Bush
Max
J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
The
raiders come at all hours of the day and night, sowing terror and
sorrow and leaving behind shattered lives. Often, those who suffer
the most are the children.
It
is not a scene out of the Darfur or the Middle East. It comes from
another war raging much closer to home, one being waged by the
federal government against undocumented immigrants in the United
States.
It
is a war that gets hotter every day. Iraq is not the only conflict
Bush has escalated in the latter stages of his disastrous presidency.
In recent months, the administration also has been dramatically
intensifying its campaign against immigrants in this country.
The
climax of the campaign so far came in mid-May in the form of a raid
against the Agrirprocessor meatpacking plant in Postville, a small
Iowa town. It netted 400 arrests and traumatized the whole community.
The
Postville raid was hardly an isolated case but rather part of a much
larger dragnet against unauthorized immigrants conducted by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the last two years.
The
tactics and even the language used in the operation have a military
flavor. On May 23, for instance, The Marin
Independent Journal
reported on the situation in the state of California:
“More
than 900 people detained statewide — including 441 from Northern
California — have been deported or are facing deportation after the
three-week enforcement surge
by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fugitive operations teams
that ended Thursday, ICE officials said.”
California
communities and Midwestern meatpacking plants are scarcely the only
targets.
On
May 8, the Washington
Post
reported on a raid on a construction site in Virginia:
“Federal
immigration agents raided the construction site of a new federal
courthouse in Richmond on Monday, arresting 33 workers on charges of
violating federal immigration laws and being in the United States
illegally…”
A
month earlier, 53 workers were arrested in a raid on the Landsdowne
Resort in Loudoun County, Virginia. In Loudoun County, as in the
overwhelming majority of cases, the workers apprehended come from
Latin American countries, including El
Salvador, Guatemala,
Mexico,
Honduras,
Bolivia,
Peru
and Argentina.
In
March 2008, ICE agents raided a business in Manassas, Virginia, and
arrested 34 Latin American nationals in what the Washington
Post
called “one of the largest federal immigration operations in the
region in recent years.” That was before the raid in Loudoun
County.
Not
all of the raids are large or spectacular. Some target a single
person, but the devastating effects fall on an entire family,
including legal immigrants. Earlier this year, the Miami
Herald
reported on the case of a Salvadoran woman:
“When
Ana Portillo came to this country 14 years ago from El Salvador in
search of that fabled dream, never did she imagine that her family
would be torn apart.
“But
on March 27, immigration officials raided her Florida City home,
scooping up and jailing the father of her two children, Rene
Villalta. They called the family’s chief breadwinner a criminal for
failing to renew his visa.”
The
stepped-up immigration raids, which began in October 2006, under the
name “Return to Sender,” and which have led to the apprehension
of nearly 20,000 people, have had a devastating effect on businesses,
communities, and families. After the Postville raid, businesses more
than 50 miles away reported major loss of sales. Other businesses
have suffered from the loss of labor. But the most heart-rending
consequences have been felt by families and individuals.
Testifying
before a Congressional committee on May 20, Kathryn
Gibney, principal at San Pedro Elementary School in Northern
California, described a 2007 raid in an apartment complex in San
Rafael, California. As reported in SF Gate:
“The
agents shone flashlights in the children’s faces. Several parents
were handcuffed in front of their kids. The next day 40 of the
school’s 400 students were too frightened to show up for class, and
others arrived in tears. A year later, Gibney said the effects
continue with higher absenteeism, lower test scores and increased
counseling for her students.”
Why
is Bush conducting this crusade against immigrants at the twilight of
his rule? Some analysts claim the administration is trying to put
pressure on a Congress that so far has stubbornly refused to pass
comprehensive immigration reform. It is not a convincing explanation.
There is no chance that Congress will pass such reform in an election
year. There will be no immigration reform before Bush leaves office,
and the president knows it.
A
more likely explanation is that in an election year in which
Republicans must energize their base to have any chance of winning,
Bush is tossing red meat to the anti-immigration wing of the GOP, a
large and important constituency of the Republican Party. This
sector, represented by the majority of the Republicans in the House
of Representatives, revolted against the president’s moderate
immigration reform proposal and effectively torpedoed it. Unable to
beat the xenophobes, George W. Bush, through his fierce new
immigration enforcement policies, has essentially joined them — in
deed if not in word.
The
politics of immigrant bashing are clear. For a certain, significant
sector of the GOP and the electorate, “illegal immigrants” more
broadly represent a kind of nightmare, a collective Willie Horton.
Both Horton and the “illegals” symbolize “otherness” on two
planes, legal and racial.
Although
the illegalities perpetrated by immigrants crossing the border
without legal authorization constitute civil violations while Willie
Horton’s crimes were heinous, the scale and cultural impact of
immigration today is such that they make it possible for the
Republican political machine to use “illegal immigrants”
politically, casting them as ogres in a fashion reminiscent of the
manipulation of the Willie Horton affair.
What
should be underlined in the context of this year’s presidential
election is that immigrants are being terrorized on the watch of one
the more reasonable Republicans on the issue of immigration. Until
recently, immigration was the one area in which Bush’s claim to be
a uniter rather than a divider actually rang true.
The
problem for Bush was that he was in danger of uniting the country
behind a compromise solution to the immigration dilemma at the
expense of dividing the Republican Party. For, while polls showed
that most Americans supported Bush’s immigration reform proposal,
the overwhelming majority of right-wing Republicans abhorred it.
Thus, to satisfy this latter group of zealots and unite the party,
the Bush administration has unleashed a campaign that is inflicting
enormous pain on immigrants in this country — legal and
undocumented, citizen and alien.
John
McCain, like George W. Bush, is a “good” Republican on
immigration. But, like Bush, McCain “got the message” sent by the
xenophobes in the GOP and beat a hasty retreat from his early support
of a humane and sensible immigration policy in favor of a policy
centered on border control.
Thus,
the fact is that, while there are a few prominent anti-immigrant
advocates in the Democratic Party and some pro-immigration
Republicans, it is clear that the GOP is the natural home of the
xenophobes. Even “good” Republicans like Bush and McCain
eventually must bow to, rather than buck, this reality.
The
massive attack against the Latino community being carried out under
the watch of a “good” Republican, namely George W. Bush (who
received a large number of Latino votes repaying that favor now with
a campaign of terror), should raise skepticism about the siren songs
of another “good” Republican, John McCain. McCain, like Bush, has
been as good as Republicans get on immigration. But, like the
president, when push came to shove, he proved a false friend.
All
of this should persuade Latinos skeptical of Obama to drop their
reticence. Yes, Obama, like Hillary Clinton and John McCain,
supported the ignominious wall being built on the U.S.-Mexico border.
But can anyone seriously argue that a Democrat in the White House —
and Barack Obama specifically — would not be a lot better than a
Republican for the interests of Latinos and a sane and humane
immigration policy?
The
devastation caused by the immigration raids are proof, once again, of
why we cannot afford another four years of even a “good”
Republican president and why Latinos must massively support Obama.
Then, and only then, will we be in a position to say:
“Mr.
Obama, tear down this wall.”
