Brad Botwin, the founder of Help Save Maryland, is very well known in The Examiner for his xenophobic position. The Examiner, though I still respect it because it has published my liberal letters on several issues despite the very conservative positions of its editor, censored my last letter answering Botwin’s contradictions and open lies. That is why I decided to publish in Daily Kos the letters I have sent to expose Botwin, the local branch head of the Minutemen, for what he is. Botwin is one of those people who does not hesitate of using any tool at hand to mislead conservatives and liberals into his xenophobic position, which basically blames on illegal immigrants, 5% of the population, of the very serious problems of our nation. Any coincidence with the Germany of the 1930s?
Brad Botwin has a long history of anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant obsession. In the first of his letters I could read, he told us how he saw his same disgust in others’ faces when he heard an announcement in Spanish while traveling in the Washington area Metro. Another reader of the Examiner got his letter published saying that he had not been able to see the angry faces saw by Botwin. I ride on Metro very often and I notice that people do not even pay attention to announcements in English so, using the tools of psychoanalysis [reflection is better known as projection], I answered Botwin’s letter with mine of November 23 of 2006:
Dear Sirs:
Although the faces reacting angrily to announcements in Spanish seen by Brad Botwin may be the result of what psychoanalysis calls reflection, Lacorte may be failing to see that if the xenophobic English-Only movement has strengthen a lot since the 80s, it is the result of short-sighted pro-immigrant leaders willing to please some immigrants who do not want to bother to learn English. Actually, when immigrants do not learn English, they fail to use the opportunities America gives them, fail to offer America the best of them in a process of mutual improvement called integration and fail to communicate their position to good faith conservatives deceived for decades by racist right wing distortions.
To be multiethnic you do not need a Babel of languages. As the worst for an ethnic group is to live alienated from other immigrants and native born, learning the common denominator language, English, should be a national crusade among the immigrant communities and services in other languages should be restricted to reasons of national security, health and access to justice. The key challenge of integration, ignored by our broken immigration law, has been addressed by the Kennedy-McCain proposal on immigration, which we hope be given a fair chance by the new Congress.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland
On January 22 of 2007 I sent another letter. This time Botwin focus his attacks against a day laborer center in Maryland. My answer was as follows:
Dear Sirs:
- It is sad when the obsession with illegal immigrants gets so big that some, in the name of national security, advocate for an at least $2 billion (Nobody knows the total cost) wall that will be useless to deter terrorists (and even illegal immigrants) while others, in the name of local security, advocate for closing markets also useful for assimilation and English learning. Laborer centers are small markets that serve laborers but employers too. They may also help a laborer with more attitude than capital build a record as a good and honest worker. Furthermore, laborer centers, temporary or not, should evolve to financial self-sustainability. The Prohibition, was another attempt to obstruct a legitimate market in the name of prejudice and we all know the upsetting consequences of such experiment.
- The laborers demonized by Botwin’s xenophobia are leaded by pastor Rocha, not by Casa de Maryland. To think that pastor Rocha and the day laborers have engaged in a criminal spree so endangering the safety of the county is absolutely ridiculous. His important leadership cannot but improve the human quality of those laborers. Any person who spends a few minutes at the laborer center near the Grace Methodist Church will soon realize that he is not at risk. If there is something to regret is that Leggett had skiped pastor Rocha in a no bid contract in favor of Casa de Maryland.
- Thirty years ago (Bika case), the Supreme Court considered immigration "exclusively a federal power." Trying to diminish it through local law is illegal.
- Instead of blaming immigrants for crime, loitering and even the bad weather we should honor our Founding Fathers with a new immigration law that rewards character instead of relatives, social class or country of origin. The present immigration law betrays their precious legacy. Only then illegal immigration will be a marginal problem and our Border Patrol will be able to focus on real threats.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland
On April 5 of 2007, I sent another letter to answer Botwin’s generic charges against immigrants. Suddenly, uncompetitive markets in health, wrong energy policies, vulnerabilities of the political system to special interests, deteriorating education with respect to other developed nations, etc., etc., were not problems any more. It was illegal immigrants, 5% of the population, the real cause of all our problems. My answer was as follows:
Dear Sirs:
Botwin’s letter reminds us again that the KKK’s spirit is still alive. Botwin, against any serious poll and study of the last years, embraces the Center for Immigration Studies’s fantasy that there is a direct relation between immigration and crime, taxes and the bad weather and that any low-skilled worker can double his pay getting rid of immigration not saying the unrealistic premise: you would have to close the economy to achieve that. What Botwin really offers is a nostalgic excuse for a whiter America and cries for enforcement of unfair laws like people like him cried for the law of the land advocating for segregation 40 years ago. Bernanke last week in Congress qualified as "disruption" the effects of repressive immigration proposals on the labor market. The massive "influx of humanity (...) in the next 20 years" exists only in Botwin’s imagination because the number of immigrants is limited by what the labor market can absorb. How are going to make a living those who are not hired? Besides that, Botwin tries to terrorize us with the path of destruction of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the next 20 years ignoring that they are already here. I invite Botwin to read serious conservative research in the Web page of the Cato Institute.
