nathan and Martin Cominsky, both of the Anti-Defamation Committee, wrote in response to a Houston Chronicle series about how law enforcement can fail to deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. What struck Nathan and Cominsky was that "anti-immigrant bigots seized on parts of (the) series to insult, stereotype and even advocate violence against immigrants and others they perceived as immigrants, especially Hispanics."

The online comments they drew attention to called for denying due process, insisted immigrants pose a public-safety threat, accuse our country of leaning toward the Third World and someone simply advocating "just shoot them on the spot."

So what have undocumented immigrants done to outrage and anger those people so much that they can't see straight? And why equate "Hispanic" to "illegal immigrant?" What incites them that they want to deny due process, as if illegal immigrants are just like those fellows at Guantanamo?

One thing is clear. They hate peaceable people. Nathan and Cominsky cite reports and studies proving immigrants of every type commit less crime. They bring up a Harvard professor who quantifies it to be 45 percent less.

So the nuts don't like people who commit less crime. What else?

Well, the evidence is they are losers. Look at the results of the 2006 mid-term elections. Among the most vehement anti-immigrant ranters in Congress who wanted to turn all 12 million unauthorized immigrants into felonious criminals, at least nine lost their House seats. In 2008, 14 out of 16 hard-line, anti-immigration Republicans went down.

But as the mainstream of that movement goes away, the more fanatic believers they incite are showing up.

The Nov. 8 murder of Marcelo Lucero, 37, an Ecuadorean immigrant, in Suffolk County, N.Y., reached a new low in hate crimes and hate speech. Seven teenagers are charged with the gang assault. The one with the swastika tattoo on his leg stands accused of sticking a knife in Lucero's chest as the gang hollered racial epithets.

Prosecutors say the group attacked another Hispanic man a half-hour before that murderous assault. The seven admitted to beating Hispanics for fun as a regular pastime.

In Brooklyn, another Ecuadorean, 31-year-old Jose Sucuzhany, who was walking home arm in arm with his brother Romel because they had been drinking, was attacked with a baseball bat and bottles by four assailants in an SUV. The attackers are reported to have used bottles and an aluminum baseball bat and shouted anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs during the attack.

Sucuzhany was declared brain-dead Dec. 9. He stopped breathing five days later. A waiter for seven years, he earned his real estate license three years ago and launched his own agency, Open Realty International. So much for the American dream.

These are among the most recent and most grizzly atrocities. While we may not know all the reasons why, we know enough. The attackers are message-carriers for others, not unlike the suicide bombers who carry messages for terrorists elsewhere in the world, except these "American patriots" are just homicidal, not suicidal. They didn't anticipate getting caught. Their deranged notions tie "illegal immigrants" and "Hispanics" with vigilante ideas about a problem that doesn't exist.

There you have it, a pretext to terrorize.

Treat the rants you listen to with caution. They are not about a broken government but about excuses to break it.

Jose de la Isla writes for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail: joseisla3@yahoo.com.

Body of Ecuadorean killed in New York returns home

SOURCE:

By JEANNETH VALDIVIESO – 15 hours ago

CUENCA, Ecuador (AP) — The body of an Ecuadorean immigrant beaten to death in New York arrived home for burial late Friday, following the third high-profile killing of a Latino immigrant in the U.S. this year.

Clutching candles, friends and family lined the roadway as the coffin of Jose Sucuzhanay, a 31-year-old real estate broker, wound its way from the airport to a funeral home in this highlands city near his rural hometown.

"Welcome ... no one will hurt you here," read a placard friends carried on the walk. "Enough already. No more migrant deaths."

Sucuzhanay was attacked by a group of men who kicked and beat him with an aluminum baseball bat, shouting anti-Latino and anti-gay slurs as he walked arm in arm with his brother near his Brooklyn home on Dec. 7.

New York City police are still searching for three suspects, and the NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.

"We're not only here to show our support, but to express our pain, our repudiation of these acts of xenophobia, these actions that have embarrassed us as human beings and that we all must fight," Ecuadorean Migration Minister Lorena Escudero said earlier Friday as she joined Sucuzhanay's mother to receive the body in the capital, Quito.

U.S. lawmakers and Hispanic groups have denounced Sucuzhanay's death, saying recent slayings of Latino immigrants lend new urgency to calls to pass a new hate crimes law and give local officials resources to investigate.

