Message of Exclusion Only Unites

The Courant
July 14, 2005
by Helen Ubiñas

Adelante, Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control.

Seriously: Onward!

Keep going from town to town, looking for the misguided and misinformed to join your ranks.

Keep claiming your views have nothing to do with racism and then on the sly send out e-mails that show otherwise.

(You seemed mighty excited about the possibilities of resurrecting "Operation Wetback," a program in 1954 that rounded folks up because of their heritage. That sounds familiar.)

"The group wants to come off as being non-offensive, but in private e-mails, they are as racist as we might suspect," one of your prospective recruits recently e-mailed me.

So, keep painting immigrants with that broad stereotypical brush. Tell your would-be faithful that immigrants are a bunch of terrorists; or else they're welfare cheats.

At Tuesday night's meeting in Watertown, Paul Streitz, one of the group's founders, wasn't satisfied to limit his derogatory remarks to Mexicans. Somalians are a bunch of "stone-age people" who mooch off of communities where they seek asylum, he said. Indians were being imported to take all the computer jobs away from Americans. Computer geeks beware!

That kind of anti-immigrant sentiment is exactly why the opposing side just keeps getting bigger. The immigration control group may have started out with 150 people at its first meeting in Danbury, but my, how the tide has turned. Every meeting since has hovered around the 30 to 40 mark. At a protest in Hartford last month, the 15 people from the concerned citizens group were solidly outnumbered by folks waving flags from various countries.

What started out as a small, local immigrant group fighting Danbury's crackdown on Ecuadorian volleyball games has turned into a Regional Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

Clearly, that's not what folks like Streitz had in mind, but too late. They've awakened a sleeping giant - and isn't that how this country's greatest movements started? Civil rights. Gay rights. Immigrant rights - all gotten from folks pushed to a corner and told that they couldn't, that they were less than, that they were `those people' who deserved our disdain.

"Many people are being treated inhumanely because of the false ideas people have about immigrants," said Khaled Alqaddumi, a spokesperson for the Palestinian American Congress who joined the rally in support of immigrants Tuesday.

So, keep whipping the racist rhetoric back and forth under the guise of protecting American jobs.

The union representatives marching outside don't buy that for a minute. Tim Sullivan, an organizer for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, said he knows his job is more secure if the immigrants get equal pay, overtime and workers' comp. "I've got no problem going up against anyone for a job, as long as it's a fair fight," he said.

And neither he nor the rest of the union reps who showed up believe immigrants are the reason for the shrinking job market.

"When employees of companies like Stanley Works or Pratt & Whitney or IBM lose their jobs, they aren't losing them to immigrants," said Kit Salazar-Smith, vice president of the Western Connecticut Central Labor Council. "And the pretty words the corporations use, `downsizing,' `outsourcing' and so forth, don't change the fact that Americans are losing good jobs, not to immigrants but to corporations investing outside of the United States."

Oh, and keep holding these events in places that are supposed to ignite patriotism, like the American Legion Hall.

"My father fought in World War II," said Sullivan. "He would have a stroke if he heard the message these guys were spreading in an American Legion. What happened to liberty and justice for all?"

Really, the pro-immigrant folks couldn't have rallied the troops better if they tried.

After a meeting in West Hartford in May, I thought one of the founders might have seen the light. Maybe we should rethink these meetings, co-founder Mary Long said after the gathering disintegrated into a shouting match between opposing sides.

So, truth be told, I was a little surprised to hear of another meeting.

"They keep going," I told Marela Zacarias, one of the pro-immigrant group organizers, when we bumped into each other earlier in the day.

"That's fine," she said, a determined grin lighting up her face. "So will we."


Helen Ubiñas' column appears Thursdays and Sundays and alternate Tuesdays. She can be reached at Ubinas@courant.com.