Though I agree that an immigration reform should not be biased to any nation, language or caste, as the present law does, the real sin of the White House’s plan is, trying to please xenophobic conservatives, to focus in punishment instead of in character and assimilation.
Finally, our English language states that amnesty is an unconditional pardon. We should respect its semantic, Mr. Botwin.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Pretty soon, Botwin charged again. On May 5 of 2007 I answered another of Botwin’s pieces of generic deceit:
Dear Sirs:
Once again Botwin tries to mislead us into his racist cause. Actually his portrait of illegal immigrants is not so different from, on the excuse of defending the states rights, White supremacists’ of integration: a movement that "stimulate" (...) "loitering and crime". He and dishonest think tanks like Heritage and the Center for Immigration Studies should thank Casa de Maryland, La Raza and most of the Hispanic leadership for their immense mediocrity for letting them to pass unquestioned with lies of all kinds. Furthermore, Botwin’s and similar groups foot us the bill of their absurd "strategy of attrition", which promotes absurd walls and the Real ID act, like the anti-saloon league footed at its time the bill of the Prohibition.
Let’s stop spreading lies. Different from the proposals for comprehensive reform, the present immigration law does not reward character or learning English; in most of the cases, the present law gives a place on the line only to those blessed by privileges of birth and so betrays the spirit of the Founders; the present law has long lost pace with the needs of the skilled and unskilled labor market so creating a 12-million-people problem; the effects of immigration on government budgets cannot ignore the effect of immigration on other groups’ income; the real challenge; assimilation, can only be addressed successfully by a comprehensive reform.
The spirit of the Founders sets the moral standard to judge unfair laws. Had they not fought the English regime, today we would not have America. If first Christian had not broken the law, today there would be no Christendom. Martin Luther King’s movement, in that same spirit, fought the Jim Crow. Today’s Americans have another test on immigration.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland
The last letter I sent was sadly censored by the Examiner, which asked to lower my tone against Botwin and his baseless charges against immigrants and the New Americans caucus. I softened some words but not the arguments. My letter was not published. My last letter was not published either despite answering other two letter with similar anti-immigrant positions. I hope this does not mean the Examiner has changed his open mind policy with respect to letters; a policy that has made me respect it despite our differences.
Dear Sirs:
Before demonizing illegal immigrants, Botwin should admit that he supports the system of castes backed by the present law as more than 90% of visas are granting depending on country or family of origin. The immoral law supported by Botwin would not have allowed Alexander Hamilton to come legally.
Botwin also says that it is insulting to compare the New Americans caucus with others. What’s really insulting is Botwin’s gross attempt to blame illegal immigrants, about 5% of the population, for every problem of our society. He tries to create a rivalry between immigrants and African-Americans for college slots when the real problem is out-of-reach education costs; he simultaneously denounce them for being poor and at the same time advocates for denying them tools to escape poverty such as driver licenses and better education; he has condemned many of them for not speaking English and simultaneously supported the present law, which does not require immigrants to learn English, in contrast with the existing comprehensive immigration reform proposals. It is easy to bully those who have no good leaders to defend them. That is what bullies do.
Botwin tells us about the "illegal immigrant agenda" as other bigots speak about the "homosexual agenda" and as a psychopath convinced the Germans of the 1930s of the "international Jewish conspiracy." If this is not racism, we would need a new definition for that word.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland
On John Reyner’s Control of illegal immigration problem is worth the cost and Ed Hinkle’s Legal, illegal immigrants unfairly lumped together
Dear Sirs:
Reyner is a captive of the bias of his sources. If you want to know the impact of immigration on the fiscal budget what interests you is not how much taxes immigrants pay but how much your income is now due to the presence of immigrants. In our history the big influxes of immigrants have always go together with prosperity and healthy government incomes. There is not a all-access "line" on immigration. If you are Austrian, you can come legally since the very first day. If you marry a citizen, you waiting time may be 6 months. If you have not been born in the right country of family, you do not have a place in that "line". "They brought that up on themselves" was what segregationists said when goons beat the Freedom Riders, who protested another un-American legal system: the Jim Crow.
Hinkle accuses O’Malley with no base. The Constitution and repeatedly the Supreme Court have reserved immigration enforcement to the Federal government. Then he says (of legal immigrants): "They work had to come to the U.S. legally". In more than 90% of the visas issued yearly, the applicant get it due to country or family of origin. If that implies hard work, it necessarily should have been made before birth. A side-effect of the present system is the market of fake-marriages with the visa as the goal. We need to strip the visa system of the right to work in America and award the right to work on a merit basis. At least we could have an exam everybody willing to come to work should take, whatever his country, family or social class. This should not imply any significant burden if we adapt the know-how of the TOEFL exam for international students.
Reading you,
Alfredo M. Bravo de Rueda E.
Gaithersburg, Maryland