HispanicVista Columnists
Immigration Protests – Demonstrations – Boycotts – Y Que!
- Chismes de Mi Gallinero:
- By Julio C. Calderon
- For Hispanic Vistas
La gente have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands all over the land. The unifier is the immigration issue and an attempt to fix a mangled system the United States of America calls its immigration policy. Fact is, the good old US of A doesn’t have a cogent immigration policy. This is just as bad as the fact that Latino leaders around the nation are just as divided as Legislators in the halls of congress.
Those on the left and right are like two butchers with meat cleavers doing brain surgery.
Washington, on Capitol Hill and the White House, send mixed messages and potential solutions. Some want to give immigrants the same status as a thief, rapist or murderer. They want to give them the tag of felon for having risked all to challenge the mean Sonora Desert and crossing an imaginary line on the sand.
Some want to build a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean – from Matamoros to San Diego -- dwarfing the Great Wall of China. At the same time, the same leaders told Gorbachov to “Tear down this wall,” the one dividing Berlin; they are also telling Israel not to build a wall between them and the Palestine Territories. These leaders claim the American Wall will protect us from terrorists coming through the desert or crossing rivers and prevent, therefore, another 9/11. Then watch the Canadian border, and the visas given out to people from Middle East countries and Europe.
Recently, Liz Chandler wrote an article for the Knight-Ridder News Service, “2 agencies withhold key data on workers.” I am still not sure what exactly she wanted to warn readers about; it could have been to show how Social Security numbers are being used by undocumented workers or easily obtained by identity thieves; or maybe it was about two federal agencies’ lack of communications and have data that could help track down these illegals. There was one line that brought an unintended message home.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) created the Earnings Suspense File in 1937, according to Chandler’s report. This file was created to hold funds collected but the names and social security numbers don’t match. “The file contains about 255 million unmatched wage reports totaling $520 billion paid into social security but not credited to individual accounts.” While this may point to a source list for potential immigration raids to Chandler – to me – this is proof that undocumented workers contribute heavily to our government. Tell me again how undocumented are a drain to our system of government. $520 Billion! The working-undocumented are keeping the social security system solvent.
I don’t know how anyone is going to accurately gage the impact of the “Great American Boycott.” I am sure figures will be grabbed out of the air. The difference between the first marches and the May 1 boycott is that cracks in our leadership have already developed. In a community with so many leaders who prefer to give themselves credit for the events, it is natural to return to their own fiefdoms. The next question is what is to happen on June 6, 2006, and again on November 7, 2006.
For those of you who don’t follow these things closely – these are dates of the primary and general elections.
I read in the Arizona Republic that more than 20,000 people took to the streets in Phoenix, Arizona during that first “spontaneous” march. The week before that day, Phoenix held a municipal election in which 60,000 voters to part. The 20K that marched would have accounted for one third of the voters that day, had they voted. These folks could have determined the outcome of those elections and changed the complex of the city’s leadership.
- The same can be said of Latino communities in the many cities and towns in all of the states where la gente swarmed on streets in protest. The greatest protest weapon and its most effective is the power of the vote in these United States of America. The noise from the May 1 boycott and its predecessor will quickly fade with the wind, while the impact of the vote lasts for a long, long time. Ask Congressman Dan Lungren of California, the first Republican to run for Governor of the state in 1998, after Gov. Pete Wilson and his Proposition 187 in 1994. Will Latino leaders claiming credit for the marches and boycotts turn this energy to votes?
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- Julio C. Calderon, a frequent contributor to HispanicVista (www.hispanicvista.com), is a freelance writer. He is a former television journalist, and a former State/National President of the Mexican American Political Association. Comments on this and other articles can be submitted to him at latsac2000@aol.com.