Who speaks for the immigrant community?
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J. Mujica
Jan 24, 2011, 2:07:52 PM1/24/11
to ChicagoMayDay
In the Letter to The Nation's Editor, Roberto Lovato, a long time
activist and writer raises some very important issues. The Nation
Magazine often spreads misinformation because of the relatively little
experience that it or other white liberal writers have when talking
about the immigration. As he correctly points out, the DC-based
organizations raise over a $100 million to represent the interests of
the Latino communities but their agendas and messages are often
watered down by the interests of the elites of the individual Latino
groups. For example, the interests of Cuban Americans with 2 million
people differ from the interests of Mexican Americans with some 32
million.
The DC based groups respond to the elites that are located in close
proximity to their base of operation. Because of their access to the
centers of power the DCers respond to the wishes of the Latino elites
rather than to the wishes of the majority of Latinos on issues such as
immigration. By the very nature of politics an accommodation between
these organizations and the Democratic Party (and in some cases with
the Republican) is profitable. Within the Latino community there is a
split. Most immigration activists do not know who run the DC
organizations and most don't care. The activists are the ones
mobilizing the gigantic marches and deal with day to day problems and
issues.
There is a growing discontent with the Obama administration. It is not
just about the mismanagement of the Dream Act and compromises such as
the military requirement. It is more. It is the lack of commitment,
the going out with a whimper. As Lovato correctly points out, border
enforcement has been harsher under Obama than Bush. Moreover, at one
time, before there was such a thing as an immigration organization
elite, the very idea of a national identification card offended us.
Now that we are players in Washington, we look the other way.
We should applaud Lovato from raising these issues. The Washington
based immigration organizations do not speak for the immigrant and it
is evident that neither does The Nation. Unfortunately, they are part
of the establishment and have networks that are too important to
ignore--making a clash inevitable. The 2012 Elections will see a
defection from Obama. Many
Latinos will not vote Republican but just maybe stay home.
*Rudy Acuña
*rac...@csun.edu
&
* The Nation**
* January 24, 2011
*Who Speaks for Immigrants?
*
* San Francisco*
As a Nation writer, I am not in the habit of publicly critiquing other
Nation writers, especially on articles about immigration. That’s
because I mostly agree with the excellent coverage concerning an issue
I’ve worked on and reported about for some time. But I am moved to
change my habit because of observations I have about Daniel
Altschuler’s “Immigrant Activists Regroup” [Dec. 20].
The article makes crucial and unfounded assumptions that orbit around
a critical mistake made by the mainstream media: talking about
immigrant rights groups in Washington as if they speak for the larger
immigrant rights movement. Although these groups do play an important
role in shaping policy, they have a very different role in the
nonpolicy arena of the “movement” mentioned in the article. Groups
like the Center for Community Change, the National Immigration Forum,
the National Council of La Raza and others highlighted by Altschuler
have collectively received more than $100 million to advocate for
Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), legislation that combines the
legalization of 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the
United States with punitive policies that will jail, deport and
terrorize immigrants even more. The DC groups backed legislation like
the McCain-Kennedy bill of 2006–07, which contained about 100 pages
focused on legalization and about 700 pages focused on punishment.
Altschuler fails to mention how CIR and its DC advocates have
fragmented and divided the immigrant rights movement, which is also
made up of groups that support neither CIR nor the DC groups. Unlike
the outside the-Beltway immigrant rights groups that organized the
spectacular marches of 2006—groups that have been consistently and
vociferously critical of President Obama and the Democrats since 2006—
Obama’s allies in the immigrant rights movement have, until this past
year, largely avoided criticizing the president. Even after reports
that Obama had broken records on persecution, prosecution and
deportation of immigrants, the DC groups provided him a Jumbotron-size
video platform at their mobilization for CIR.
When these groups do criticize Obama, their approach is to target DHS
Secretary Janet Napolitano or ICE Director John Morton, a very
different approach from the Bush era, when they regularly named and
denounced Bush. Altschuler’s claims that the DC groups organized
marches and did civil disobedience to “express their frustration with
Obama’s de facto enforcement-only policy” are, at best, partly and
only recently true. The criticisms have come only this past year, when
the terror rained on immigrant communities by the administration
became so devastatingly bad that nobody in immigrant rights could
ignore it without appearing callous, co-opted or irrelevant.
I again saw the DC groups’ tacit submission to the Democrats when I
called the heads of some of these groups to get their opinion about
the most recent CIR legislation, presented by Chuck Schumer. When I
asked about Schumer’s ideas on including, for example, a national ID
card as part of CIR, the DC leaders’ response was either to avoid me,
say “no comment” or declare that they needed time to “study” the
matter further (the ACLU and other outside-the-Beltway immigrant
rights groups, by contrast, condemned Schumer’s national ID proposal
before, during and after the CIR debate).
Quoting only the heads of DC groups simply reproduces the MSM’s spin
and keeps Obama’s depredations on immigration out of the public view.
The inability to find actual immigrants, immigrant voices to speak for
immigrants, is also noticeable in this article. While nonimmigrants
can and should speak in the movement (full disclosure: I, a USborn
Salvadoran, used to lead an immigrant rights organization), I always
try to find and include in my stories the voices of those most
affected by immigration policies; many of them can be heard
disagreeing with the DC consensus on immigration in the vast immigrant
universe just beyond the Beltway.
