Speech delivered to the EPA for the 2009 Hispanic Heritage Month: Embracing the Fierce Urgency of Now

Over 33 years ago, my law school professor began his lecture with the words:  “It is customary of barbarians to fear strangers.” Back then I had no idea what he meant. However, when we fast forward to the last few years in our country, and the fear of strangers all Americans cannot ignore post 9/11, and especially to what we have seen take place in the Delaware Valley recently,  his words take on new meaning.

2009 has been a bittersweet year for America. In August we entered this horrific economic period, characterized as either a recession or a depression, depending upon who’s telling the story. In November, however, our spirits were lifted and the words “Si se puede” were realized as we elected our first African American President, a man with dreams, convictions and yes, a man filled with hope that America can truly be an inclusive country where an individual is not judged by his or her skin color or ethnic background but rather, by who he is. Unfortunately, against our new found optimism and hope we battled (and continue to battle), not just the economy but an atmosphere of poorly masked hatred—an atmosphere of xenophobia. Having survived 9/11 we worry: who are these new people coming to our country? Are they like the aliens coming from a spaceship in a “Twilight Zone” episode? Are they here to “serve” man as our helpmates or are they carrying a cookbook instructing them on how to cook eat and destroy us? Will they steal our jobs, destroy the “purity” of our language (as if American English is truly pure) and turn our country into an annexation of Mexico (similar to what some people are convinced elderly New Yorkers have done to the state of Florida)?

This oozing xenophobia, loudly and widely espoused each day by Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck, has made this year a particularly difficult one, a year of “inquietud”, for the entire immigrant community, legal and illegal alike.  We started with the leftovers and fall out from the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino ordinances invented and passed several years by Mayor Barletta of Hazelton, who came up with the idea that it was okay to hate those with different skin colors, those who spoke with different accents, as long as the hatred was cloaked in legal concepts, local ordinances prohibiting landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.. Barletta’s anti-immigrant legislation sparked the birth of copycat ordinances throughout many parts of Pennsylvania, especially in the Poconos, crossing the border into New Jersey, as well as spreading throughout the entire United States. Enter Joey Vento and Genos’s steaks,( where we all must remember to speak English in order to be served), and South Philly became a new ethnic battleground, pitting long term Italian residents against newly arrived Mexican immigrants, probably quite similar to the backdrop of the play “West Side Story” that memorializes the same struggle which took place so many years ago in New York as waves of Puerto Rican immigrants arrived, causing their more settled immigrant neighbors to fear displacement. We ended with the murders of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania and Marcelo Lucero in the suburbs of New York.

This fear of strangers has always existed in America, despite the fact that we were once all immigrants or, in the words of Bill Murray in the movie “Stripes”: “We’re all mutts; all of our ancestors got kicked out of some country”.

So who, then in 2009, is this Hispanic population in America today? What countries do we come from? What have we contributed to this country? How do U.S. immigration laws impact us? How do our non-Latino American neighbors view us? Most importantly, what is our future in America and how can we best embrace the fierce urgency of now?

Certainly, many Hispanics in the U.S. today are from Mexico. Some of us are educated in colleges and universities while others of us are not. We come to work in agriculture, in the mushroom companies of Chester County, PA, where we are exposed to constant pesticides, constant eye infections, and must wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. each day to crawl into small, dark spaces filled with manure, spaces smaller and darker than those of our American brothers who work below the earth, in the mines of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. When (and if) we are ever able to apply for that coveted “green card”—la mica—it is often difficult for USCIS to fingerprint us because years of working with the sharp knives needed to cut these snowy white mushrooms at the base erase the lines of our fingers.

However, contrary to what anti-immigration activists would like the American population to believe, the Hispanic population does not consist merely of uneducated illegal Mexicans, crossing the border under cover of night, to nefariously take jobs away from hardworking American workers. Recall instead the dignity, humanity, kindness and sacrifice of Jesus Cordova, one of these same “uneducated” illegal Mexicans, who, while trying to achieve his dream of making it to America in order to work and provide for his family back home, came across a 9 year old child in the Sonoran desert whose mother had been injured in a car accident.  Without hesitation, he chose to save that child’s life by remaining with him in the desert until dawn, flagging down the very same border patrol that he sought to evade, because for him the saving of the life of a child, a stranger, was more important than his own life. Indeed, his reward for such humanity and sacrifice was a speedy return to Mexico at the hands of the U.S. border patrol.

Our Hispanic population comes from many nations and for many reasons. They are the very same reasons that the first immigrants to America’s shores arrived here over 200 years ago. We come for political freedom, economic opportunities and most of all, to make a better life for our children. We came as Braceros in the 1950s through a poorly thought out immigration program where only the men, agricultural workers, were allowed to come to America. We, like the Chinese, who built America’s railroads, were not allowed to bring our wives and children. Still, many of us found out that we liked America, despite the harshness of our lives here and as the Mexican economy continued to not produce jobs, we either remained in America beyond our permitted stay or left the U.S. on time, only to return but without governmental permission. We brought our families, our neighbors and our relatives. Illegal immigration from Mexico increased, as a safety valve for the lack of work in our native land. We will continue to come, no matter how many fences are built or borders reinforced, unless there is work for us at home. Some of us are professionals, engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists but many are not.

We are from the Dominican Republic. Many of us first arrived in N.Y. but life was tough. Our Philadelphia relatives told us of the opportunities in this city and we arrived, opening bodegas, automotive shops and other small businesses in inner city areas that other more settled immigrants were afraid to even enter. Some of us are professionals, engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists but many are not.

