I didn’t have in mind writing again, at least for some time, because I had already proposed what I had to propose and the time has already passed to make it work. Nevertheless the news about a young talented immigrant who paid with his life for putting his hope on something nobody seriously cares about, immigration reform, has pushed me to write these lines. This time I’m not trying to propose ideas. This time I’m writing to tell the Hispanic leadership and others who is paying for their mediocrity.
Some weeks ago I learnt about the suicide committed by a talented youngster from Texas:
http://www.pilarmarrero.com/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
In these lines I want to denounce again the mediocre people who, after 7 years of dancing in the streets with flags, making colorful choreographies, trying to twist the arms of hardhearted swing-state politicians with cute letters or negotiating in whispers, speaking vaguely of immigration reform in Spanish without a proposal to win immigration reform either in English or in Spanish, embarrassing themselves in every possible debate due to their ignorance of the facts that could have helped them crush the deceptive accusations of their adversaries, over and over again, no matter how many times the facts told them that all that corny idiocy doesn’t work, no matter how many times their adversaries were successful by doing exactly the opposite. Whether their motivation is to make a living of keeping the issue unsolved or to validate their vanity by expecting that their persistence in their error will magically be crowned, after repeated tries, with success (After all, that’s the feedback they get from their advisors, who are precisely selected for their tireless capacity to applaud them) is irrelevant.
1. Here I want to denounce people like Francisco Acosta (who lacked the moral fortitude to use his position to advance the serious proposal he had before his eyes and with which he had agreed) and his IALAP board (for whom convenient accommodation, charm and good taste are the way to victory), or Kim Propeack and her fruitless though colorful conduction of Casa Action (The arm of Casa de Maryland that is going to win Maryland for the Democratic Party in exchange of immigration reform though, at the end, they are convinced that both parties are going to compete for their affections). Here I want to denounce people from places like Chirla, Casa de Maryland and La Raza which, after all these years haven’t even felt curious about why their adversaries seem to win every time while they have been reduced to pretend that their failures are actually victories. I want also to denounce their members for accommodating and for milking this tragedy because after 7 years they should have realized that either they are completely incompetent to learn from their own mistakes (and so they should have made room for people who could provide better results) or they are dishonestly making a living of it.
Though maybe unexpected for them, the natural result of their mediocrity, of their irresponsible vocation to play with the lives of others, has been rewarded with results: Joaquin Luna is dead. Maybe Joaquin Luna, in your imagination, was supposed to placate his frustration with a Corona or two while watching soccer or maybe he was supposed to forget his tragedy watching El Gordo y la Flaca. Maybe Joaquin Luna was actually unconsidered to you taking his own life, for not appreciating that even though your leadership is useless is at least tasteful, for not being the idiot he was supposed to be to not realize that the real fruit of your leadership is hopelessness. Congratulations! You got a result: Joaquin Luna is dead.
2. On August 20 I made the mistake of attending a presentation of the Urban Institute in which they were presenting a document about the effects of immigration enforcement on children and families. After all, the Urban Institute is a pro-immigrant liberal think tank. Isn’t it? My real intention was to approach the moderator in person and see whether he agreed that the problem with immigration activism was not the serious research that justified immigration reform but the fact that a mediocre Hispanic leadership had turned their back on them as it had turned its back on learning from the groups that actually have advanced their causes successfully. My naïve intention was to see whether he somehow would be willing to collaborate in trying to assemble some sensible try at activism that coordinated serious research with political activism (like the xenophobic right has done successfully to advance their sadistic Enforcement by Attrition strategy). I remember telling him that he knew this paper, the one they were presenting, like many others, would dust in some file cabinet because, even if it was based in serious research, Hispanic activists would not even pay attention to it, much less echo it, while their adversaries would spread like self-evident truths all the garbage coming from Heritage or the Center for Immigration Studies. He simply was not interested. Unfortunately he, like others with whom I could talk that day, were more interested in seeing their names on the cover of papers nobody else would read than in whether those papers could do something to transform worthy lives for good. Well, congratulations to you too. At least one live has been transformed by your apathy and inaction: Joaquin Luna’s.
As a digression, I am attaching the link to the paper so you can make your own opinion:
http://www.urban.org/...
