Raul Ramos y Sanchez's Blog, page 13

Vigilante violence targets immigrants in Greece

Emboldened by anti-immigrant political rhetoric amid the worst economic crisis to hit the country in a decade, Greece has seen a marked rise in vigilante violence against immigrants by the Golden Dawn, a neo-fascist group.
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Excerpted from...
Greek Far Right Hangs a Target on ImmigrantsBy LIZ ALDERMAN - New York Times

ATHENS — A week after an extremist right-wing party gained an electoral foothold in Greece’s Parliament earlier this summer, 50 of its members riding motorbikes and armed with heavy wooden poles roared through Nikaia, a gritty suburb west of here, to telegraph their new power.

As townspeople watched, several of them said in interviews, the men careened around the main square, some brandishing shields emblazoned with swastikalike symbols, and delivered an ultimatum to immigrants whose businesses have catered to Nikaia’s Greeks for nearly a decade.

“They said: ‘You’re the cause of Greece’s problems. You have seven days to close or we’ll burn your shop — and we’ll burn you,’ ” said Mohammed Irfan, a legal Pakistani immigrant who owns a hair salon and two other stores. When he called the police for help, he said, the officer who answered said they did not have time to come to the aid of immigrants like him.

A spokesman for the party, Golden Dawn, denied that anyone associated with the group had made such a threat, and there are no official numbers on attacks against immigrants. But a new report by Human Rights Watch warns that xenophobic violence has reached “alarming proportions” in parts of Greece, and it accuses the authorities of failing to stop the trend.

Since the election, an abundance of anecdotal evidence has indicated a marked rise in violence and intimidation against immigrants by members of Golden Dawn and its sympathizers. They are emboldened, rights groups say, by political support for their anti-immigrant ideology amid the worst economic crisis to hit Greece in a decade.

As the downturn deepens across Europe, the political right has risen in several countries, including France, the Netherlands and Hungary. But the situation in Greece shows how quickly such vigilante activity can expand as a government is either too preoccupied with the financial crisis or unable or disinclined to deal with the problem. Greece’s new prime minister, Antonis Samaras, has said he wants to put an end to the “invasion” of illegal immigrants, but “without vigilantism, without extremism.” Yet, as attacks mount even against legal immigrants, he has addressed the violence infrequently.

Threats, beatings and vows by Golden Dawn followers to “rid the land of filth,” sporadic problems in recent years, have become commonplace since the party claimed 18 of Parliament’s 300 seats in the elections last month, even after Ilias Kasidiaris, the party’s spokesman, repeatedly slapped a female rival during a televised debate.

While some attackers are being arrested, Human Rights Watch and other groups accuse the Greek police of increasingly looking the other way when confronted with evidence of violence, and even standing by while the beatings are going on. All of this, the report by Human Rights Watch says, is “in stark contrast to government reassurances.”

The report further states that illegal migrants “were routinely discouraged from filing official complaints,” and that “the police told some victims they would have to pay a fee to file a complaint.” In addition, it says, the police told some victims to fight back themselves.

“We have hundreds of reports from people who are beaten while policemen were standing there doing nothing,” said Thanassis Kourkoulas, the spokesman for Expel Racism, an immigrant support group. He said officers had been accused of assaulting immigrants in police stations and of giving the telephone number of Golden Dawn to citizens who called with complaints about crime and immigrants.

Still, Golden Dawn’s allure is seeping more into the mainstream amid reports of rising crime in areas where poor illegal migrants are concentrated. In Parliament recently, Golden Dawn’s nominee for a deputy speaker position was backed by 41 lawmakers, an indication of either support or tolerance from major political parties.

Armed with promises to restore jobs and order, the group is increasing its presence even in some middle-class areas. Burly black-clad men who hew to nationalistic and xenophobic slogans offer protection to older people, the poor and Greek business owners.

Stratos Papadeas, 33, runs the Byzantium gift shop near the Acropolis, selling Greek Orthodox icons. As the crisis devours business, he has grown exasperated with illegal Pakistani and African immigrants who make money selling fake designer purses outside his door.

“They are killing jobs for Greek people,” Mr. Papadeas said as he stood under a gilt-leaf painting of the Madonna. “They scare customers away, and they engage in criminality. I’m not racist, but something needs to be done.”

