Shenandoah, Pa., and Suffolk in Long Island, N.Y., will be two cases the Hispanic immigrant community will remember because of the beating to death of a Mexican and the fatal stabbing of an Ecuadorian. In both instances, teenagers filled with racial hatred were the perpetrators. 

Yet, what these communities will remember the most will be the abysmal difference between the local judicial authorities both in Pennsylvania and in New York.

A Schuylkill County judge agreed to take into consideration a motion to dismiss the third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation charges pending against three white teens accused of beating to death a Mexican immigrant, and one more who allegedly took part in the beating.

People are perplexed but not surprised.

From the beginning, Pennsylvania authorities behaved diametrically different from its counterparts in the state of New York after the Ecuadorian citizen was killed there earlier this week. 

While in the town two hours away from Philadelphia authorities tried, if not to hide the incident, at least to tone it down, N.Y. governor David Paterson, immediately called it “a hate crime” and a “senseless and cowardly attack by these teenagers.”

“This crime should serve as a source of outrage for all of us," the governor said in a written statement two days after the crime was reported.

Paterson’s words came in as comforting, sensible and on time. He directed state law enforcement agencies to assist Suffolk Police in its investigation “to ensure swift and certain justice for this heinous crime.”

There’s already one teen arrested and charged with first-degree murder without bail, which also contrasts with the bail set on the two teens charged with the beating to death of the Mexican immigrant. Both of them have been already home for a while.

Suffolk, N.Y., Assistant District Attorney Nancy Clifford didn’t hesitate to call things as they are and said that the teens had certainly gone out Saturday night “hunting for some Mexicans.”

That’s how officials should act in such cases; that’s what’s been missing in a county in Pennsylvania.

That could be the sole difference between a county deep in the hills of what used to be the coal empire, now diminished, and that doesn’t realize the existing globalization promoting immigration and that tolerance plays a significant role; and a county in New York, not hidden in the mountains and closer to the immigrant’s realities. 

This week, along with an comprehensive immigration reform, Hispanic organizations asked president-elect Barack Obama to change the debate’s “tone” that has taken xenophobic airs and also to acknowledge immigrant’s economic contributions.

Audrey Singer, lead researcher in a study on immigration in the Philadelphia region published this week by Brookings Institute, said that “getting used” to immigrants is necessary, and that people should “acknowledge immigration is happening in their area.”

She said understanding this is key, otherwise “we’ll see the tension grow.”

Beyond an immigration reform, what’s needed is people with radical and backwards thinking to understand the demographic change present for quite a while. They can’t do anything about it. Trying to stop this presence with hideous crimes against dry cleaners employee Marcelo Lucero, 37, or strawberry picker Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala, 27.