We are from Cuba, where our families fled the politically repressive regime of Fidel Castro. We came as engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, journalists, schoolteachers, with nothing in our pockets, for we were not allowed to leave Cuba with much, save for our dreams of the life of freedom and opportunity America promised. We, like our brothers and sisters, did not speak English so we, respected professionals in our home country, cleaned the toilets and homes of others and washed dishes in restaurants. Some of us learned English, repeated our professional education again in America, and re-established our careers. Others were not so lucky; our dreams for success in our new country were no longer for ourselves but instead were passed to our children, who became that which we once were in another life: engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and schoolteachers.

 We are from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, and Colombia. We first arrived, fleeing political repression and persecution. Now, however, we are unwilling to return to our native lands because of our many years and ties in the U.S. and our fear that our home countries are still not politically or economically stable (and never will be). Our children are American; they feel no real ties to the land of our birth, merely a distant curiosity as a vacation destination.

We are from Honduras and Bolivia, countries that have most recently experienced political upheaval and we are afraid to return home. We are from Costa Rica, a country of great beauty but a country with few jobs.

We are so many now from Venezuela, a country none of us would ever have dreamed of leaving but for the actions of a mad man whose rise to power and totalitarian control of our country was previously unfathomable (and is still bewildering to us).

We are from Puerto Rico and yes, we are citizens of the U.S. but like our brothers and sisters from Latin America, we, too feel the sting of this xenophobia because of our accents and perhaps our skin color. We are “them”—those branded as illegal aliens, as unwelcome strangers because we speak Spanish or speak English with a discernable accent.

As Hispanics we have contributed so much to America and will continue to contribute even more. We are found in every area of American life—in the arts, sciences, medicine, education, social services, journalism in small and large businesses. Above all else we are Americans and we and our children are the future of America.

Let’s turn to a few statistics that you’ve probably familiar with:

 The 2008 Census reports show that the estimated Hispanic population of the U.S. as of July 1, 2008 was 46.9 million (and that includes just those who actually wanted to be counted)

 Hispanics constituted 15% of the nation’s total population.

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More than 1 of every two people added to the nation’s population between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008, was Hispanic. There were 1.5 million Hispanics added to the population during this period, a 3.2& percentage increase, making Hispanics the fastest growing minority group in the U.S.

132.8 million is the projected Hispanic population of the U.S. on July 1, 2050. According to this projection, Hispanics will constitute 30% of the nation’s population by that date.

The U.S. is 2nd in ranking of the size of the Hispanic population worldwide as of 2008. Only Mexico (110 million) had a larger Hispanic population than the U.S. (46.9 million).

64% of this population were of Mexican background, 9% were of Puerto Rican background, with 3.5% of Salvadoran and 2.7% of Dominican background. The remainder were of some other Central American, South American or other Hispanic or Latino origin.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among 16 states with at least a half million Hispanic residents.

In 2002 there were 1.6 Hispanic owned businesses in the U.S. and nearly 43% of them operated in construction, administrative and support, waste management and remediation services, personal services, repair and maintenance. Retail and wholesale trade accounted for nearly 36% of Hispanic owned-business revenue.

The rate of growth of Hispanic businesses was 31% compared with the national average of 10% for all businesses.

There were 79,400 Hispanic Chief Executives, 50,866 physicians and surgeons, 48,720 postsecondary teachers, 38,532 lawyers and 2,726 news analysts, reporters, and correspondents. 1.1 million Hispanics were veterans of the U.S. armed forces. 9.7 million voted in 2008 and larger numbers in 2009.

Much of this growth is, of course, due to immigration. So then, how do these laws work and why on earth would anyone be here illegally because, contrary to popular anti-immigrant belief, a child does not wake up one morning and say “Gee, when I grow up I want to be illegally present in the U.S.”?

It’s not easy to fit square pegs into round holes and that’s the U.S. immigration system. There are very few categories in which individuals can legally come to the U.S. Even if someone does fit into this system the waiting times are horrendous. For example, if an Lawful Permanent mother had petitioned for her unmarried under 21 year old son in June of 2006 that son would still be waiting because his category, family based second preference, is only now, in the month of October, up to June of 2005. That’s more than a 4 year old wait. If, however, that son, during this long waiting period, turns 21, he now falls until an even worse category where there is a waiting list backed up to August of 2001. If this unmarried son chooses to marry, he falls out of line altogether, for there is no category for married sons of Lawful Permanent resident mothers, only for married sons of U.S. citizens. Similarly, the second preference family based quota applies to spouses of Lawful permanent residents, separating husbands and wives for well over 4 years before they are finally able to be reunited (and over 6 years if they are originally from Mexico).

The employment based system is equally problematic and difficult to fit into. Once again, this portion of the immigration law is also subject to horrific waiting periods, such as well over 8 yeas for those who have been sponsored by employers for Lawful permanent resident status and do not require at least a masters’ degree to perform the job duties for which they have been sponsored.

Assuming, however, that an individual is lucky enough to fall within one of these limited visa categories and have his priority date reached on the long immigrant visa waiting list, he is still subject to the 3, 10 year and permanent bars if he is in the U.S. illegally, as well as subject to other sections of excludability such as criminal, health, public charge or past negative immigration history sections.

Returning to the theme of “Embracing the Urgency of Now”, what must (and can) the Hispanic community do? First, we must assist in advocating for and in effectuating immigration reform. Remember: “Hoy marchamos, manana votamos”. Next we can (and must) register to vote and finally, we can and must vote.

Why should we care if we are not impacted because we are sitting nice and comfortably with our U.S. citizen birth certificates? For two reasons. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, reminds us of the first, in his letter to America:

Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly deployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat”.

The second reason?  Because history has taught us that we cannot remain silent just because we, at that moment, are not at risk:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--

    because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--

    because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--

    because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--

    because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me--

    and there was no one left to speak out for me.