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Martinez column: What's behind people's fear of illegal immigration?
| Wednesday, Aug 8 2007 8:25 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Aug 8 2007 8:37 PM
It's not about race or ethnicity. It's about immigration.
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That argument, or a similar one, is one of the most frequently used defenses I hear of proposals aimed at clamping down on illegal immigration from Proposition 187 -- passed by California voters in 1994, but gutted by the courts -- to more recent and unsuccessful efforts by Congress to make felons of illegal immigrants.
Bakersfield City Councilman David Couch's recent proposals are in the same tradition. At a council meeting last month, Couch floated the ideas of officially declaring that Bakersfield will never be a refuge for illegal immigrants, research the possibility of denying services to these foreigners, and adopt English as the city's official language.
If passed, the measures likely will have no concrete effect, but they apparently enjoy strong support. Councilman Zack Scrivner said e-mails and phone calls to City Hall overwhelmingly backed Couch.
Yet there is an uncomfortable question that thus far has been largely ignored: Is support of these measures purely about illegal immigration as supporters contend, or is it about fear of the growing Latino population? In other words, how many back Couch's measures to take a stand against undocumented residents and how many do so as part of a backlash against the growing Hispanic population?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey, Hispanics made up 44.4 percent of Kern County's population, up from 38.4 percent in 2000.
That scares a lot of people.
And this fear has less to do with illegal immigration than it does with fear of the cultural shift that will occur as the size of the nation's Latino population grows larger.
Extremists take note: I didn't say it's inherently racist to take a hard-line stance on illegal immigration. Write your Congressman and suggest we build a 100-foot-tall and electrified fence along the U.S.-Mexico border with land mines surrounding it, and I'd call you barbaric, but not necessarily racist.
Still, it troubles me that a small but significant percentage of the hundreds of angry people I've debated with over the last four years -- via e-mail and on the phone -- quite comfortably blur the distinction between Latinos and illegal immigrants, jumping from one to the other as if they are synonymous or nearly so.
Listen carefully to these angry folks, and you will note that they're not just mad about too many people sneaking across the border. They're livid about too many speaking Spanish, flying Mexican flags and attending Cinco de Mayo events. They are furious about a culture and a people that are just too different and may transform the nation into one that more closely reflects those differences.
They fear this despite the fact that that's what immigrant groups have done since the birth of the country, and they have enriched the nation by doing it.
Two last questions: If the real bogeyman in Couch's proposals is illegal immigration and not this culture clash, what's the logic behind including a measure to make English the city's official language? Why link that with illegal immigration unless you were trying to make a point about something other than illegal immigration?
One wonders what that point could be.
Leonel Martinez's column appears every other Thursday. Readers may send comments or suggestions to lmartinez@bakersfield.com or leave a voicemail at 395-7631.