THESE DAYS, a good way to fall out of favor with the Reich Wing is to treat Mexican Migrant Homelanders (or “ALIENZ”; “Migrant Homelanders” is my papás phrase) as if they are human beings. That is just not cool, and you will be castigated and cast out for it. Guess Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) of is figuring this out. But the man doesn’t care, apparently.
WASHINGTON – Democrats are praising Sen. Jon Kyl. Republicans are damning him.
This topsy-turvy political scene would have been unbelievable a year ago, when the conservative Arizona Republican was facing his toughest challenge yet in his bid for a third term.
But Kyl’s key role in this year’s failed immigration compromise has former supporters howling, foes taking a second look and everyone re-evaluating his record and his legacy. [... ]
Immigration is the No. 1 problem bedeviling Arizona, and despite the Senate’s rejection of his bipartisan prescription, Kyl says he has no intention of leaving the resolution solely to the majority Democrats.
‘Obviously, I wasn’t thinking of my political career when I took the leadership role I did in the immigration debate,’ Kyl said during a recent interview in his Capitol Hill ‘hideaway’ office beneath the Senate. ‘Sometimes you do what you have to do.’”
—How migrant-reform effort changed the image of a powerful conservative, http://www.azcentral.com
Ouch. Hideaway office! Nice sly phrasing. Too bad he wasn’t speaking from his “Master” suite or “Central office,” or something a bit more leaderly. (Must remember, no matter what. Never give interview from Hideaway office.)
Don’t get me wrong. Reading the whole article, I doubt that most of Kyl’s motivation is thinking of immigrants as “human beings.” He’s probably just a bit more politically savvy than his brain-frothy compatriots, who have lost all sense of balance and reason in the storm of racism that has also lately swollen the ranks of the KKK, the Minutemen, and other rabid non-thinking segments of America.
Along with McCain, Kyl has infuriated many Republican activists and bloggers, some of whom have painted him as a turncoat with insults such as ‘Judas’ and ‘Benedict.’
At the same time, he has earned respect from the other side of the aisle.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat running for president, praised both Kyl and McCain for their work on the immigration bill.
‘That’s leadership from the Southwest,’ Richardson said during a recent visit to Phoenix. ‘I don’t want to say too many more nice things about McCain and Kyl because that won’t help them, but I commend both of them for their efforts.’
—How migrant-reform effort changed the image of a powerful conservative, http://www.azcentral.com
How do these anti-immigration advocates see these Mexicans who work so hard to gather a bit of food and money with which to live? It’s easier for me to think of them with a human angle, of course. My father and Mama Lucha, his mother and my abuelita made their way working the fields in the American Southwest. Mama Lucha came to El Paso from Mexico City and that’s why I exist as a human being deemed citizen of one United States of America. (One of the reasons!) They were able to come because cousins Beto and Vicente Quintana joined the U.S. Army so that they could all be citizens. (These types of sacrifices and contributions to the U.S.A. by Latinos is exactly why Ken Burns’ omission of us in his The War documentary was so offensive and remains an important issue.)
But…green card, no green card. I don’t see these people as different, so different. We all want to eat, we want to grow, we want to prosper and not be ill or dying, and be able to take care of those we love. All of our economies and lives and means are influenced and limited by the political powers that be, moving things behind the scenes, opening up opportunities, or closing them down, and almost always as a consequence of them shoring up their own coffers. For Mexican immigrants, it is not so simple as “Stay in Mexico and make it better.” It is not so simple as “you are criminally invading our land.” Oh, if it were only so simple. But in our soundbyte society, these juvenile non-arguments actually have legs. Who cares about systematic economic war waged on a nation? Who cares to look up the history of Mexico and the U.S.A.? Who cares to understand more than the headlines they dump on our benumbed brains? And who cares for what the whole idea of the U.S.A. was once advertised to be.
Somehow, I do. I know many of you do. And if it’s too hard for some of today’s politicians (some on both “sides,” but it seems mostly from the Right) to frame this issue in human or empathetic, compassionate terms? Then use self-interest. You still have some of that, I take it?
A registered Republican, Bermudez predicts that Arizona eventually will be a Hispanic majority state and says that Republicans such as Kyl and McCain are crucial to the party’s continued vitality. The strident anti-immigrant commentary from other Republican segments turns off many Hispanics, he said.
That wasn’t always so. President Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli legislation that granted amnesty to more than 3 million illegal immigrants. Immigration restrictionists look back at the law in horror, but many Hispanic Americans see it as a breakthrough.