He said he almost asked Golden Dawn to “clean the streets” but hesitated as reports of its methods proliferated. His family cares for a skeletal Kenyan immigrant, Omar, whom he said the group beat savagely one day. “Still,” Mr. Papadeas said, “I’m very tempted to call them because the police are nowhere to be found.”

As Golden Dawn tries to expand its sphere of influence, many Greeks are growing alarmed by what they see as echoes of ultraright ideology in a country that resisted Nazi occupation during World War II. In response, some communities are forming antifascist countermovements, turning once-abstract ideological differences into a street-level struggle.

At a high school blocks from where the episode occurred, students and teachers said Golden Dawn had reached into schools. Recently, several male students sympathetic to the group left their classrooms and beat a passing dark-skinned mail carrier, said Elena Siozou, 16, a student. “Planting violence in young people is the worst thing someone can do,” she said.

Dimitris Bounias and Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.






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Associated Press complicit in fostering prejudice

Excerpts from
How Journalists Use Hate for ProfitBy Charles Garcia in the Huffington Post


Posted: 07/09/2012 6:14 am
"Since 2004, AP directs the media to use "illegal immigrant" as the most "accurate and neutral" term."


In 2010, University of South Carolina journalism professor Sei-hill Kim and Auburn University professor John Carvalho researched newspaper articles and television transcripts between 1997 and 2006 and found the terms illegal alien, illegal immigrant, or just plain illegals are everywhere on television, in newspapers, and on talk radio. They also discovered journalists attracted the largest audiences with crime stories, so linking immigrants to a crime drama was preferred because it increased ratings and profits.
This sleazy practice was confirmed by Fox News host Geraldo Rivera who recently urged his colleagues to drop these biased and racial epithets, charging that media companies "are making a killing demonizing undocumented immigrants" because few issues work so well for ratings in cable news and talk radio.
In the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark Arizona immigration case on June 25th Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and three other justices made clear that foreign nationals residing unlawfully in the U.S. are not -- and never have been -- criminals. They are subject to deportation, through a civil procedure where judges have wide discretion to allow them to remain here. The Court also ruled that it was not a crime to seek or engage in unauthorized employment. Groundbreaking also was what the Court omitted: the biased and racially charged words "illegal immigrants" and "illegal aliens," except when quoting other sources.
The reason journalists get away with dehumanizing Latinos with coded hate language for profit lies in large part on the Associated Press Stylebook which is the media industry bible for the appropriate use of language. Since 2004, AP directs the media to use "illegal immigrant" as the most "accurate and neutral" term.
Suggesting that "illegal immigrant" is accurate and neutral is like Chief Justice William Rehnquist defending his use of the term "wetbacks" for Mexican children. He once argued with a shocked Justice Thurgood Marshall that this racial slur still carried "currency in his part of the country." Rehnquist practiced law in Phoenix for sixteen years.
Not surprisingly the 19-member board of directors of the Associated Press doesn't have a single Latino on its board. If it did, I'm sure management would be chastised for the use of "illegal immigrant" which is not only inaccurate and biased but highly offensive.
Post originally appeared on Fox News Latino


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A nation of laws - and a nation of immigrants

The New York Times reported on a unique 4th of July celebration by President Barrack Obama: A swearing in ceremony for 25 new citizens serving in the U.S. armed forces.

“Just as we remain a nation of laws, we have to remain a nation of immigrants,” Mr. Obama said. “And that’s why, as another step forward, we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. It’s why we still need a Dream Act — to keep talented young people who want to contribute to our society and serve our country .
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July 4, 2012
Obama Marks Fourth With New U.S. Citizens
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — President Obama for a fourth straight Fourth of July joined with military families to eat barbecue and watch fireworks from the White House lawn, but this year he also began the day with active-duty service members, presiding at a citizenship ceremony that made 25 of them new Americans.

And in between, he marked the 14th birthday of his older daughter, Malia.

The naturalization event on Wednesday in the ornate East Room, which was packed with the service members’ families and friends, was the third such ceremony in the Obama White House but the first on Independence Day.

“Happy Fourth of July,” Mr. Obama said. “What a perfect way to celebrate America’s birthday — the world’s oldest democracy, with some of our newest citizens.”

“I have to tell you, just personally, this is one of my favorite things to do,” he said, adding, “It is an honor for me to serve as your commander in chief.”

All of the new citizens had been in the country legally; residents here illegally cannot join the military. They benefited from a legal fast track that shortens the naturalization process for service members in wartime to a few weeks, according to administration officials.