Sucuzhanay's killing follows the deaths of Luis Ramirez, 25, a Mexican immigrant who was beaten to death July 14 in eastern Pennsylvania; and Marcelo Lucero, 37, an Ecuadorean immigrant who was fatally stabbed Nov. 8 by a group of teenagers on Long Island, New York.

Prosecutors said seven teenagers charged in Lucero's assault had set out to attack a Hispanic person, while three teenagers linked to Ramirez's death also face charges of ethnic intimidation.

There were 830 Hispanic victims of hate crimes last year in the United States, up from 819 in 2006 and 595 in 2003, according to FBI statistics.

Sucuzhanay's funeral will be held Saturday in Cuenca, the capital of Ecuador's Azuay province, from which thousands of immigrants have left for the U.S. and Spain.

Lucero, also from the region, was buried outside Cuenca earlier this year.

On Friday, the streets were crowded with Sucuzhanay's friends and family, including his two children, Brian, 10, and Johanna, 4, who were raised by their paternal grandfather after their parents went to the U.S. in search of work.

"We only know that they attacked him. Why would they do that? We don't know," one of Sucuzhanay's uncles, Jose Reiban, told The Associated Press.

De la Isla: Hate crimes against Hispanics

Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 12/17/2008 - 12:04.

• By JOSE DELAISLA, Hispanic Link News Service
• editorials and opinion

In Houston, Marvin Nathan and Martin Cominsky, both of the Anti-Defamation Committee, wrote in response to a Houston Chronicle series about how law enforcement can fail to deport criminal undocumented immigrants who commit illegal acts. It's conventionally understood that anyone committing a crime should be properly arraigned, prosecuted, tried, if guilty punished and if unauthorized be deported.

But what struck Nathan and Cominsky was that "anti-immigrant bigots seized on parts of her (the reporter's) series to insult, stereotype and even advocate violence against immigrants and others they perceived as immigrants, especially Hispanics."

The blog entries they drew attention to called for denying due process, insisted immigrants pose a public-safety threat, accuse our country of leaning toward the "third world," and someone simply advocating "just shoot them on the spot."

So what have undocumented immigrants done to outrage and anger those people so much that they can't see straight? And why equate "Hispanic" to "illegal immigrant?" What incites them that they want to deny due process, as if suspicious people are just like those fellows at Guantanamo?

One thing is clear. They hate peaceable people. Nathan and Cominsky cite reports and studies proving immigrants of every type commit less crime. They bring up a Harvard professor who quantifies it to be 45 percent less.

So the nuts don't like people who commit less crime. What else?

Well, the evidence is they are losers. Look at the results of the 2006 mid-term elections. Among the most vehement anti-immigrant ranters in Congress who wanted to turn all 12 million unauthorized immigrants into felonious criminals, at least nine lost their House seats. These were members of the hateful 104-member House Immigration Reform Caucus. In 2008, 14 out of 16 hard-line, anti-immigration Republicans went down.

But as the mainstream of that movement goes away, the more fanatic believers they incite are showing up.

The Nov. 8 murder of Marcelo Lucero, 37, an Ecuadorean immigrant, in Suffolk County, N.Y., reached a new low in hate crimes and hate speech. Seven teenagers are charged with the gang assault. The one with the swastika tattoo on his leg stands accused of sticking a knife in Lucero's chest as the gang hollered racial epithets.

Prosecutors say the group attacked another Hispanic man a half-hour before that murderous assault. The seven admitted to beating Hispanics for fun as a regular pastime.

In Brooklyn, another Ecuadorean, 31-year-old Jose Sucuzhany, who was walking home arm-in-arm with his brother Romel because they had been drinking, were attacked with a baseball bat and bottles by four assailants in an SUV. The attackers are reported to have used bottles and an aluminum baseball bat and shouted anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs during the attack.

Sucuzhany was declared brain-dead Dec. 9. He stopped breathing five days later. A waiter for seven years, he earned his real estate license three years ago and launched his own agency, Open Realty International. So much for the American dream.

These are among the most recent and most grizzly atrocities.

While we may not know all the reasons why, we know enough. The attackers are message-carriers for others, not unlike the suicide bombers who carry messages for terrorists elsewhere in the world, except these "American patriots" are just homicidal, not suicidal. They didn't anticipate getting caught. Their deranged notions tie "illegal immigrants" and "Hispanics" with vigilante ideas about a problem that doesn't exist.

There you have it, a pretext to terrorize.

Treat the rants you listen to with caution. They are not about a broken government but about excuses to break it.

