When Being Called Crazy is a Compliment

Perhaps it is a compliment that O'Reilly called Oppenheimer a "crazy columnist." I'm not saying I agree with O'Reilly. However, if Oppenheimer's column is being noticed by the xenophobes, that means it must be pretty good and they must be concerned about it's impact.

Another thing... I think O'Reilly and Dobbs are not the most logical or reasonable people (maybe missing some nuts and bolts in their brains). Their character judgement is not very reliable. I think I'd be afraid to be called normal by these guys.

Now, as for Oppenheimer's opinion on the future of the DREAMERS. If the DREAM ACT does not pass, it's possible that these kids will become part of the underclass. I would say they probably won't, but their children will.

As in the history of Mexican Americans in the southwest, people weren't allowed to go to high school or couldn't because of the harvest schedule (la cosecha). They still worked hard and lived as good citizens. Unfortunately many of the next generations have found that being a gang member feels more inclusive than being a college student.

As I mentioned in a previous post (November 8, 2007 "Oppenheimer on the DREAM ACT") there won't be a riot. DREAMERS would become parents who would mourn their lost opportunities... with their children carrying the burden in other ways.

THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Who's crazy, me or O'Reilly?
Posted on Thu, Nov. 15, 2007
By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com


On Nov. 8, I had the distinction of being called ''a crazy columnist'' and a ''nut'' on prime time television by conservative Fox News anchorman Bill O'Reilly for a column I had written about the urgent need for a comprehensive solution to America's immigration crisis.

I'm not going to disqualify O'Reilly -- or the CNN anti-immigration crusader Lou Dobbs -- as a Hispanic-phobic hate monger. Rather than trying to smear him, as O'Reilly did to me, I will focus on how deceiving his arguments are. You judge.

DANGEROUS TREND

First, the facts. In my Nov. 4 column, ''Angry migrant underclass might erupt in U.S.,'' I argued that the rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria is a dangerous trend. It will create an underclass of nearly 13 million people who won't leave this country, who can't realistically be deported and who -- if deprived of a path to earned legalization -- will become increasingly frustrated and angry, I said.

I even used the word ''intifada'' -- granted, I wanted to grab your attention, to describe the worst case scenario of what could happen if undocumented immigrants are given absolutely no legal path to earned upward mobility. In that context, I cited the examples of the Palestinian youths' riots in Israel in the 1990s and the 2005 riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris.

My main point was that the estimated 1.8 million U.S.-raised undocumented youths -- who were brought to this country as toddlers, often speak no other language than English and don't even remember their countries of origin -- will soon be thrown into the U.S. labor market with zero chances of getting a legal job.

What is going to happen with these youths? Most are barred from applying for in-state college tuition and will grow up on the streets. Many of them will join the gangs that are already terrorizing many U.S. cities. Undocumented kids, especially the brightest ones, need to be given an opportunity to gain U.S. citizenship, as was contemplated in the Dream Act that was recently defeated in the U.S. Senate.

As soon as my column was published, I was flooded with e-mails from all over the country. By Wednesday, MiamiHerald.com website had a whopping 93 pages of comments on the column. Many of them were openly hostile against Hispanic immigrants and claimed -- wrongly -- that my column was inciting violence.

`CRAZY COLUMNIST'

On Nov. 8, O'Reilly said in an on-air conversation with Fox News analyst Laura Ingraham that ``there is a crazy columnist in Miami, Miami Herald, who says that the Hispanics are going to rise up.''

Ingraham said I was ''intimating something akin, Bill, to a race war . . . It's insane.'' He responded, ''He's a nut. He's a nut, this guy.'' She added that I am part of ''a crazy far-left anarchist wing'' of the immigration debate.

My opinion: For the record, I never called for violence, nor would I. Suggesting that I was endorsing violence, as was done in the O'Reilly show, is irresponsible journalism.

But even more irresponsible is what O'Reilly and other cable television anti-immigration crusaders are doing every day: inciting Americans to rebel against ''illegal immigrants'' -- most of whom are Hispanic -- without offering any realistic solutions to America's immigration problem.

As long as the income gap between the United States and Latin America continues to be as wide as it is, as long as U.S. employers keep welcoming undocumented immigrants to do low-paid work and as long as U.S. consumers continue to prefer paying less for services performed by undocumented workers, the immigration flow will continue, no matter how many stretches of fence we place along the 2,000-mile border.

If we want to reduce illegal immigration, we will have to allow greater legal immigration and at the same time increase economic ties with Latin America to help our neighbors grow and reduce their people's pressures to emigrate.

Above all, we need to give the 1.8 million U.S.-raised undocumented children an earned path to legalization. Otherwise, we will be creating an underclass of social pariahs, many of whom will end up joining street gangs.

Are these fears crazy? Am I nuts? You decide.

http://www.miamiherald.com/519/story/308401.html

Oppenheimer on the DREAM ACT

Oppenheimer is warning of some type of revolt or violence if immigration is not handled correctly. I disagree. I don't think people will resort to violence as much as become more passive and invisible in U.S. society.