Mr. Obama used the occasion both to recall his recent order suspending deportation of people brought to the United States illegally as children and to once again urge Congress to pass the so-called Dream Act, which would grant legal status, not citizenship, to such people who serve in the military or seek higher education in the United States.

“Just as we remain a nation of laws, we have to remain a nation of immigrants,” Mr. Obama said. “And that’s why, as another step forward, we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children. It’s why we still need a Dream Act — to keep talented young people who want to contribute to our society and serve our country.

“It’s why we need — why America’s success demands — comprehensive immigration reform.”

Many Republicans oppose both Mr. Obama’s order and the legislation, though the issue has proved an awkward one for Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama’s rival. With Latino voters concentrated in swing states like Nevada and Colorado, Mr. Romney has sought with difficulty to soften the hard-line stance he took on immigration in the Republican nomination race.

The 25 service members, all in uniform, stood and raised their right hands to recite the oath of allegiance along with Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security. They came originally from 17 countries.

According to the Pentagon, noncitizens have served in the military since the Revolutionary War and about 29,000 currently are in uniform.

To end the ceremony, Mr. Obama asked Lance Cpl. Byron Oswaldo Acevedo, a decorated Marine who was born in Guatemala and served in Afghanistan, to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. “I’m nervous,” Lance Corporal Acevedo said, before reciting it without error.

In the evening, with the temperature still in the 90s, Mr. Obama and Michelle Obama mingled on the South Lawn with casually dressed service members, some in wheelchairs, and their families amid tables clothed in red, white and blue and tents with lemonade and cotton candy stands. Entertainment included the Marine Corps band, the country music star Brad Paisley and, of course, the annual fireworks display on the National Mall — viewed from a prime location.

In brief remarks, Mr. Obama spoke of the heroism of those present. “Americans are celebrating the freedoms that all of you and your families defend,” he said. “Like many of them, we’re grilling in the backyard.”


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A monument to Che Guevara's Irish ancestry stirs controversy

An editorial by Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times revealed what for many is a little known fact: Che Guevara's Irish ancestry. 
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Gaelic Guerrilla
By MAUREEN DOWD
GALWAY, Ireland

Billy Cameron, a colorful local pol here, never expected to set off an international incident. “It’s ruined my life over here for awhile,” he says cheerfully of his Yank foes.

Things got ugly after Cameron, a Labour Party member of the Galway City Council, proposed putting up a memorial to honor that famous son of Hibernia, Che Guevara, or “our Che,” as Cameron fondly refers to the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary.

Che made only a brief stop in Ireland in the ’60s, visiting a pub in the West Clare seaside town of Kilkee one night after his flight from Moscow to Cuba stopped for refueling at Shannon airport and then got stuck in fog.

But Cameron has been pushing the idea that “Dr. Che Guevara Lynch,” as his Irish supporters dubbed him, counts as a Galwegian because he’s descended from the Lynches and Blakes, two of the 14 original tribes of Galway, well-to-do merchant families who once ruled the city. “Patrick Lynch immigrated to Argentina in the mid-1700s and settled in Buenos Aires,” Cameron notes. “Che is part of the Irish diaspora, I would say.”

An Irish Central Web site headline in May proclaimed “John F. Kennedy beats Reagan, Che Guevara, as world’s top leader with Irish ancestry.”

Ernesto Che Guevara’s grandmother was Ana Isabel Lynch, and his father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, told an interviewer in 1969: “The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of Irish rebels.”

Cameron agrees: “I’m sure Che studied guerrilla tactics of the I.R.A., the same way the Mau Mau in Kenya did.” He thinks the memorial would draw tourists from Latin and South America.

The council voted last year to honor Che. Cameron says he got pledges of funding from the Cuban and Argentine embassies in Dublin. The architect Simon McGuiness and the Dublin artist Jim FitzPatrick designed a plan for a three-dimensional, interactive work of art that would be “a total homage” to “man, image and ideal,” according to McGuiness, featuring three glass panes in different colors of Che’s iconic image.

FitzPatrick, remarkably, was the teenage barman in Kilkee who served Che an Irish whiskey that night. The guerrilla leader told FitzPatrick that his ancestors were Lynches from Galway and that he admired the Irish revolutionaries who had helped Ireland “shake off the shackles of empire.”