(Jose de la Isla, author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power," writes weekly commentaries for Hispanic Link News Service. Email: joseisla3(at)yahoo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)

Column
Must credit Hispanic Link

Police: Youths harass Hispanic men in Patchogue

BY MITCHELL FREEDMAN |mitchell.freedman@newsday.com; Staff W

November 27, 2008

In the latest incident police are calling a hate crime, a group of eight youths in Patchogue shouted ethnic slurs at two Hispanic men coming out of a restaurant on East Main Street, then pushed one of them, police said.

The incident was quickly broken up when a passing Patchogue Village code enforcement officer in a marked car did a quick U-turn and pulled over, police said.

The youths ran down the street as the officer got out.

"Our code enforcement officer noticed it ... He did exactly what he was supposed to do. He calmed the situation down and notified the Suffolk County Police Department," said Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri. "It is very alarming that after the incident of two weeks ago there are still people who have not gotten the message."

On Nov. 8, Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was stabbed to death after he and a friend were attacked. Seven Patchogue-Medford High School students have been charged. Police said the suspects admitted they regularly sought out and attacked Hispanic immigrants.

Last night, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy - who had been criticized for not strongly condemning that killing - said through a spokesman, "If the facts are as presented in this complaint, it is my hope that punishment will be as severe as possible, to insure that this type of menacing is stopped once and for all."

The eight people being sought, five men and three women, were described as "young adults" by Det. Sgt. Robert Reecks, commanding officer of the Suffolk Police Hate Crimes Unit. Reecks said the attack was considered aggravated harassment as a hate crime.

The two victims, who were uninjured, were taken to the Fifth Precinct, where they were interviewed and signed complaints, Reecks said.

Reecks is asking anyone who may have seen the incident to call the Hate Crimes Unit at 631-852-6323 or the Crimestopper hotline 800-220-TIPS.

Lucero's killing, and reports of other attacks against Hispanics, have set the Latino community on edge, and led to protests by people of all races in Suffolk. The county has also been the target of criticism from people as far away as Ecuador, where a lawyer representing the Ecuador consul-general's office, Gerardo Mejía, said Suffolk was rife with racism.

The Rev. Allan B. Ramirez of the Brookville Reformed Church, an immigrant activist, said last night he had heard about the latest incident while visiting Patchogue yesterday, and added that he was appalled by it, but not surprised.

Staff Writer Zachary R. Dowdy contributed to this report.

RELATED POST
Civil rights groups denounce 'immigrant bashing'

Gathering in D.C. prompted by Marcelo Lucero's slaying

BY JULIANN VACHON |Special to Newsday

2:02 PM EST, November 24, 2008

Related links

• Patchogue stabbing case and community reaction Photos

• Ecuador mourns Photos

• Complete coverage: Patchogue hate crime case

• Reflections on the Patchogue killing

• Viewsday blog: Hate and tragedy on Long Island

FAIR Claims Demonizing Rhetoric Unrelated to Anti-Latino Violence

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important anti-immigration group in America, recently issued an angry press release denouncing those who suggest that demonizing nativist rhetoric leads to hate violence. FAIR said that this “outrageous behavior” was part of “a calculated strategy” aimed at “silenc[ing] legitimate immigration policy debate” and added that those who suggest such a link between rhetoric and hate crime “provide no proof whatsoever.” FAIR and its leader, Dan Stein, were particularly incensed that Latino rights organizations had “cynically” suggested that the recent murder of Marcelo Lucero on Long Island, N.Y., by white teenagers who had gone hunting for “Mexicans,” was related to the demonization of Latino immigrants that had been particularly heavy there.

FAIR accused the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and unnamed other organizations of “manipulat[ing] the data” on hate crimes. But the fact is that it is FAIR that dishonestly manipulated data as part of a bid to minimize anti-Latino hate violence.

FAIR says that anti-Hispanic hate crime incidents went up by just 3.3% between 2006 and 2007, and it is right. But it completely ignores the fact — which is what La Raza, MALDEF and the Southern Poverty Law Center (publisher of this blog) have been pointing out — that that figure is only the latest rise of many. In fact, the very same FBI hate crime statistics cited by FAIR to make its case show that anti-Latino hate crimes have risen a total of 40% between 2003 and 2007 (see chart below). While the FBI statistics are not conclusive, they indicate a trend that parallels the rise in anti-immigration groups and their often-vicious anti-Latino rhetoric. As Jack Levin, the Brudnick professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University and a national expert on hate crime, told Hatewatch: “It’s not just the most recent numbers. It’s the trend over a number of years that lends credibility to the notion that we’re seeing a very real and possibly dramatic rise in anti-Latino hate incidents.”