Among its recommendations, at the end of the paper, you will find:
i) “ICE should continue the de facto moratorium on worksite raids.” Actually the xenophobic right and Mitt Romney agree. The heartbreaking faces of children left on their own after their parents’ arrest can raise sympathy for immigration reform in the public opinion. On the other hand, they’d tell you that eVerify can produce similar effects pushing people to self-deport in desperation and arrests under Secure Communities are more discrete… for dramatic effects. That’s why the xenophobic right is not for worksite raids any more but for self deportation induced by attrition. Isn’t that nice to see the Urban Institute agreeing with the Center for Immigration Studies and the Minutemen (now part of the Tea Party)?
ii) “As ICE reforms the system, the agency should develop supervised release policies and other alternative forms of detention with the needs of parents and children in mind
Law enforcement should allow greater access to arrested immigrants during their processing and detention, including minimizing transfer of detainees to remote locations and supporting children’s communication and visitation with detained parents.” Here the Urban Institute’s recommendation aims to a soft version of the Enforcement by Attrition strategy with happy family reunification at the other side of the border. Destroy them but destroy them humanely.
To Urban Institute, you got your name in this paper and Joaquin Luna had the good sense of killing himself somewhere else. Congratulations to you too!
3. A couple of days ago I was astonished as a somehow denominated journalist from Univision raised her voice to ask Mitt Romney whether he wanted to deport illegal immigrants or not. Obviously Romney said that he wasn’t for deporting 11 million people. The so-called journalist amazingly swallowed this answer. Of course, had she followed Romney’s past declarations she would’ve remembered that Romney has said this same thing before because massive deportations are distasteful and expensive while self-deportation was his preferred option. The somehow denominated journalist didn’t mention the issue of self-deportations and, of course, neither did Romney. Actually Romney spoke of creating a permanent solution creating an environment where immigrants could make their own decision about staying here or leaving, something Romney has also said before when forecasting that as a result of laws based on the Arizona benchmark those immigrants would decide on their own, as their lives turned into a silent living hell, to go back to the countries were they came from. Actually the only possible window Romney left open was for young immigrants serving in the armed forces. Need I say that the somehow denominated journalist didn’t even mention that that was even less than had been suggested by Rubio, who at least seems to sympathize with some limited version of the Dream Act? The implementation of Krikorian’s Enforcement by Attrition is what Romney conceives as immigration reform and when he said that, different from Obama, he was for immigration reform, astonishingly, the audience clapped. Maybe even the somehow denominated journalist, protagonist of a colossal ignorance that would have embarrassed anybody else, clapped too. I don’t know. Maybe the Hispanic press can afford to dance before cameras in their morning shows and ignore basic facts because at the end Hispanics are supposed to be an ethnic group that dances typical dances and eats typical dishes, an ethnic group for whom any pain could be cured by a Tecate. Nobody tragic could result of their mediocre journalism unable to challenge the fruitless standards of the mediocre Hispanic leadership, the disinformation about this issue or the duplicity of politicians seeking Hispanic votes, couldn’t it? Ask Joaquin Luna, Univision. Ask Joaquin Luna.
Could anybody be surprised that Obama, in his acceptance speech, reduced immigration reform to the Dream Act?
4. Finally I want to congratulate some bloggers on the death of Joaquin Luna. I understand that many bloggers simply don’t have the means to organize leaders, media, think tanks, etc. but some, who have that traction, have not even tried. I at least tried some time ago more than once. Other bloggers, whose pages reach many more readers than mine ever has, have, instead of trying to produce some positive result in the real world, preferred to promote cute videos or look like cool intellectuals. I hate to break the news for you but in the real world Joaquin Luna is dead and maybe, had you taken some time and courage to grow up, you could have given him that slice of hope that could have given him a reason to hold on a bit more.
To the kids behind the Dream Act, you have to grow up. You may engage in looking cute in endless choreographies and indeed gain additional sympathies but remember that sympathy is not enough. In 2007, despite all its defects, the Kennedy-Kyl bill reached up to 72 % of popular support and still xenophobic groups led by NumbersUSA sank it. Check the polls at every attempt made, from the Kennedy-McCain of 2005, the Specter bill of 2006, and the Kennedy-Kyl of 2007 and you will see that those bills didn’t fail due to lack of popular support (or, better said, to the idea of immigration reform because the public knew very little about the contents of those bills). You don’t have time to repeat others’ mistakes or you will sadly see the trap falling behind you and then it will be too late. Joaquin Luna was one of you. Honor him growing up.
Do I care if other bloggers condemn me for my criticism of them? At this point I actually don’t give a damn. Do I feel better because I tried? No. You never feel better because you will always ask yourself whether you could have done something else, tried a bit more. I have spent all my ammunition in my several attempts but I honestly hope somebody else can give hope to the next Joaquin Luna, even if it is based on a lie, to hold on a bit more.