‘There are a lot of Hispanics who remember President Reagan as the person who came in and solved at least some of the problems for 3.5 million undocumented immigrants in this country in 1986,’ Bermudez said. ‘We consider him to be a hero, and he’s the reason why I became a Republican, for instance.’
—How migrant-reform effort changed the image of a powerful conservative, http://www.azcentral.com
Oooh! Sing it: Wouldn’t ya like to be a Reagan, too?
I know these politicians who condemn Kyl for his latest shift in outlook or behavior are in denial, but let me help you out (because I know you are reading this, ése). The “Hispanic” voting block/buying block/population? It’s not a joke. It’s not hype. It’s not a threat, or some radical Xicano activist pump-the-first bravado-inspired phrase. It’s simply reality. We are large, and we are growing at faster rate. And cálmate, porque it’s not about alienz flooding your borders. Natural born Latinos are the ones mostly swelling the census ranks. We are simply growing at a faster rate. High population numbers are a manifestation of the Latino destiny.
So, por favor, think hard on the human angle, or at least making friends with your fellow humans and citizens, Right Wing and anti-immigrant factions. Before long, it will be inarguably and utterly self-defeating to position the Hispanic/Latino population as adversaries. It actually already is. Just scope out the mass of corporations and merchants responding to the new markets. That’s all you have to do to sniff the maize-wild wind.
In a month or so, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City will unveil its new Web site, which for the first time will be bilingual. And the chamber’s meetings also are now in Spanish. [...]
In addition to building a Web site, Gomez has been busy making sure that every one of the chamber’s publications is bilingual.
‘We’re making a concerted effort to embrace bilingualism and also focus on small businesses,’ Gomez said. ‘We had a series of lunch-and-learns we did in English. Now we’re doing them in Spanish. The response we’ve been getting from the Spanish-speaking community has been tremendous.’
Gomez believes he got involved in the chamber at the right time.
By the end of this year, one of every 10 small businesses throughout the nation will be owned by a Hispanic, Gomez said. [...]
‘After a year of lobbying, I convinced the vice president of marketing to test it,’ Gomez said. ‘It went over so well, they decided to put it in every Best Buy store.’
—Bilingual push is part of Hispanic chamber outreach, kansascity.com
With harsh, unforgiving, or punitive conditions in your immigration bills or a hostile attitude toward Mexican@s, you can punish all those Mexicans who are not citizens, if this speaks to your fear and sense of territory. But you can’t deport us all, as is said (and in a fun and spicy video, even). And even after you’ve been intractable on this issue, or even if you manage to stuff the bill full of obstacles or fire up the hate and ignorance that is already sadly raging and having very real effects on many of us, remember: the rest of us live here. We do feel connected to their fate. Very often we are connected to their fate. We do see them as human. And we do care about what laws are now being passed, ignored or manipulated. And we do buy things. And vote.
We’re the passionate ones with the long, long memories right? I mean if you’re going to buy into the old stereotypes, go all the way, vato!
Don’t get me wrong. Reading the whole article, I doubt that most of Kyl’s motivation is thinking of immigrants as “human beings.” He’s probably just a bit more politically savvy than his brain-frothy compatriots, who have lost all sense of balance and reason in the storm of racism that has also lately swollen the ranks of the KKK, the Minutemen, and other rabid non-thinking segments of America.
Along with McCain, Kyl has infuriated many Republican activists and bloggers, some of whom have painted him as a turncoat with insults such as ‘Judas’ and ‘Benedict.’
At the same time, he has earned respect from the other side of the aisle.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat running for president, praised both Kyl and McCain for their work on the immigration bill.
‘That’s leadership from the Southwest,’ Richardson said during a recent visit to Phoenix. ‘I don’t want to say too many more nice things about McCain and Kyl because that won’t help them, but I commend both of them for their efforts.’
—How migrant-reform effort changed the image of a powerful conservative, http://www.azcentral.com
How do these anti-immigration advocates see these Mexicans who work so hard to gather a bit of food and money with which to live? It’s easier for me to think of them with a human angle, of course. My father and Mama Lucha, his mother and my abuelita made their way working the fields in the American Southwest. Mama Lucha came to El Paso from Mexico City and that’s why I exist as a human being deemed citizen of one United States of America. (One of the reasons!) They were able to come because cousins Beto and Vicente Quintana joined the U.S. Army so that they could all be citizens. (These types of sacrifices and contributions to the U.S.A. by Latinos is exactly why Ken Burns’ omission of us in his The War documentary was so offensive and remains an important issue.)