FAIR also suggests, based on the number of incidents reported by the FBI, that the prevalence of anti-Latino hate crimes is very low — 1.3 attacks per 100,000 Latinos. It ignores the important, 2005 Justice Department study (pdf) that concluded that the real level of hate-motivated attacks on Latinos (this at a time before the anti-immigration movement and its rhetoric had really exploded) was vastly higher — 90 per 100,000 Latinos. The study, considered by criminologists to be far more accurate that the annual hate crime statistics, found that huge numbers of hate crimes are not reported to police or don’t find their way into the FBI’s statistics for various other reasons. The underreporting problem is even more severe among undocumented immigrants, who rarely report crimes to police because they are afraid they will be deported.

FAIR takes the remarkable position that hate speech directed against Latinos — allegations that they are secretly planning to hand the American Southwest over to Mexico, that they are far more criminal than others, that they are bringing dread diseases to the United States, and so on — has no relationship at all to hate crime. In addition to defying common sense, that head-in-the-sand approach completely ignores the statements that are typically made by hate criminals during their crimes. In the Long Island case, for instance, prosecutors said the suspects told police that they were “specifically targeting Hispanic males.” “Let’s go find some Mexicans to [expletive deleted] up,” they said, according to Newsday. They told detectives they were going “beaner-jumping” and they used racial epithets during their attack. The facts are similar in most such cases. “Racist rhetoric and dehumanizing images inspire violence perpetrated against innocent human beings,” Levin concluded.

Hate criminals’ sentiments come from somewhere. Just because it’s not possible to pinpoint the exact source of the Long Island attackers’ racial anger — rhetoric from their parents, nativist groups in the area, politicians, pundits or even FAIR itself — does not mean it magically popped into the assailants’ minds. But FAIR uses the fact that we don’t know precisely where their anger started to claim that the angry and demonizing rhetoric FAIR and others promote is unrelated to criminal violence.

Finally, FAIR keys in hard on the idea that those who criticize the authors of demonizing propaganda are attempting to suppress free speech. But the fact that hateful things can be said and enjoy First Amendment protection does not mean that hateful rhetoric doesn’t promote violence and it does not absolve groups like FAIR from moral responsibility for such rhetoric. In reality, as the Chicago-based human rights group Center for New Community (CNC) points out, FAIR has been active in the Long Island county where Lucero was murdered for some 10 years now. In 2001, not long after FAIR began work in the area, two young men tried to beat two immigrant laborers to death with hammers; in a later case, a Mexican family escaped with their lives after their home was firebombed in a hate attack. Perhaps, given its history, it’s no surprise that FAIR, started by Michigan nativist John Tanton in 1979, is working so hard to convince us that demonizing rhetoric — including its own — has no relationship to criminal violence.

Weekly Update on Immigration

Submitted by Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro on Wed, 12/03/2008 - 5:25pm.

"Prison" for immigrants? - A note in Dubois, Pennsylvania's Courier Express discusses expansion plans for a privately run "federal prison for illegal immigrants." According to the story, the prison is under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. My first question is: why are any immigrants going to prisons as opposed to detention centers? Or is this a case of criminals who are serving sentences and are found to be in the country illegally? I feel like important details were left out of the story, but if non-criminal aliens are somehow being held in prisons then we have a major issue.

The Impact of the 2008 Elections on Immigration, continued: 1. "Firewall" wins -Saxby Chambliss (R) won the runoff election in Georgia against Jim Martin (D) for the Senate. The runoff was widely covered by Time and Chambliss was even on Halperin's "Five Most Important People in American Politics Right Now Who Aren't Barack Obama." In addition to the political considerations, a win by Jim Martin would have meant a key vote in the Senate for immigration reform. Now Chambliss and the Republican party are touting this "big win." This seat would have meant a huge win for Democrats, but it's important that Democrats put up such a fight in Georgia. Vehemently anti-immigrant and anti-reform Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin couldn't have more different views on immigration and in their approach to governing - Chambliss has been politicking, selling himself as a "firewall to prevent Democratic excess," while Jim Martin had presented himself as the man who would provide a "bridge" to the change promised by President-elect Barack Obama, and that change includes immigration reform.