During the 19th and early to mid- 20th century people of Mexican descent in the American southwest were treated the same or worse than current day undocumented immigrants. They were lynched, had their lands stolen, were banished, and treated as sub-human. Numerous Texas counties did not allow Mexican-Americans to live within their boundaries. Their children were not allowed to attend "white" schools, often having to work in the fields to help parents reach the productivity required by their "bosses." All of this did not lead to outright revolt. There was violence and tension between groups in the early 20th century, but after over 5,000 Mexican Americans were killed (in south Texas) - things calmed down and people became passive and subservient again.

No Mr. Oppenheimer, it won't be violence against other people. It may be violence among themselves (as Jose Limon states in his book Dancing with the Devil) - but not towards the establishment. This time I believe it will be resistance in other forms, organization, voting, more push for education. The DREAM ACT may be lost for now but the DREAMERS are a group of bright and determined young people who will ultimately make their mark. They are motivating other students who are American citizens, and together they will form a large political movement - not to hurt anyone - but to bring peace to our country. Anyway, we may not be battling now- at least not with guns - but we certainly are battling with words.

for more information on the history of Mexican Americans in the southwest, see the award winning book "Anglos and Mexicans in Texas: 1836-1986" by David Montejano.

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Angry migrant underclass might erupt in U.S.
Andres Oppenheimer
Miami Herald
November 4, 2007

...I was thinking about all of this [frustration of undocumented immigrants] when I read about last week's U.S. Senate refusal to pass the Dream Act, a bill that would offer a path to legalization to children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States at a very young age, and who get a college degree or serve in the military.

MIAMI BROTHERS

The bill would have regularized the status of youths like Juan and Alex Gomez, the two Colombian-born Miami brothers who were brought by their parents to this country as toddlers, graduated near the top of their high school classes, and now face deportation to a country they don't even remember.

There are an estimated 1.8 million children in the United States who are growing up like other American kids, often speak no language other than English, but don't have legal documents, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They are denied in-state college tuition fees or scholarships that are available to legal U.S. residents, and are eventually thrown into a labor market where they are barred from being employed.

Further, the Bush administration-backed escalation of raids against undocumented workers in factories, the increase of city ordinances prohibiting people from leasing apartments to undocumented immigrants, and the overt xenophobia spilling daily from Hispanic-phobic radio and cable-television shows will leave their mark on these and other children in immigrant communities.

A study released last week by the Urban Institute and the National Council of La Raza says there are about five million U.S. children with at least one undocumented parent.

''The recent intensification of immigration enforcement activities by the federal government has increasingly put these children at risk of family separation, economic hardship, and psychological trauma,'' the report says.

The study looked at the impact of recent U.S. immigration raids in Colorado, Nebraska and Massachusetts, where about 900 undocumented workers were arrested at their work sites, and their children -- most often infants -- were suddenly deprived of their fathers or mothers.

''The combination of fear, isolation, and economic hardship induced mental health problems such as depression, separation anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide thoughts,'' it said.

My opinion: We have to stop this xenophobic hysteria. And please, dear anti-immigration readers, don't tell me I'm being dishonest for failing to point out that you are not against legal immigration, but only against ``illegals.''

You are making a deceptive argument. Leaving aside the fact that nearly half of the undocumented immigrants came to this country legally, and overstayed their visas, their non-compliance with immigration rules should not stigmatize them with the label of ``illegals.''

DANGEROUS PATH

You may have violated a rule, but that should not make you an ''illegal'' person. You may have gotten a ticket for speeding, but that doesn't make you an ''illegal'' human being, even if the potential harm of your reckless driving is much greater than anything done by most of the hard-working undocumented immigrants in this country.

Carrying out enforcement-only policies, labeling undocumented workers as ''illegals'' and depriving them of hope for upward mobility -- rather than working toward greater economic cooperation with Latin America to reduce migration pressures -- is not only wrong, but dangerous. The millions of undocumented among us will not leave. They will only get angrier.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/story/295183.html

The Biggest Explosion of Anti-Hispanic Sentiment in 30 years?

image from:
http://blogs.infoshop.org/UrbanGuerrilla.php?title=report_anti_war_anti_colonial_latino_you&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1


Immigration is a Proxy for Anti-Latino Racism?*


THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Time to hit back against anti-Latino bigotry
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com



..The recent immigration debate in the Senate, which ended with the defeat of a bill that would have given a path to citizenship to many of the 12 million undocumented workers, has given way to the biggest explosion of antiHispanic sentiment I have seen since I arrived in this country three decades ago.

Prominent academics such as Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington are getting away with sweeping statements such as ``America's Latino immigration deluge . . . constitutes a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States.''

While the 44 million Hispanics are the biggest minority in America, you don't see the kind of nationwide protests, legal actions or calls for boycotts on a scale that you would probably see if these statement were directed against African Americans or Jewish Americans...

My opinion: The National Council of La Raza and its sister institutions are doing the right thing with their ''Ya es hora!'' citizenship drive. But they should also launch a nationwide ''Ya basta!'' campaign to identify, name and shame those who systematically bash Hispanics.

If anti-Hispanic sentiment is allowed to keep growing, we will soon have an underclass of 12 million immigrants that will feel not only frustrated by not having a legal path to citizenship but increasingly insulted by the mainstream media.

And social exclusion mixed with frustration can be a dangerous cocktail, as we've seen in the violent 2005 riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris.

The time for Hispanics to say ''Ya basta!'' is now, before it's too late.

for entire article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/421/story/178206.html

*immigration prof blog posted on Oppenheimer's book earlier today