The attack on immigrants — Part II
By Max J. Castro
First it was states, counties, towns, and cities. Now the federal government has jumped in with both feet.
When it comes to scapegoating “illegals,” everyone lately seems to want to get in on the act, even the tiny rural Virginia county of Culpeper. Last week, Culpeper County, which in 2000 had about 35,000 residents, 2.5 percent of them Latino, declared English the official language.
Political leaders in the county, which according to the Washington Post has no foreign-language interpreters and does not publish its documents in Spanish, nevertheless wanted to send a message. Said Supervisor Bill Chase: “We just wanted to clarify that this was an English-speaking county…”
The Culpeper County resolution declaring English the official language is the latest in a string of state and local statutes, ordinances, initiatives, and resolutions meant as an “Unwelcome” sign for undocumented immigrants specifically and Latinos more generally.
By Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
First it was states, counties, towns, and cities. Now the federal government has jumped in with both feet.
When it comes to scapegoating “illegals,” everyone lately seems to want to get in on the act, even the tiny rural Virginia county of Culpeper. Last week, Culpeper County, which in 2000 had about 35,000 residents, 2.5 percent of them Latino, declared English the official language.
Political leaders in the county, which according to the Washington Post has no foreign-language interpreters and does not publish its documents in Spanish, nevertheless wanted to send a message. Said Supervisor Bill Chase: “We just wanted to clarify that this was an English-speaking county…”
The Culpeper County resolution declaring English the official language is the latest in a string of state and local statutes, ordinances, initiatives, and resolutions meant as an “Unwelcome” sign for undocumented immigrants specifically and Latinos more generally.
More serious than Culpeper’s expression of Southern hospitality was the Bush administration’s announcement last week of a multi-pronged federal crackdown against undocumented immigrants and those who employ them. The plan involves twenty-six new enforcement initiatives, including one intended to force employers to fire workers whose social security numbers do not match government records. Other provisions provide for an additional 370 miles of border fencing, 300 miles of vehicle barriers and 1,700 more Border Patrol agents.
What do these new measures amount to? The president sent Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to deliver the news and explain the details, but the announcement is a turning point in Bush’s own immigration policy, which has sought to balance tough enforcement with a guest worker program conditional amnesty in order to please three constituencies: anti-immigration hard-liners, business interests, and Hispanics.
These constituencies, however, are irreconcilable. So, after failing to convince the hard-line majority of members of Congress in his own party to offer unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship, the Bush administration has thrown its lot with those for whom immigration reform means draconian enforcement.
The San Francisco Chronicle got it exactly right when it wrote: “People clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration got their wish with the Bush administration’s announcement Friday of sweeping new enforcement measures that will force employers to fire the millions of illegal workers they now employ.”
Businesses that depend on immigrant labor, including agribusiness, restaurant operators, and hoteliers, were upset at the announcement. Why would the Bush administration, so pro-business, choose to outrage a key Republican constituency and at the same time further alienate Latino voters that the party has long courted with some success but who lately have been moving away from the GOP?
The answer is that Bush, having lost the approval of the majority of Americans, almost all those who are not very high income, imperialists, neoconservatives, social Darwinists, religious zealots, bigots, or xenophobes, can hardly afford to upset his residual base of hard core supporters.
Yet, Bush’s Republican Party will pay a high price for doing the bidding of the xenophobes. A recent story in The Miami Herald showed that the party’s appeal is fading even among its most loyal Hispanic constituency, Cuban Americans in Miami. The administration’s latest move regarding immigration may be the last straw.
The Republican project to seduce Latinos away from the Democrats through a steady diet of family and moral values is moribund. Republican morality has been shown to be a sham on multiple levels. The Mark Foley and David Vitter scandals are bad, exposing as they have the hypocrisy underneath so much Republican sanctimony. Much worse, from the standpoint of a community struggling with issues of basic family survival, are Republican efforts to deny health insurance to low income children and to push punishing immigration measures bound to tear apart tens of thousands of families.
For a long time, the Republican Party seemed to be of two minds about immigration and Latinos. The hard-liners have always had the numbers, but immigration moderates like both Bush presidents have kept the zealots under some modicum of control and argued for a policy of Latino inclusion. Bush’s new enforcement-only immigration “reform,” the defeat of his immigration proposal at the hands of fellow Republicans, and the decline of John McCain all point to a more monolithic Republican Party on the issue of immigration. The choice for Latinos could not be any clearer.