2. Reality sets in, in VA - Per a piece by Anita Kumar in the Washington Post, the Virginia Panel on Immigration is changing its ways, from the hard-line stance to more productive and realistic proposals. After seeing the hard-line anti-immigrant Republican candidates lose congressional elections all over the state, the members of this commission have apparently realized that the anti-immigrant positions they formerly took to score what they considered to be political points just don't work. The panel has shifted its focus from fighting illegal immigration to working with the ever-growing population of immigrants. Delegate Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), who served on the commission and is staunchly anti-illegal immigration, noted "I can't totally disagree that some people are leery of the issue, because maybe it wasn't the wedge issue that some thought it would be," Gilbert said. The new recommendations provided by the panel to Gov. Tim Kaine include shortening the Medicaid residency requirements for certain qualified immigrants, offering in-state tuition to immigrants who meet specific criteria and creating an immigration assistance office. The commission also proposed increasing the number of English classes and creating a plan to address the needs of foreign-born residents and urged the federal government to compile more complete immigration statistics, increase the number of visas for foreign workers and pass comprehensive immigration legislation.

A Post op-ed also discusses the significance of this change in tone in Virginia in more detail: "....reform is as needed as ever. Only the federal government can get the job done, and the political climate may be more favorable than last time around." Of the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the United States, 250,000 to 300,000 live in Virginia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. The U.S. Census Bureau says an additional 440,000 people in Virginia are not U.S. citizens but are in the state legally.

3. More Immigration Losers - The Wall Street Journal remarks: the GOP hardliners have to face the reality that immigration reform is not unpopular. This Opinion piece notes Virgil Goode's loss to Tom Perreillo - which became official this week. For the second straight election, incumbent Republicans who attempted to turn illegal immigration into a wedge issue lost their election. Anti-immigration hardliners Randy Graf, John Hostettler and J.D. Hayworth were among the Republicans who lost in 2006. In addition to Goode, joining them this year were GOP Representatives Thelma Drake (Virginia), Tom Feeney (Florida), Ric Keller (Florida)and Robin Hayes (North Carolina) - all Members of a House anti-immigration caucus that focuses on demonizing the undocumented and advocating for things like mass deportation and denying citizenship to U.S. born children of undocumented persons.

4. GOP Immigration Strategy Goes Down in Flames - El Paso newspaper citing the most recent poll conducted by America's Voice and Lake Research.

5. Jeb Bush Readies to Woo Hispanics- In an interview, most importantly, Bush said his party must embrace the nation's changing demographics:

"We can't ignore large segments of our population and expect to win," Bush said. "We can't be the ‘old white-guy' party. It's just not going to work, the demographics go against us in that regard...". "Among Hispanic voters, I think we need to change the tone of the conversation as it relates to immigration. In Florida, we've not participated much in the chest pounding and the yelling and the screaming. I mean, it just drives me nuts when there are substantive policy differences that we can show mutual respect on, but the tone needs to change. And I think we need to recruit more candidates who share our values in the Hispanic community. In Florida we've done that."

This provides a window into the strategy Jeb will use if he runs for Senate.

Intelligence Report: Anti-immigration Leader at Heart of White Nationalist Scene for Decades - This report just released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) details more precisely what SPLC has been reporting for some time: John Tanton, the architect of the modern anti-immigration movement and founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has been at the heart of the white nationalist scene for decades, working with racist intellectuals, Klan lawyers and even Holocaust deniers.

CIS also appears in this article on alleged "Green Card Marriage Fraud." While there is little data to substantiate the alleged incidence of fraud in marriages between one U.S. citizen and one non-citizen, even one case of fraud is unfortunate. In this regard, we thank CIS for furthering our argument for CIR - so long as the immigration system is broken and so long as there are insufficient legal channels for those currently living in the United States, or those wanting to come here, people will continue to find ways outside of the system to come here. So let's get a law passed that provides for a realistic number of visas, a speedier green-card process through employment and family, and additional realistic legal channels for permanent residence.

