This Mexican immigrant enters the United States openly at Laredo, Texas in 1912. Back then, the U.S./Mexico border was just a line in the dirt. The concepts of "legal" and "illegal" Mexicans did not exist. Photograph provided by the Library of Congress collection.Arellano, for those whose memories are short, was the woman who sought sanctuary in a Humboldt Park neighborhood church and managed to hole up for a full year before being deported back to her birthplace of Mexico.
The Adalberto United Methodist Church, located in the Northwest Side neighborhood that has evolved into a vibrant Puerto Rican community, seems to be becoming the place to go to try to advance the cause of immigration reform.
Crisostomo is turning to the same church, hoping that officials there will shelter her from the federal immigration officials who want the 28-year-old woman also to return to Mexico.
Crisostomo will not attract the same public attention or outrage that Arellano did – largely because her stunt is too similar. It will be like the tens of thousands of Latinos who marched through the streets of Chicago and other cities in favor of immigration, which petered down to a few hundred by the fourth and fifth times they marched those same streets.
“Been there, done that,” is likely to be the attitude of “middle America” towards Crisostomo, particularly since the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials never made the public perception mistake of busting into a Methodist church and forcibly seizing Arellano.
While one should never underestimate the stupidity of government agency bureaucrats, it would be hoped that immigration officials learned last year that calmly waiting out the situation resulted in its ultimate resolution with a lack of offense on the part of real Americans, who are nowhere near as extreme on this issue as the social conservatives would like to believe.
There is a serious need to reform the immigration laws – but not the ones that the crackpots are calling for. We need to look seriously at current restrictions on how people can get into this country, because many of the people who are turning up here without the proper documentation are fully legitimate people who are making a contribution to the U.S. economy and society.
Arellano, at the time of her initial arrest by immigration officials, was a single mother trying to support her son on the meager salary of a cleaning woman at O’Hare International Airport.
There is no reason she should not have been able to get into this country legally, except for ridiculous bureaucratic procedures both in Mexico and the United States that make it virtually impossible for many people to seriously expect to get a visa.
Her “offense” in the eyes of the law was using someone else’s social security number when filling out paperwork to apply for the job. Had she been able to get a visa, she could have got a legitimate social security number. Hers was a case where “the law” as written was nothing more than a technicality designed to keep certain kinds of people out.
People who say they are only against illegal immigration and fully support the “legal” kinds are missing the point. Our country’s system is flawed, and in some ways rigged against people who can make more of a contribution to U.S. society than some people who were born here.
Eliminating those flaws is what is needed by immigration reform. Closing off borders and putting further restrictions on which kind of people can get into the United States is a waste of time.
Citizenship itself is largely an accident of birth, and the only reason that Mexicans make up such a large percentage of “illegal aliens” is because the U.S. and Mexico are intertwined. Like it or not, northern Mexico and the southwestern United States are a region with a common history and culture. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo del Norte to Mexicans) was never meant to be an impenetrable barrier between two distinct regions.
The city of Laredo, which dates back to 1755, is a perfect microcosm of U.S./Mexico ties. In 1847, it was a Mexican city in the state of Tamaulipas, with a river cutting through the middle of town.
That river, however, was the Rio Grande. So when the Mexican War ended with the United States shifting the Texas border about 100 miles south, half the city wound up being in a new country. Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas is part of a single, bi-national metropolitan area of nearly 600,000 people with Laredo, Texas – even though certain elements of our society would prefer to think of the river as a concrete barricade.
For people living in places like Laredo, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, N.M., or Tuscon, Ariz., the Spanish and Mexicans are the “founding fathers,” not a batch of Englishmen in fruity powdered wigs. The basic concept behind NAFTA is a sound one. The two countries are linked and ought to be cooperating along with Canada on so many economic and social issues.
Illegal immigration also should not be turned into a “Mexican” issue. Personally, the first “illegal alien” I ever met was a white Canadian citizen who did not have the papers to allow him to openly live with his U.S. citizen girlfriend in the suburbs of Detroit.
The ultimate irony? The girlfriend was of Mexican descent.
Allowing the xenophobic elements of our society to try to turn this into a debate of “too many Mexicans” coming into this country is a distraction. And I don’t want to hear the argument that the U.S. national security is at stake.
It is absurd to think of threats to the United States of America when what we’re really talking about are people like Arellano, who wielded a mop at the airport and occasionally took a vacuum cleaner to the inside of an airplane after passengers made a mess.
National security would be improved if the United States was cooperating with Mexican officials, rather than pushing for policies that antagonize them. A Mexico that feels a bond with the United States is more likely to watch our back at the border, whereas a Mexico that feels neglected will take a carefree attitude with regard to border security.
Admittedly, Crisostomo is an activist on the immigration issue. She hopes to milk her sanctuary status to gain public awareness of the uncertainty that confronts the daily lives of people without proper papers.
She has three children who are living with a grandparent in Mexico, and is in the United States to work menial jobs so she can send money back to support her family. That experience is not limited to Mexicans in the U.S. Many people regardless of ethnicity can tell of similar family stories.
Crisostomo plans to make a public statement Monday at the church in favor of immigration law reforms, and she also has attorneys who are going to fight in court to try to get her permission to openly remain in the United States. Then, we’ll have to wait and see if her situation turns into another yearlong vigil.
The reason this issue has become such a sore spot is because, like abortion, it is one that some people are unwilling to compromise on. People who insist on portraying compassion and decency as “amnesty” and are preoccupied with mass deportation may be a minority – but they are vocal.
The vocal minority has Republican politicos openly pandering, and Democrats cowering in fear, wishing there was some way to make the issue go away.
There really are only two ways the issue can be resolved.
We conduct mass deportations of people who are hard working and are making a worthwhile contribution to our country. That would incur the wrath of followers of Democracy, who would rightfully call such actions “un-American.” Of course, it didn’t stop the U.S. from engaging in a similar policy (officially known by the code name “Operation Wetback”) in the 1930s.
Or, we accept the fact that the bulk of these people should be allowed to remain legally. Government officials will have to devise a means by which the millions of people now here can be integrated into the national consciousness.
That might not be the popular idea for a segment of our society. But similar to how Lyndon Johnson incurred the wrath of a segment of the American people when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1965, history will remember it as the right thing to do.
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EDITOR’S NOTES: How heated did the rhetoric become last year with regards to Arellano? Here are a couple of memorable blasts (http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/19/no-more-sanctuary-for-elvira-arellano/) from the past (http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/599/599_04_Elvira.shtml) to let you know how the two extremes viewed the issue.
A part of me will always be a United Press International reporter at heart. So it repulses me to have to acknowledge it was the Associated Press that reported the story (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-il-immigrationactivi,0,1659557.story) about Crisostomo.
Laredo, Texas (http://www.cityoflaredo.com/) in many ways represents the ideal of what U.S./Mexican relations should be.
Despite all the talk of Aztlan and reconquest, Mexican people do not seriously expect the return of California, Texas and the Arizona territory. All they'd really like is some acknowledgement that the Mexican/American war (re-enacted as a musical show in this 1890 production) was not the finest hour in U.S. history. Illustration provided by Library of Congress collection.
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