But…green card, no green card. I don’t see these people as different, so different. We all want to eat, we want to grow, we want to prosper and not be ill or dying, and be able to take care of those we love. All of our economies and lives and means are influenced and limited by the political powers that be, moving things behind the scenes, opening up opportunities, or closing them down, and almost always as a consequence of them shoring up their own coffers. For Mexican immigrants, it is not so simple as “Stay in Mexico and make it better.” It is not so simple as “you are criminally invading our land.” Oh, if it were only so simple. But in our soundbyte society, these juvenile non-arguments actually have legs. Who cares about systematic economic war waged on a nation? Who cares to look up the history of Mexico and the U.S.A.? Who cares to understand more than the headlines they dump on our benumbed brains? And who cares for what the whole idea of the U.S.A. was once advertised to be.
Somehow, I do. I know many of you do. And if it’s too hard for some of today’s politicians (some on both “sides,” but it seems mostly from the Right) to frame this issue in human or empathetic, compassionate terms? Then use self-interest. You still have some of that, I take it?
A registered Republican, Bermudez predicts that Arizona eventually will be a Hispanic majority state and says that Republicans such as Kyl and McCain are crucial to the party’s continued vitality. The strident anti-immigrant commentary from other Republican segments turns off many Hispanics, he said.
‘There are a lot of Hispanics who remember President Reagan as the person who came in and solved at least some of the problems for 3.5 million undocumented immigrants in this country in 1986,’ Bermudez said. ‘We consider him to be a hero, and he’s the reason why I became a Republican, for instance.’
—How migrant-reform effort changed the image of a powerful conservative, http://www.azcentral.com
Oooh! Sing it: Wouldn’t ya like to be a Reagan, too?
I know these politicians who condemn Kyl for his latest shift in outlook or behavior are in denial, but let me help you out (because I know you are reading this, ése). The “Hispanic” voting block/buying block/population? It’s not a joke. It’s not hype. It’s not a threat, or some radical Xicano activist pump-the-first bravado-inspired phrase. It’s simply reality. We are large, and we are growing at faster rate. And cálmate, porque it’s not about alienz flooding your borders. Natural born Latinos are the ones mostly swelling the census ranks. We are simply growing at a faster rate. High population numbers are a manifestation of the Latino destiny.
So, por favor, think hard on the human angle, or at least making friends with your fellow humans and citizens, Right Wing and anti-immigrant factions. Before long, it will be inarguably and utterly self-defeating to position the Hispanic/Latino population as adversaries. It actually already is. Just scope out the mass of corporations and merchants responding to the new markets. That’s all you have to do to sniff the maize-wild wind.
In a month or so, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City will unveil its new Web site, which for the first time will be bilingual. And the chamber’s meetings also are now in Spanish. [...]
In addition to building a Web site, Gomez has been busy making sure that every one of the chamber’s publications is bilingual.
Gomez believes he got involved in the chamber at the right time.
By the end of this year, one of every 10 small businesses throughout the nation will be owned by a Hispanic, Gomez said. [...]
‘After a year of lobbying, I convinced the vice president of marketing to test it,’ Gomez said. ‘It went over so well, they decided to put it in every Best Buy store.’
—Bilingual push is part of Hispanic chamber outreach, kansascity.com
With harsh, unforgiving, or punitive conditions in your immigration bills or a hostile attitude toward Mexican@s, you can punish all those Mexicans who are not citizens, if this speaks to your fear and sense of territory. But you can’t deport us all, as is said (and in a fun and spicy video, even). And even after you’ve been intractable on this issue, or even if you manage to stuff the bill full of obstacles or fire up the hate and ignorance that is already sadly raging and having very real effects on many of us, remember: the rest of us live here. We do feel connected to their fate. Very often we are connected to their fate. We do see them as human. And we do care about what laws are now being passed, ignored or manipulated. And we do buy things. And vote.
We’re the passionate ones with the long, long memories right? I mean if you’re going to buy into the old stereotypes, go all the way, vato!
crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican
This is my last post at Feministe. Muchas gracias to Jill, Piny, Zuzu and all others who were involved in asking me to guest post. Thank you for the invitation, and big thanks to the readers here who offered me a warm welcome and fair treatment. ¡Nos vemos!
—Nezua
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