Outlook on Napolitano- A New York Times Editorial on the role Gov. Napolitano could play in achieving Comprehensive Immigration Reform as DHS Secretary. This op-ed makes many of the arguments NDN has posited on the inadequacy of "enforcement-only", and makes a compelling argument for the urgency of CIR:

How badly have [enforcement-only] efforts failed? Since Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, instead of comprehensive reform, 32 tunnels have been discovered under Arizona's border with Mexico, according to research by The Arizona Republic's Sean Holstege. That's more than all tunnels previously found in Arizona. Drug cartels finance tunnels, but transporting people into the country illegally has become so lucrative that drug smugglers increasingly are mixing their cargo. If the U.S. had a process to legally bring in needed foreign workers and legalize the current undocumented population, the reduction in the Border Patrol's workload would allow border law enforcement to focus on drug smuggling. There's reason to hope the new Congress will act on that simple reality.

The Immigration Crystal Ball - NPR is doing a great job focusing on border and immigration issues, Jennifer Ludden explores how enforcement priorities may change under President Obama and why "Immigration Experts Expect Fewer Workplace Raids." There's also a great deal of debate over whether immigration reform will happen, and when: 1) an interesting blog by Roberto Lovato, 2) A Dallas Morning News post by William McKenzie posits "Why Immigration May Go Forward," while a John Riley article in Dallas Morning News argues that immigration reform "Takes backseat to the economy."

No one really knows, all we can do is educate and advocate. The bottom line is that President-Elect Obama has demonstrated a commitment to immigration reform - he has spoken about this issue as a priority, and here's how he'll go about it.

The Economy and Immigration - And why should immigration and the economy be considered separate priorities, exclusive of each other? At NDN we've discussed why there is opportunity for immigration reform to form part of a new plan for the economy. In a post this week, Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University also posits that immigration may be part of the answer to give the economy an entrepreneurial boost:

Most studies find that immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs or self-employed than the population as a whole. The Philadelphia Business Journal reports on yet another study that adds more support....Current policy makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to enter the U.S. legally.

In a different post, Jaya Ramji-Nogales writes about one of the effects of the economic downturn on immigrants:

The "Lou Dobbs" effect; as xenophobic vitriol and resulting anti-immigrant sentiment has increased, so has violence against immigrants or those who appear to be immigrants. Add that to an economy in free-fall, and the result may be highly combustible.

Number of Undocumented Immigrants Continues to Fall - According the Center for International Trade of University of Texas at San Antonio, 1.3 million, or 11% of undocumented immigrants have returned to their home country this year. A right wing website similarly reports a dramatic decline, the difference is in the causes to which the decline is attributed. The UT study correctly attributes the decline to the economic crisis and a decrease in the supply of jobs, combined with increased raids and workplace enforcement. The nativist website draws a very incorrect and very dangerous conclusion: that "illegal immigrants" started heading home "immediately" after the failed attempt at CIR in the Senate in Summer of 2007, which is completely false. The first evidence of undocumenteds leaving began earlier this year, during late summer and Fall of 2008, in response to the economic crisis, as opposed to a bill in Congress. As we move forward, and as President Obama works with Congress to pass immigration reform, we have to be very careful to fight back against that 10% of people in the U.S. who will be spreading misinformation such as this.

Immigration Changing Course, A Story that Needs Telling - The Miami Herald has begun a series on the course of immigration, "It's an important story for a country built on immigration and yet often ambivalent about its impacts. Over a generation, new arrivals from Mexico, the Caribbean and throughout Latin America have reshaped this country. Nowhere is that more the case than in South Florida, where millions of legal immigrants and nearly one tenth of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States have settled."

Hate Crimes Changing Political Climate - On Tuesday, activists called for investigation of Suffolk hate crime statistics. This is the beginning of what we hope to be an ongoing PR campaign to encourage victims to report hate crimes, and to encourage law enforcement to crack down on such criminal activity.

El Universal reports an increase in remittances to Mexico over the last month, with immigrants taking advantage of the recent devaluation of the peso. Remittances rose 13% compared to October of 2007, coming to a total of about $2.4 billion. This is the first rise in remittances after 14 months of a consecutive decline. Even though they rose from last October, remittances are still less than they were in January of this year. And the AP reports on Philadephia's growing immigrant community.

Harsh Words, No Action

From: Chrisy58’s Weblog

My Journal of Thoughts

« Ring of Fire Radio/Interview of Mark Bowen Democracy Now, 11/10/2008 »

Harsh Words, No Action

I wanted to post this here because I thought it was very interesting and I think that many people have forgotten our history. What is the best way to fight those who hate people, but to expose their lies with the truth.