* Roberto Lovato*
activist and writer raises some very important issues. The Nation
Magazine often spreads misinformation because of the relatively little
experience that it or other white liberal writers have when talking
about the immigration. As he correctly points out, the DC-based
organizations raise over a $100 million to represent the interests of
the Latino communities but their agendas and messages are often
watered down by the interests of the elites of the individual Latino
groups. For example, the interests of Cuban Americans with 2 million
people differ from the interests of Mexican Americans with some 32
million.
The DC based groups respond to the elites that are located in close
proximity to their base of operation. Because of their access to the
centers of power the DCers respond to the wishes of the Latino elites
rather than to the wishes of the majority of Latinos on issues such as
immigration. By the very nature of politics an accommodation between
these organizations and the Democratic Party (and in some cases with
the Republican) is profitable. Within the Latino community there is a
split. Most immigration activists do not know who run the DC
organizations and most don't care. The activists are the ones
mobilizing the gigantic marches and deal with day to day problems and
issues.
There is a growing discontent with the Obama administration. It is not
just about the mismanagement of the Dream Act and compromises such as
the military requirement. It is more. It is the lack of commitment,
the going out with a whimper. As Lovato correctly points out, border
enforcement has been harsher under Obama than Bush. Moreover, at one
time, before there was such a thing as an immigration organization
elite, the very idea of a national identification card offended us.
Now that we are players in Washington, we look the other way.
We should applaud Lovato from raising these issues. The Washington
based immigration organizations do not speak for the immigrant and it
is evident that neither does The Nation. Unfortunately, they are part
of the establishment and have networks that are too important to
ignore--making a clash inevitable. The 2012 Elections will see a
defection from Obama. Many
Latinos will not vote Republican but just maybe stay home.
*Rudy Acuña
*rac...@csun.edu
&
* The Nation**
* January 24, 2011
*Who Speaks for Immigrants?
*
* San Francisco*
As a Nation writer, I am not in the habit of publicly critiquing other
Nation writers, especially on articles about immigration. That’s
because I mostly agree with the excellent coverage concerning an issue
I’ve worked on and reported about for some time. But I am moved to
change my habit because of observations I have about Daniel
Altschuler’s “Immigrant Activists Regroup” [Dec. 20].
The article makes crucial and unfounded assumptions that orbit around
a critical mistake made by the mainstream media: talking about
immigrant rights groups in Washington as if they speak for the larger
immigrant rights movement. Although these groups do play an important
role in shaping policy, they have a very different role in the
nonpolicy arena of the “movement” mentioned in the article. Groups
like the Center for Community Change, the National Immigration Forum,
the National Council of La Raza and others highlighted by Altschuler
have collectively received more than $100 million to advocate for
Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), legislation that combines the
legalization of 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the
United States with punitive policies that will jail, deport and
terrorize immigrants even more. The DC groups backed legislation like
the McCain-Kennedy bill of 2006–07, which contained about 100 pages
focused on legalization and about 700 pages focused on punishment.
Altschuler fails to mention how CIR and its DC advocates have
fragmented and divided the immigrant rights movement, which is also
made up of groups that support neither CIR nor the DC groups. Unlike
the outside the-Beltway immigrant rights groups that organized the
spectacular marches of 2006—groups that have been consistently and
vociferously critical of President Obama and the Democrats since 2006—
Obama’s allies in the immigrant rights movement have, until this past
year, largely avoided criticizing the president. Even after reports
that Obama had broken records on persecution, prosecution and
deportation of immigrants, the DC groups provided him a Jumbotron-size
video platform at their mobilization for CIR.
When these groups do criticize Obama, their approach is to target DHS
Secretary Janet Napolitano or ICE Director John Morton, a very
different approach from the Bush era, when they regularly named and
denounced Bush. Altschuler’s claims that the DC groups organized
marches and did civil disobedience to “express their frustration with
Obama’s de facto enforcement-only policy” are, at best, partly and
only recently true. The criticisms have come only this past year, when
the terror rained on immigrant communities by the administration
became so devastatingly bad that nobody in immigrant rights could
ignore it without appearing callous, co-opted or irrelevant.
I again saw the DC groups’ tacit submission to the Democrats when I
called the heads of some of these groups to get their opinion about
the most recent CIR legislation, presented by Chuck Schumer. When I
asked about Schumer’s ideas on including, for example, a national ID
card as part of CIR, the DC leaders’ response was either to avoid me,
say “no comment” or declare that they needed time to “study” the
matter further (the ACLU and other outside-the-Beltway immigrant
rights groups, by contrast, condemned Schumer’s national ID proposal
before, during and after the CIR debate).
Quoting only the heads of DC groups simply reproduces the MSM’s spin
and keeps Obama’s depredations on immigration out of the public view.
The inability to find actual immigrants, immigrant voices to speak for
immigrants, is also noticeable in this article. While nonimmigrants
can and should speak in the movement (full disclosure: I, a USborn
Salvadoran, used to lead an immigrant rights organization), I always
try to find and include in my stories the voices of those most
affected by immigration policies; many of them can be heard
disagreeing with the DC consensus on immigration in the vast immigrant
universe just beyond the Beltway.
* Roberto Lovato*
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