I remember the calls I would receive after another Mexican was found dead

in the desert. Their scorched bodies discovered by Border Patrol Agents in the Sonoran Desert, anywhere between the Mexican border and Phoenix. Sometimes they would die within a mile or two from Phoenix, other times they would die before even reaching Tucson.

I was a newspaper reporter, covering the police beat for The Arizona Republic, which meant that I was one of the reporters who would write about the frequent deaths. Almost 150 immigrants died of dehydration during the last year I worked there.

Most times, I would just write a brief. Other times, if the dying started earlier than usual or if it were a family that was found dead or a child or two, I would write a short article.

And those times when I did write an article that contained my byline, I would never fail to receive the phone calls.

"Serves them right for entering this country illegal."

"You have an accent. Did you come from Mexico and steal someone's job?" (As if I learned how to read and write English by studying the fine print on my empty water bottle during my desert trek to my job interview).

"Why do you keep writing about these deaths when they're not even American?"

And they would always call first thing in the morning before I got to work. They would always just leave a message. Never a name. Never a number.

Those faceless, spineless racist motherfuckers would sometimes laugh as if celebrating the deaths.

And I always wondered if they were one of the thousands, like myself, who had moved to Phoenix during the economic boom of the late 1990s. If they were one of the thousands who had purchased a home in what was considered the most affordable metropolitan housing market in the United States.

If they were one of the thousands who were unable to make the connection that if it weren't for the Mexicans who built their home, tarred their roof and dug out their pool, there would have never been an economic boom in the first place.

Chances are, our paths would never have crossed.

What the hell has happened to America's soul?

Sarca. She was "illegal", undocumented. When she used the phone to call her kin in Mexico, she shouted because she wasn't used to telephones.

One night, Sarca called and she was hysterical. Neither Mom nor I could understand what she was saying. Spanish was her second language. My mom drove to downtown San Jose to Sarca's home and brought her back.

Sarca had been raped. There were marks all over her. She was weeping. At some point, we all realized that we couldn't call anyone. We couldn't call because the rape would get a pass and Sarca would be raped, traumatized AND deported.

Sarca had a baby in due course.

She took care of my grandmother for ten years.

I want this bullshit to stop. Now.

/typo

Local police agencies do not deport. Especially in heavy immigrant areas. That was a big thing in Phoenix and the cops made a huge effort to send out the message that they were not to be feared because immigrants would become victims of crimes and not report them.

The cops didn't care if you were in this country illegally. They only cared if you were involved in criminal activity once you were in the country.

Obviously, many people here can't see the difference, but there is a difference.

and we were afraid.

This has to stop. NOW.

What are they thinking?

But I can assure that cops do not want to deal with that added burden. They have their hands full as it is.

Every cop I know supports legislation that allows illegal immigrants to get drivers licenses because they'd rather pull someone over who has ID and can be checked on their computer rather than some guy with no ID who can provide a fake name and address.

They've been targeted for so many crimes here.

Horrible know they can't have bank accounts.

They carry large amounts of cash or have it in their houses.

There was special programs to have a Spanish speaking officer available for these cases...

So that people could know they cpuld report a crime without fear.

This is just... :cry: and :mad: and is there a smilie for badshit crazy?

It's a program that cops actually helped get going, for that reason alone, to prevent them from carying their life savings in their pockets.

also picks up the fees when they wire money home, so its a plus for them.

They wouldn't be doing it if they were not making money off it. But we all have to pay to play, including the illegal immigrants. If the banks accept their money in accounts, then that is more money circulating in the local economy.

Of course people complain that they send their money home to Mexico, so it all doesn't stay in the local economy. Well, this is the United States. If you earn your money, you're allowed to do with it what you please, even if it means sending a few bucks to Mexico to help support your family.

in border area & gives them the authority to deport immigrants. Law enforcement officers will become involuntary agents of the INS. This means that all the trust police officers have struggled to build w/the immigrant community will be gone & illegal immigrants will lose any protection from crime or exploitation.

...for Big Brother. These people (cops, etc.) perform essential services for society, and they can't do their jobs unless the people they come in contact with trust them.

Government officials and the citizens of this country should pay attention to those with experience. Disease and crime of all kinds will spill over into the rest of society if immigrants are afraid of going to the doctor or reporting a crime. Sarca's rapist got away with his crime because she was too afraid to go to the police -- what Americans should ask themselves is "Who did he rape next?"

With Homeland Security bull* running rampant, I am afraid that intense pressure is being brought to bear on all those who have contact with undocumented people and their children, and I don't know how it will play out in the future.

Hekate

The remedy will be complicated but, this. must. stop.

It needs to get much worse. Right now, there are too many blind people not seeing the truth that is standing right before them. That we need to form alliances, not enemies.

Yes, we need to spread facts and not counter hatred. Not an easy assignment.

And with the wingnuts fanning racism whenever they have no other card to play, it won't be easy.

And need to be done. But the marches will eventually create counter-marches. Mark my words on that. It shouldn't be long before the neo-nazis step up their marches in response.

I doubt they're stupid enough to march in LA, but they might pick some other city.

And I'm ready for what ever needs to be done. I've been ready for the fight for a very long time. It's the reason why I quit the corporate media in the first place. I got tired of having to be "objective".

would be very frightening for the racists. Very upsetting.

I'm not objective. And I guess I'm ready. It's very simple.

You are either with the people or you are not.

"Every single one of them is illegal!"

This is a class struggle, not an immigrant struggle. And everything that's happened recently, no matter how subtle, no matter how blatant, is just another drop in the bucket. The war, stolen elections, Katrina, Medicare reform, massive layoffs, persecution of immigrants.

The bucket is not only almost full, it's starting to simmer.

But I know before we take the fight to the real enemy, the people at the top, we're going to have to fight those in our same class system; our neighbors, our co-workers, even our so-called friends.

Because from what I've seen on DU these last few days, it's not just going to be republicans that we will be up against.

on DU is not a good one to form such a serious opinion.

There's been a lot of interference. A lot of stirring up fear and hatred.

I'm not shy of calling what I see. And perhaps, this isn't the week to use to make the call.

It shows how easily fractured we can get. The republicans are also fractured over immigration, but they will manage to pull it together for the party. They always do.

As dems, we are more stubborn than that.

But having said that, there are things that were said this week by certain people that I will never forgive. And I hope I never will meet them in person because who knows what I would say (I'm crazy like that).

To me, this is not your typical DU flame war about my candidate is better than your candidate. I always find those pretty stupid.

The issue of immigration is a lot more personal and involves family, friends and life experiences.

Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/deportees.shtml

:cry:

Hekate

know where it comes from myself. I can't even imagine how you felt about those messages, Raging.
This country has learned nothing, and that's a broader truth that has stuck its head out since Katrina and because of this immigration issue.
The racism in this country amazes and saddens me.

Please!

I frequently think about how they built my home (I bought it built, but I know who built my home).

I was born and raised in California; I'm 47 and have lived my entire life here. My mother divorced my father, and had few funds for childcare. She made a deal with Maria, who cared for us for many years.

Many of my friends in high school had parents who, at least initially, were 'undocs.' Many of my friends throughout the years had parents who, at least initially, were 'undocs.' When I was a social worker, and you were on my caseload, I helped you if you needed it - period - as best as I could.

:)

I think discussing our experiences helps many understand the history/situation better.

that need to be addressed.

I guess I always move to the basic ones first: Is there clean water? Is there a food supply? Is there available basic medical care?

I know these priorities seem very remote to many DUers.

That's why, when I read an article such as the one written by Thom Hartman on www.commondreams.org , I have very mixed feelings. It would be great if we could see that the pool of workers here were all paid well and had health insurance. Some might disagree with me, however, when I say that I believe that workers who have labored here for years deserve some kind of program that leads to permanent residency (and eventual citizenship), particularly when a couple has children that are U.S. citizens (born here).

should their parents be deported.

This is a game for Rove et al. Not a game for those kids.

This is a complex problem that needs a thoughful approach.

I hope we can be thoughtful. :)

My friends marched in L.A.

This IS a complex problem that needs a thoughtful approach.

And THAT is exact what Jeeni says - I'm part of her volunteer group.

http://www.jeeniforcongress.com/ .

Issa is my current non-representative. I hope that Jeeni replaces him this November (in Congress, that is).

Thanks again, Maat.

We will get it done. I have to believe that.

I hate to think what was said over kitchen tables

:(

of those callers. Not that I've heard anyone here celebrate a death, but there were a lot more calls than what I had mentioned. They always came each time I wrote any article about Mexicans, whether they died, danced or dined.

And the one question they always asked was: "What is wrong with the word illegal?" In fact, if you read the LTTEs to the Arizona Republic, you will find at least one letter every week or so that asks that same question.

"What is wrong with the word illegal?"

I have read only a handful of LTTEs that basically asks the same question over the president's wiretapping program.

I was about to start a Hispanic DUer in Times of Insanity thread before you posted. May still do it.

It's the fear, the from the toes fear we're reading. Because there may be "illegal" people.

With illegal needs or skills or contributions? I think not.

It will be okay, even if it is ugly for now.

Thank you so much for posting the OP.

is killed due to the death penalty. As if their life is of little to no value because they committed a crime.

It wasn't too long ago that I was very pro death penalty. It has to do with growing up in Florida during a crazy time, which included Ted Bundy and a bunch of crazy Cuban refugees which terrorized Miami after Castro released them from jail.

But then during the last few years, DNA tests proved that many people on death row were actually not guilty. So now I'm a little hesitant about the death penalty. But for example, I have no qualms about the death penalty being issued to the child molester in Florida who was caught on tape kidnapping Carla Brucie, then later admitted killing her.

Even though I'm still not 100 percent against the death penalty, I'm a lot more against it than I used to be. I was hoping Tookie's life would be spared for the simple reason that he became a positive influence on the lives of children.

But you shouldn't celebrate someone's death because we're all going to up there one day.

and I appreciate your honesty. I still have a hard time maintaining my anti-death penalty stance when it comes to child molesters. For a very long time, I advocated for dp for them, because I've heard so many say they can't be cured, the need to molest doesn't go away. I figured, why let them live?

I know that I can't have it both ways, so I still say I'm anti DP and work on myself to not be so judgemental, as it isn't for me to decide who is entitled to live.

Those calls you got remind me of that, though. Of the people that seem to feel they are more entitled to a certain life than those that come here illegally. Like the people that died trying to get here, deserved death, because they were trying to come here. As if someone that commits a crime, doesn't deserve to live. That a person that is being punished for committing crimes, is less a human being and deserves to be killed--whether we are certain they are guilty or not. That disturbs me.

None of us is more entitled than anyone else... (or at least I'd like to think so;)) :hi:

This sort of thing is the type of information that allows me to maintain hope in
basic human decency.

Thanks for the post.

Recommended.

they were more sinned against than sinning.

Needless to say, when I was a social worker, slumlords out here in California left the most disgusting housing for 'the Undocs.' Fortunately, when I was a social worker, the domestic violence shelters would help anyone, and wouldn't be looking at their documents or lack thereof. And the police officers I worked with were wonderful, in terms of addressing crime against these immigrants.

I'm so outraged that people would have the audacity to leave such heartless, racist messages for a reporter. That they would have the audacity to tell another human being that they have such hatred in their heart and they feel justified in doing so. :mad:

I always appreciate your posts, raging--but this one...leaves me speechless and disgusted. I'd like to think there is more good in this world than bad. Things like this always make me wonder, which way the scale tips...

:mad::grr:

bhg

And BTW, RIM, awesome post. K&R'ed

The people who complain about "illegals" would take any legal or illegal opportunity to better their own families, and do.

Let's get real.

Why are people bitching? Because someone else is getting some of what they don't got? Or someone else is getting what they think they oughta have?

Every stinking one of us lives on land that really belongs to someone else, if that "right of first possession" holds true. So, really, nobody but First Peoples - and there are very few of them - can claim this land belongs to "my color/race/religion."

And there isn't one person reading this thread who has not in some way compromised him or herself to either get a job/help a child-relative-spouse/pay or not pay taxes/deal with authorities/pass a test/deal with zoning/deal with admissions/meet a deadline/appease a neighbor-boss-judge/you name the compromise.

Everyone here knows that ethics in government, in the workplace, at school and on the streets in the United States are not exactly stellar. So why all this absolute venom directed at other people who are trying to beat the system to get ahead, to feed their families?


There really is enough to go around. We just live in a nation of heartless hypocrites so freakin' obsessed with having it all they have allowed their bounty to be stolen by jackals while they fret over what a mouse has nibbled.

Our abundance is found in the way we allow ourselves to be led. Many Americans are being led like pigs - by the rings in their noses - to some fake promised land of conformity and ease. Once there, all they seem to do is loll around in the mud, trying to fling it on everyone around them.

It's disgusting, really.

and those enthralled by the fear mongers are loud here, but a minority.

and on numerous occasions gave water to illegals. I don't care what anybody says, they are human beings and I wouldn't let any human being die of thirst.

in the desert for the immigrants. You should have seen the reaction from the anti-immigrant community about that.

"That will do nothing but encourage them to come over!"

They were dying by the hundreds each year so it wasn't like the lack of water tanks was discouraging them from coming over in the first place.

I've wanted to say something about the booming economies, but too often those points get lost. I live in a temperate climate where many migrant workers can be seen in our fields during off seasons, under conditions that most folks would be cuddled close to fireplaces, but we have an annual tulip festival (begins today) so that means those bulb fields are worked during winter, no matter what.

Our county depends on those fields of color, both in bulb sales and flocks of tourists, tho throughout the big month-long to-do one would think the tulip-tenders must become invisible. In all the hundreds of pictures, paintings, postcards, and every other possible representation of a tulip, daffodil, or iris, hardly a field is colored with any farmworker in it. Once, back in 1994, the winning annual Tulip Festival Poster was done by an artist who actually included the workers of our fields...he'd worked those fields himself for decades and it was indeed a beautiful expression of his life. That was the year he passed away.

A few years before that, we had an awful flood here when one of the river dikes broke; the army corps was desperately trying to plug and drain what became a vast bowl of water covering many of those same tulip fields. They stupidly blew a hole in one of the Sound dikes, thinking that would solve everything, but whoops, tide came in and water got deeper. We had parades of trucks bustling rip-rap for weeks, the roads caved from the weight of their constant trips, trying to make repairs.

I was riding in one of those trucks one day, when we were stopped by one horrific accident...a dump truck had smashed into a smaller truck, an older Datsun with a canopy, which was squashed flat. I sat there in traffic and watched as they struggled to find any life after impact with 80 tons of rock and there were eventually six bodies lined up along the ditch, with EMTs working on another and firemen still trying to get someone pinned out of the wreckage. The injured and the dead were all Latino, some of the mangled bodies were covered with their rain-gear that's so commonly seen on our Farmworkers. Here for bulb season, I imagined.

The reason I tell this story is because I read our paper for days afterward, to see how many really died that day or if that one guy survived, names, anything to tell of what we'd witnessed. Not one story ever was printed in our newspaper; I called them cause I'd seen a local photographer pulling up as the line of trucks finally was allowed thru, but nobody had heard of it or knew why it wasn't covered, nada.

I doubt there are many who would want to die, nameless, for a tulip.

We all have seen the decline of unions in this country. We have also seen the outsourcing of jobs to India (and elsewhere). Our 'middle class' is disappearing.

I think what will happen, is that with the numbers of Mexicans in the United States, they will bind together for standardized wages, maybe even forming unions. Mexicans are very family orientated too. I think they will become the base upon which our country grows, much like the European immigrants who came to this country in the early 1900's who fought for worker rights.

On the other hand, I wish they wouldn't illegally cross the border to get here. But, they are here, and lots of them. Look at all those protesters last week.

The question still plagues us. Or, at least some of us.

For some the answer is always "No".

For others "brother" is defined by skin color, or religion, or wealth, or "usefulness".

For some of us the answer is simply "Yes".

families stuffed so tight they sometimes couldn't treathe inside a closed truck in temperatures so high that many died of heat stroke before they could die of dehydration or asphyxiation, after paying everything they had to the driver to get them across. If they survived, they were driven around in not much better conditions to work on farms and do the dirtiest jobs for almost nothing.

Even slaves were usually treated better than this in the ancient civilizations - they were worth something, after all.

The monsters who called you show something we need to understand: those who keep saying that "this is America" and it just CAN'T be as bad as we try to tell them because people aren't that monstrous MUST be made to see the truth. As long as they live in TV lala-land and listen to the constant re-assurances mixed with the fear-inducers, they will see nothing and do nothing and the monsters can keep killing and looting.

You never cease to amaze me, Friend. This is an tragic and beautiful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it with DU.

K&R :kick:

This immigration issue has triggered a lot of emotion in me, and emotion is the driving force behind better writing.

Fernando Suarez del Solar was leading a 241 mile peace march from Tijuana to San Francisco.

Fernando Suarez Del Solar's son, Jesus Suarez Del Solar, was the first Mexican to die fighting our war in Iraq. The US Military informed Fernando that his son died from enemy fire. He found out later, with Bob Woodruff's help, that Jesus died from stepping on an illegal US cluster bomb, 7 days into the Iraq invasion.

In the shadow of this march, people were upset that a Mexican flag was raised above an American school.

Our schools held a walk-out today at noon, some under threat of disciplinary action because they'd already skipped out for the Anti-War/Impeach Boosh march on the 16th. These are our county's children, leading the way, shouting, "The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated!".


Mount Vernon students rally against Immigration Proposal
March 31, 2006 By JANE McCARTHY
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_033106WABstudentwalkoutEL.7ccaa3f8.html

~snip~

Some 200 students rallied at the Skagit County Courthouse Friday to protest legislation that would make illegal immigration a felony.
The issue is now being argued in Congress. If the legislation is passed, the protestors say many of their friends and families would be criminalized because of their search for a better life.

I have witnessed the verbal bashing that you and all of us who believe in human rights for ALL people have taken this week.

You give me hope and put into words what I have been feeling.

I am with you. My husband is with you. My beautiful brown children are with you.

I wanted to give a special thanks to sfexpat2000 as well. Thanks for standing up.

If we don't stand up, we get trampled on. And I'm not about to get trampled on. Not without a fight.

And I have no doubt your beautiful brown children will grow up to be compassionate, tolerant adults, thanks to their parental guidance.