David Duke and his White Nationalist like to blame most of our problems on the Jews, Blacks, and other non whites. Just the 30 minutes I listened to his Euro Conference this weekend was about the Jews and how they hate white people and don’t consider us human beings. I think his story was if a Jewish person needed a liver that he wouldn’t hestiate to grab a Non Jew off the street and take his liver. I know they won’t consider that hate speech or anything wrong with implying that we have to be afraid of the Jews in our midst, but I do find it very hateful and spreading lies as truth.

That is exactly what the Hitler and this Third Reich did in Germany. They poisoned the minds of the German people by telling them all these terrible lies as truth. I still have nightmares just thinking of the movie the Eternal Jew which is promoted as the truth in White Nationalist circles and families. The scene where the baby calfs were tortured and the movie said that is the way Jewish people butcher their cows for beef really got me angry. I love animals and I thought how could anyone be so cruel to animals. It was the German people love animals and are good and the Jews are terrible and are out to get the German Aryan race. The movie is presented as the truth. I see that same brainwashing going on in this country today.

I had never heard of the book the The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zionism until I was living with Jeff. It was one of the books on the required reading material. Again that book is passed off as the truth. It is a lie, but like the movie the eternal jew people who are being recruited into White Nationalism are told that is the truth and come to think that they must fear the Jew who they are told is out to destroy them. It was just another book to me that I couldn’t get through because it make me sick to my stomach, but just told Jeff I read it.

Kristallnach did happen, though I know White Nationalists either deny it or blame the Jews and look at it as Germans just defending themselves or some delusion that they hold as the truth.

http://www.adl.org/ADL_Opinions/Holocaust/YNetNews_11092008.htm

Harsh Words, No Action
By Abraham H. Foxman
ADL National Director
This article originally appeared in Hebrew in Yedioth Ahronoth and in English on Y-Net News.com on November 9, 2008

For those of us engaged in the fight against anti-Semitism, the commemoration of Kristallnacht which took place 70 years ago on November 9-10, has special meaning. Of course, Kristallnacht is important to remember because it was the moment when it became clear that Nazi hatred of Jews was beyond anything seen before. It is important to remember because there are yet those among us who lived through, witnessed it, and survived it. And it is important to remember because after Kristallnacht, the world no longer had any excuses for not acting against the barbarism of Nazi anti-Semitism.

Most of all, however, Kristallnacht teaches us the most basic lesson about how to view anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred. One could ask the question: if we observe Yom HaShoah every spring, why do we need to have a second commemoration every year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht? The answer, I believe, lies in the different focus. Yom HaShoah speaks to the horror of the murder of six million. It remembers and calls attention to the ultimate brutality that humans are capable of and that the history of anti-Semitism eventually produced. It is about remembering the millions of people whose lives were snuffed out because of hatred. And it reminds us that “Never Again” must be a guiding principle of our lives as Jews.

Kristallnacht, on the other hand, is not about the end product of hate but the process. It represents the reality that a Holocaust does not just happen; it has to be prepared, cultivated, acted upon first in small steps, then bigger ones, and finally the biggest. In this sense, Kristallnacht commemoration is not only about remembering the over 90 Jews who were killed, the 30,000 male Jews who were arrested and sent to concentration camps, the over 1,000 synagogues which were torched along with their Torah scrolls and prayer books, and the 7,000 Jewish shops and business that were looted and destroyed.

It is also about how the Holocaust came to pass. It reminds us that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened had there not been 2,000 years of demonization of Jews throughout Europe, as reflected in the Decide charge and in the scapegoating of Jews as an evil and powerful force. It couldn’t have happened had there not been cynical anti-Semites who produced the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zionism which gave credibility to the notion of worldwide Jewish satanic power.

Harsh words, no action

Hatred in its most extreme form, like the Holocaust, evolves over time. The challenge is not to wait to stand up until the final stage when it is too late. The time to stand up is during its evolution, indeed as early as possible. Kristallnacht was the moment when the world had to stand up. It didn’t.

There was no doubt from that point on that the Nazis were no longer content to simply strip Jews of their legal rights. Many newspapers and government officials around the world decried the violence and barbarity of Kristallnacht, but few governments were prepared to act.

Franklin Roosevelt condemned the outrages and recalled the US Ambassador from Germany for “consultations,” but any liberalization of America’s tight immigration quotas was, he said, “not in contemplation.” The British cabinet allowed 10,000 Jewish children into Britain from December 1938 to September 1939 in the course of the famous Kindertransport, but refused to allow 21,000 more into Palestine.