Fascinated, FitzPatrick went on to become the artist who made the Alberto Korda photo of Che in his black beret famous by creating his own stylized psychedelic-tinged posters in the late ’60s.

When plans for the memorial were printed last winter in the newspaper, “all hell broke loose,” Cameron recalls.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was furious. She wrote to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, calling Che a “mass murderer and human rights abuser.” Che died at age 39 fomenting revolution in Bolivia, executed in 1967 by C.I.A.-supported Bolivian forces.

The Ivy League joined the brawl. Carlos Eire, a Yale professor of Cuban and Irish descent, wrote a letter, printed in The Galway Advertiser, condemning the “monstrous project” and suggesting it would be “only fair” to put up a monument to Oliver Cromwell next to Che.

FitzPatrick jumped into the donnybrook, writing The Irish Times saying he wished Ireland had a Che-like figure “who could so inspire us” to bring the looting bankers and politicians to justice.

“Che was a bloodthirsty, sadistic killer who did not value human life,” Ros-Lehtinen wrote in an e-mail to me on Tuesday. “I do realize that Che continues to be a chic figure to the intellectual elite harboring misplaced romanticism, but I represent many of his victims and survivors who see him in a far different light.”

The controversy caused the outgoing mayor of Galway and others to back away, claiming they didn’t realize an actual monument was being planned. “What did they think they were voting for, an egg and spoon race?” laughed Dermot Keys, a reporter for The Connacht Tribune.

The lefty Cameron argues that “Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her buddies down South, lunatic fringe Republicans with a Miami-Cuban agenda, should not be allowed to dictate what happens in Galway politics.”

He calls Che a magnetic brand who launched a million T-shirts and mugs — not to mention a passel of biographies, the glamour of “Evita” and movies produced by Robert Redford and directed by Steven Soderbergh.

And therein lies the rub with the bizarre idea. Just because Che became a chic brand for the capitalism he tried to destroy, it doesn’t mean he’s worth honoring on Galway Bay. And just because Ros-Lehtinen can be grating, it doesn’t mean she’s wrong this time.

Cameron hopes the city council takes the memorial matter up soon. Meanwhile, he sees the totalitarian rainbow. “The ultimate fruit of all this is that Che will be known as having the Irish blood and the Galway connection,” he says. “And that is an achievement in itself.”




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Hispanic view of immigration complex, still visceral

An excellent perspective on the immigration debate by VOXXI.com editor Carlos Sanchez.

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Hispanic view of immigration complex, still visceralCarlos Sanchez, Special Contributor

Published: 6:12 p.m. Sunday, July 1, 2012
I chuckled quietly when I was offered an opportunity to present a Latino perspective on June 25's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the Arizona immigration law.Though I am sharing the page with two powerful elected leaders — the most powerful governor in the state's history and a widely respected state senator — my role is much like the role of the country's Latinos in the immigration debate: We're largely on the outside as others make decisions that affect our daily lives.I apologize for offending anyone who views my observations of race or ethnicity as divisive; that isn't my intent.My intent is honesty, and let's be honest, when one thinks of undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens or whatever label is chosen, one typically thinks of Hispanics. And that's what too many elected officials — including the two gentlemen who would be president fail to appreciate. The issue of immigration is perhaps the most visceral, most unifying issue among Hispanic voters.For many of us, this decision cannot be viewed through the prism of states rights versus civil rights.As a group, we generally resent being treated as a monolithic voting bloc who can be appealed to by politicians who utter a sentence or two of broken Spanish. But many of us can just as quickly be made to feel monolithic when the issue of immigration is raised.Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, Aggie or Longhorn Hispanics across the board take this issue personally because for too many of us it has been foisted on us our entire lives.I'm a third-generation American who can barely speak Spanish. Yet I can't tell you how many times in my life that I have been asked, "Why don't you go back to your own country?"For too many Hispanics, the Supreme Court case involving the Arizona law wasn't a debate on constitutional law; it was a deliberation on whether Hispanics are welcome in the great American tapestry.Too often among too many institutions for too long, that answer has been no.That's what I felt about Arizona's immigration debate. Understandably, many who supported the legislation and polls at the time suggested a majority of Americans did took offense that they could possibly be viewed as prejudiced.That's the nature of the immigration debate. Hispanics obviously care about public policy issues beyond immigration. We recognize that we have been disproportionately affected by unemployment, for example. And we can debate with the best of them regarding the proper course of action.But there is something about immigration that causes many Hispanics to personalize the debate. Intellectually, I understand we have an immigration problem. I understand that people are in this country illegally.Emotionally, there is one thing I don't understand. Inevitably, discourse over immigration turns into discourse aimed at fear and hate. We love calling ourselves a nation of immigrants, while we seem to hate immigrants themselves.Politically, a little demagoguery over the immigration debate may be a good tool to fire up the base. But politicians too often fail to understand that fires left unchecked can consume and destroy.The substance of the Arizona law never bothered me. Police officers who are apt to practice racial or ethnic profiling don't need a law for that; they'll do what they want.What bothered me most about Arizona's immigration debate was the poison of the rhetoric; the fire that burned on both sides of the issue soon consumed that state with bitterness and hatred.To nationalize that debate raised fears in me that the entire country would be consumed by additional vitriol, much of it aimed at Hispanics.But what I learned last week is how truly brilliant our democracy is structured to allow for such discourse even in the face of such vitriol.What we witnessed not only in the Arizona immigration case, but in the health care case three days later was an extraordinary display of constitutional magic.We, as a country, saw the wisdom of the judiciary reign in the passions of the executive and legislative branches of our government. For the time being, the Supreme Court extinguished a dangerous fire.We must ask ourselves, as we debate the wisdom of the high court's actions, whether it's worth re-igniting the embers of vitriol to make our point.Sanchez is the national political editor of VOXXI, an online publication aimed at Hispanics; 
carlos@voxxi.com


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Supreme Court issues split decision on Arizona immigration law

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The people of Arizona will regret SB 1070 -- if they don't already. The legal costs and loss of tourism will outweigh any economic benefits. The only winners are the politicians who pander to xenophobes. 


Raul Ramos y Sanchez

From the Los Angeles Times...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court, in a major immigration ruling, upheld parts of Arizona’s strict law targeting illegal immigrants, but said the federal government has the ultimate authority to decide who will be held on immigration charges and deported.The decision is a partial victory for Arizona Gov. Jan Breweras well as for President Obama, whose administration had sued to block the state law from taking effect.The justices said Arizona’s police can stop, question and briefly detain immigrants if officers have reason to believe they are in the country illegally. This was seen as a key part of the state’s law.But the justices said the police have limited authority. They must check with federal immigration agents before deciding to hold the suspects.The justices also blocked parts of Arizona’s SB 1070 that would have made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to fail to carry documents or to seek work.The court’s decision appears to give states such as Arizona a quite limited role in enforcing the laws against illegal immigrants. Their police can notify federal agents if they have a suspect in custody, but they cannot keep them in a county jail on state charges.


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The Colors of Confinement

From today's New York Times, a collection of rare color photos of the Japanese interment during WWII by photographer Bill Manbo.

View slide show here:
 The Colors of Confinement





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The Asian “race” is the new face of U.S. immigration

Although most scientists agree that race is social construct, editors at widely respected media sources continue to perpetuate racist myths every single day. 


Members of the same "race"?Today’s New York Times reported that Asians are now “the fastest-growing racial group in the country.” To my friends with origins in the Far East, let me say “I feel your pain.”

For over a decade, the mainstream media has barraged the nation with breathless pronouncements about the scope of Hispanic immigration to the United States. Using language usually reserved for natural disasters, publishers and broadcasters have forecast the growth of the Hispanic population, which is invariably portrayed as a racial monolith swarming over the land. Now, with the story of the “explosive growth” of the U.S. population originating in Latin America growing a little stale, it seems those with Asian origins may be in for similar treatment.

Of course, in both cases, the picture painted in the media avoids inconvenient nuances. Central to these over-simplifications is the idea that those labeled “Asian” and “Hispanic” can be lumped into distinct racial categories. This absurd conflation of geography with genes is best summarized in these words: Race is an illusion, but racism is real.

Although most scientists agree that the idea of “race” is social construct, editors at widely respected media sources continue to perpetuate racist myths every single day. In reality, people with origins in the Far East and Latin America are not genetically similar. But under the incongruous “racial” labels used in the media, people from the Indian sub-continent, Japan, China and the Philippines are considered genetically the same. This puts Mahatma Gandhi in the same racial category as  Mao Zedong. 

The myth-making about a “Hispanic race” is equally absurd. Who in their right mind would consider Cameron Diaz, Salma Hayek and Afro-Cuban salsa legend Celia Cruz part of a single race? Apparently the editors at the New York Times and other prestigious publication do. 

What’s the harm in all this? These inaccurate quasi-racial categories paint a distorted picture of U.S. society. The illusion of monolithic swarms of racial “others” stirs irrational fears, fueling the growth of extremist movements based on xenophobia that could destabilize the nation. If present trends continue, we could be on the path to the Balkanization of America.

Racism does not always wear a white hood and burn a cross on someone’s lawn. Sometimes the racism takes place at a keyboard – by someone who should know better.

Raul Ramos y Sanchez




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The Asian “race” is new face of U.S. immigration

Although most scientists agree that race is social construct, editors at widely respected media sources continue to perpetuate racist myths every single day. 


Members of the same "race"?Today’s New York Times reported that Asians are now “the fastest-growing racial group in the country.” To my friends with origins in the Far East, let me say “I feel your pain.”

For over a decade, the mainstream media has barraged the nation with breathless pronouncements about the scope of Hispanic immigration to the United States. Using language usually reserved for natural disasters, publishers and broadcasters have forecast the growth of the Hispanic population, which is invariably portrayed as a racial monolith swarming over the land. Now, with the story of the “explosive growth” of the U.S. population originating in Latin America growing a little stale, it seems those with Asian origins may be in for similar treatment.

Of course, in both cases, the picture painted in the media avoids inconvenient nuances. Central to these over-simplifications is the idea that those labeled “Asian” and “Hispanic” can be lumped into distinct racial categories. This absurd conflation of geography with genes is best summarized in these words: Race is an illusion, but racism is real.

Although most scientists agree that the idea of “race” is social construct, editors at widely respected media sources continue to perpetuate racist myths every single day.

In reality, people with origins in the Far East and Latin America are not genetically similar. But under the incongruous “racial” labels used in the media, people from the Indian sub-continent, Japan, China and the Philippines are considered genetically the same. This puts Mahatma Gandhi in the same racial category as  Mao Zedong. 

The myth-making about a “Hispanic race” is equally absurd. Who in their right mind would consider Cameron Diaz, Salma Hayek and Afro-Cuban salsa legend Celia Cruz part of a single race? Apparently the editors at the New York Times and other prestigious publication do.

What’s the harm in all this? These inaccurate quasi-racial categories paint a distorted picture of U.S. society. The illusion of monolithic swarms of racial “others” stirs irrational fears, fueling the growth of extremist movements based on xenophobia that could destabilize the nation. If present trends continue, we could be on the path to the Balkanization of America.

Racism does not always wear a white hood and burn a cross on someone’s lawn. Sometimes the racism takes place at a keyboard – by someone who should know better.

Raul Ramos y Sanchez




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Illegal or not—immigrants are real Americans

The June 14, 2012 TIME Magazine cover above inspired me to re-issue this column originally published November 13, 2007.

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Above all else, being American is an attitude. It is an affirmation of hope, the dream that sweat and energy can create a better life. No ethnic group can lay claim to that ideal. Nor is it limited to a single language.

The upheaval we are seeing today is part of a larger pattern. For centuries people have come to this land with dreams of a better life. Their arrival has invariably been met with resistance. Eventually, their foreignness becomes familiar and they are welcomed into the fold, usually to be replaced by the next wave of newcomers who endure a similar fate.

Many say today’s wave of immigrants is different. They arrived here illegally. In truth, the world is not so simple. The first illegal immigrants in Texas came from Tennessee. Most of these Anglo squatters settled in the Mexican province of Tejas without any legal rights. Today, Texas is one of the most prosperous regions in the world and their legal indiscretions are long forgotten.

At its core, the current migration from south to north on our continent is easy to understand. The U.S. has the jobs. Mexico and Latin America have the labor. The economic gravity at work in this dynamic is as powerful as the tides—and just as irresistible.

A look at our planet from space shows no national borders. Examine a fifty-year-old globe and it becomes apparent that sovereign boundaries are illusions that change over time. What we are seeing today is Adam Smith’s invisible hand redrawing the map of our hemisphere.

We can choose to resist—and create turmoil and strife. Or we can accept today’s immigrants for what they really are: the latest wave of Americans.

Raul Ramos y Sanchez


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