Kristallnacht proved the point. The world responded with harsh words and no action. Soon enough, the words themselves echoed empty and hollow. Silence followed. Kristallnacht was the first nail in the coffin of European Jewry.

Kristallnacht commemorations are important for many reasons, including the need to show the world that we must stop hate in its tracks before it leads to the ultimate - a final solution.

__________

Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, is National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

The Latino Threat | Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation

Nonfiction review: 'The Latino Threat'
(Heads up by "The Unapologetic Mexican", thanks Nezua!)

Bob Blaisdell, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, October 13, 2008

By Leo R. Chavez

(Bio & more books by this Author)

Stanford; 288 pages; $55/$21.95 paperback

Leo R. Chavez, a cultural anthropology professor at UC Irvine, is patient and careful. No matter how racist and stupid and infuriating the fearmongers like the Minutemen vigilantes and assorted right-wing radio hosts and columnists are about the so-called Latino threat, Chavez meticulously reiterates or quotes their charges and then tidily corrects them, unfortunately not quite so energetically and amusingly as the doctor in Kurosawa's "Red Beard," who breaks the villains' arms and then immediately mends them.

As Chavez proceeds through his study in "The Latino Threat," he doesn't free us to rage; he keeps us focused on the Styrofoam horse the anti-immigrants have glued together from spit and fearful imagination and wheeled into our fair Troy:

"In the final analysis, the discourse surrounding Latina fertility and reproduction is actually about more than reproduction. It is also about reinforcing a characterization of whites as the legitimate Americans who are being supplanted demographically by less-legitimate Latinos. For this reason, the empirical evidence examined here may be easily dismissed by those who prefer perpetuating a discourse that undermines Latino claims of citizenship."

That is, he knows those who foment terror of the "threat" of brown babies are not likely to listen to facts when they have deep-rooted prejudices to express. Among the biggest threats undocumented immigrants pose is that their vulnerability and our scapegoating of them for taking jobs we won't do allow American citizens to expose themselves as hypocrites.

Not only do we fear illegal immigrants and, of course, continue to hire them for wages and under conditions few citizens would accept, but we also demonize them and, no more decently, discount the real contributions of legal immigrants as well as of the multigenerational citizens who happen to have Spanish-sounding last names.

Chavez examines the clamor raised by national magazines and in the 1990s by books and concludes: "It was as if Mexican Americans and other Latinos existed in an ahistorical space apart from the life that took place all around them. They were cast as 'alien-citizens,' perpetual foreigners with divided allegiances despite being U.S. citizens by birth, even after many generations." They're not Americans, they're Latinos.

So almost everything you've heard about Latinos as a culture - or that there is such a thing as a distinct identifiable Latino culture in the United Sates - is, if you look at it with patience and research, either wrong or no more true of Latinos than of other Americans. It just doesn't take very long for most immigrants to become "American," for good (economic standing, social and political participation, national pride) and bad (by the second generation, immigrants usually succumb to our poorer diets, our indifference to education, our earlier and more promiscuous sexual activities).

But those pale ones fearing the "browning" of America never seem to think once, much less twice, before spouting off, intolerant in spite of professing a tolerant religion and unhindered by facts or history. Chavez occasionally despairs of trying to summarize nonsense and lets the speakers explain their own views.

Chavez is so cool and gentle in his corrections of the knuckleheads who pretend that their "patriotism" is anything but racism that it's hard not to wish that he'd really let loose once in a while. He's earned it! Shouldn't an informed and knowledgeable person get to deliver a shot or three? But that's not Chavez's style.

Niceness is a grand quality, but it's not much fun, so while "The Latino Threat" is educationally plain and clear, it's also slow. "The trouble with kindness is that it takes a long time," as the professor and critic Marvin Mudrick once told his classroom of creative-writing students. "If it were possible to be kind as quickly as it is possible to be cruel and funny, I would be kind all the time."

Chavez's very civil "discourse" is a deliberate and considered choice. He shows that the Latino threat of "reconquista" by U.S. citizens (with those telltale Latino last names) and even by undocumented workers (their one-day peaceful walk-out protest in 2006 created a right-wing tizzy) is no threat at all, and is evidence rather of our own bad conscience regarding race and hard work, and that those who pose Latinos as a threat are at best irresponsible. We all would have benefited from taking college courses with such a good, even-keeled man who suffers the fools and educates the rest of us.

Bob Blaisdell teaches English in Brooklyn. E-mail him at books@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle