Times evolve, but in some ways remain remarkably similar to the past

I couldn’t help but be amused by a story the Chicago Sun-Times published recently – one about restaurant help being taken advantage of because of their position on society’s fringes due to their ethnic status.

An ethnic mixture that's truly all-American

In this case, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism worked with the newspaper to prepare a lengthy story about all those workers doing the labor in Chinese restaurants and buffets located across the Midwestern U.S.

IT SEEMS LIKE an old tale – Chinese immigrants being used and abused as cheap labor who can’t really complain about their treatment. If they don’t like it, they can go back to China.

Except these weren’t Chinese immigrants. For it seems the kitchen help consists largely of Mexican immigrants. These are people who got these jobs though employment agencies that tend to cater to providing labor for Chinese-oriented businesses, including restaurants.

And in many cases, the news organizations reported, the decision to seek out Latino-oriented workers was a conscious one by the Chinese businesses.

One could try to put the spin on things by saying these businesses know hard workers when they see them, so the conscious decision to seek out Mexicans in need of jobs is a fully-legitimate one.

ALTHOUGH LET’S BE honest. What it really amounts to is the reason why many businesses in our society seek out individuals of ethnic origins to do the physical labor that needs to be done in order for a business to operate.

Not all jobs involve sitting around on one’s duff and tapping out a few keys on a computer of sorts.

They really do want people who might be trying to draw as little attention to themselves as possible while managing to earn an income in order to survive.

Past attitudes towards Mexicans not all that different … 

Finding those people whose immigration status makes many question their presence means you can have a work force inclined not to complain – even if one is treating those workers with less than proper respect as people and as a labor force.

BUT PERHAPS THIS is merely evidence of our society evolving – albeit in a manner that is rather embarrassing to all of us.

For there was a time when it would have been Chinese workers being brought over to this country to do the work that no one else wanted to do, and treating them in a demeaning manner.

Now, we get the image of Chinese ethnics seeking out Mexicans to do the work of maintaining those restaurants that can be quite popular with the bulk of our society. What comes next? Mexican business owners finding hard-working African Muslims in need of work and willing to put up with nonsense when it comes to human rights?

It’s embarrassing to see that on one level, our society isn’t evolving in the least. The idea that some people think exploitation of one’s labor force is the only way to manage to make a profitable business entity truly is appalling.

PARTICULARLY SINCE THE news organizations reported the degree to which these businesses are providing inadequate housing for their labor (which is part of the deal by which they get these workers to take jobs with them). And also that while the restaurants and other businesses pay these employment agencies a fee for finding the workers, the laborers then have money taken from their wages to reimburse the business for that fee.

… from those toward Chinese

Almost as though one has to “pay” for the “right” to hold a crummy job that manages to take advantage of their situation in life – which is to be in need of a job so badly that one thinks someone else is “entitled” to take advantage of them.

As one of Mexican ethnic origins myself, I’d like to think we’re somehow above this and will never be in a status where we choose to exploit other individuals in such a manner. Although in this Age of Trump, I wonder if there are those who would say that such status is evidence that we’re (as “The Jeffersons” of TV fame on told us) “Movin’ on Up.”

Although as we Chicagoans all know, there’s no “East Side” of the city to move up to – unless you count the 10^th Ward neighborhood where many of us already live.

  -30-

EXTRA: Are you sure foreigners are taking over everything in this nation?

I spent my Saturday afternoon in the Pilsen neighborhood, checking out the set-up along 18^th Street and the Mole de Mayo festival.

McDonald's on a street named for Cesar Chavez, or ...

It’s an event intended to give various restaurants a chance to show off their special recipes for that uniquely Mexican dish – mole. That mix of the cocoa bean and assorted spices mixed into a sauce served atop chicken, turkey or other meats.

... mariachis playing in between Giordano's and Subway? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT HAPPENS TO be a personal favorite of mine, and I was anxious to try unique variations on the dish (which my mother often served atop chicken with rice).

But the part of the day that caught my attention was the ethnic and racial blend of people that turned out to what some people would want to believe is the ultimate Mexican neighborhood in Chicago.

Chato's for pasta, along with ...

Just as many white people of assorted ethnicities showed up and gave the mole a try. The fact that this one-time immigrant enclave that has been through so many ethnicities during Chicago’s history truly is going through gentrification.

... Memo's for hot dogs

For it seems there were so many mixtures of the old (being the Mexicans who have been a part of Pilsen since the 1950s) and the new (upper-scale individuals who like the idea of a city address not too terribly far from jobs downtown (it’s about a 15-minute ride from “the Loop” to the 18^th Street CTA ‘el’ train platform).

I’M STILL TRYING to figure out the most off-beat sight I saw – the stage on 18^th Street where I saw a female mariachi band perform, located in between Giordano’s and Subway franchise restaurants.

Or the McDonald's franchise located on Chicago's Cesar Chavez Street.

A faded Mexican mural on a barbecue joint

The conservative ideologues who would have you think that the foreigners, especially all those dreaded Mexicans, have “taken over” this country ought to see these sites. It would go a long way towards shutting them up – except that the ideologues usually don’t worry about having fact to back up their rhetorical trash.

I also couldn’t help but notice several restaurants in the neighborhood being operated – based on their names – by people of Mexican ethnic origins. But who are serving up most definitely un-Mexican foods.

Still sights w/in Pilsen ...

PASTA AND HOT DOGS, to be exact. Assimilation at work. Perhaps somebody figures that even Mexican-Americans are anxious for something else to eat, even though the ideologues might have inane thoughts about serving up burritos.

Now I know some people see these sights and they get scared. They’re afraid the white people are going to drive up the rents and make it too expensive for others to afford to live there.

Although there has to be a mid-ground we can reach between a neighborhood remaining an ethnic enclave and becoming the latest version of Lincoln Park – which itself was once a Puerto Rican neighborhood back in the days when Pilsen had an overflow of Czech immigrants and it made sense the neighborhood was named for one of the largest cities in what is now the Czech Republic.

... that I'm sure will manage to offend ...

It was pleasing to see so many interacting with good behavior.

I DIDN’T SEE any bad incidents, and in fact there wasn’t even a heavy police presence.

I saw two lone officers walking along 18^th Street, and they said it was a pleasant afternoon. Which is something I'm sure the ideologues will refuse to believe can occur in an ethnic enclave in Chicago. We are, after all, the "murder capital" of the country -- even though it's really St. Louis, with Baltimore and New Orleans close behind.

... the ideologue idiots amongst us

Not even the presence of $5 beers got people to misbehave. Perhaps it was the presence of all the food that kept people from acting up. Or at the very least, kept us all stuffed to the point where none of us would have felt compelled to start up any trouble.

Although I have to admit to one thing – despite not being displeased with anything I ate or drank, I still have to say; none of the moles compared to the way my mother use to make them.

  -30-

Mexican ethnic holiday takes on greater meaning for me these days

I am of Mexican ethnic origins (three of my four grandparents were born there, along with one set of great-grandparents) and always have found my background to be of personal interest.

My brother on a baseball-themed trip to Pittsburgh

Yet I have to confess, the concept of the Day of the Dead isn’t one that ever caught on with me. Until now, that is.

FOR THOSE WHO are uninformed, the holiday being celebrated Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday is a Mexican one whose serious point is that we pay homage to those of our loved ones who are no longer with us – as in they have died.

There are those Mexicans who go so far as to build elaborate tributes to their loved ones. There are others who literally will spend the night tonight at the cemetery, visiting with their loved ones in gravesite picnics that turn into semi-festive celebrations.

I don’t plan to go that far, largely because both of the loved ones who are popping into my memory these days were cremated. I don’t have cemetery plots to visit, and in fact I have my mother’s remains with me.

In my case, my loved ones to remember are my mother, Jenny, and my brother, Christopher.

My brother and mother, in a happy moment

AS IT TURNS out, the anniversary dates of both of their deaths come up around this time of year. In the case of my brother, Sunday was the second anniversary of the aneurism he suffered that almost instantly killed his brain activity, and Monday was the anniversary of the date upon which he was pronounced dead.

As for my mother, it will have been seven years on Nov. 10 since the day she suffered a complication related to her diabetes treatments that caused her to bleed to death.

Meaning this early autumn time period that I otherwise would think of as the conclusion of the World Series and the end of the baseball season in this part of the globe (it’s just kicking into gear in professional leagues that play across the Caribbean) is one in which I find myself remembering my brother and our mother.

One of my mother's favorite family photographs

In that sense, the Day of the Dead takes on a certain convenience factor in that I can remember both of them at once – and know I’m not alone in thinking about death. Although I’d prefer to think of it as remembering the lives that used to exist – and not the piles of ash that they have been reduced to these days.

MY BROTHER (HE was younger than me) only made it to age 45. His was a case of his blood pressure reaching such high levels that he was on medication that doctors were fiddling around with at the time we lost him.

If anything, my brother’s experience has been an educational one for me, since I have developed blood pressure issues and doctors have described my own condition in ways that make it seem I’m at an earlier stage of what ultimately took down my brother.

His life may well be the warning of what could happen to me if I slack off on my own medical routine.

My mother as a child, long before I ever existed. She's with her Uncle Aurelio "Spinx" Salas, and a part of me likes to think he's keeping an eye on her these days

Although I actually feel the need to keep living in part to not embarrass the memory of those before me. Yes, a part of me feels like my mother’s spirit is watching over me, and is prepared to give me a smack or two upside the head should I ever encounter her again for everything stupid I may do with what remains in my life.

MY MOTHER ONLY made it to 66 at the time of her death, and the final decade of her life was a not-so-pleasant experience of constant medical treatment. Being that I’ve barely past the half-century mark of life, I know it won’t be all that much longer before I can say I’ve lived longer than she did.

Unless I’m amongst the ones unfortunate enough to suffer an early ending. One thing I learned a long time ago from my reporter-type person work is that there are no guarantees about life. One can go at any time, and perhaps I should view myself lucky to have survived this long.

These are thoughts passing through my head on this Day of the Dead, and perhaps this essay is my remembrance of family whose absence still leaves me longing – even though I’m fortunate enough that my father remains and is in a place where he can continue to be a pain in the behind. Although I’d give just about anything if my mother could be around in an equally annoying way these days.

But I also suspect my mother would be bothered by this commentary, particularly since I recall she used to get all creeped out at Day of the Dead imagery and thoughts – she’d probably want her memory to be the last thing possible to be associated with Wednesday in any way.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: On a not-quite-so-related point, I’m still amused by this use of Day of the Dead imagery in this animated sequence from the 2002 film “Frida” that explains just how badly bashed the body of Frida Kahlo was from a bus crash she suffered as a teenager that left her crippled through much of her life.

Long-time ethnic enclave turning white and wealthier, but is that a plus?

Gentrification is a label with negative connotations to some people, usually those whose long-time home neighborhoods get improved to the point where they can’t afford to live there any more.

Proximity to downtown makes Pilsen attractive to all

Some want to say there’s nothing wrong with upgrading a neighborhood. It ought to be desired.

BUT WHAT OF the situation where upgrade means creating improvements meant to attract newcomers, without any interest in improving life quality for the existing residents.

That seems to be the situation taking place in Pilsen, the long-time immigrant neighborhood whose character has evolved so much throughout the years and is undergoing yet another round of change.

Pilsen carries the name of a village now in the Czech Republic. Sure enough, it was once a Czech enclave in Chicago. It has been home to many ethnic groups as they first enter the United States. Since the 1960s, the neighborhood language has been Spanish – it has been a Mexican enclave.

But the DNA Info website reported on a University of Illinois at Chicago study of the neighborhood demographics – the Mexicans are moving out; being displaced not by other immigrants but by many white people.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD, ACCORDING to the study, is still majority Mexican-American in its composition; nearly 29,000, compared to about 4,300 white people. But that white figure is about 22 percent higher than it was in the year 2000.

While the number of families with children living in the neighborhood is down by 41 percent. Which brings about a drastic change in the neighborhood’s character.

Pilsen has the potential to become the kind of place where a young professional type of person lives for a few years (to gain some sort of Chicago street-cred, so to speak) before moving off to a suburb once they have their own kids.

And for those people whose lives depend upon being within a Spanish-speaking enclave (because their comfort level in English is lacking), they are the ones who could find themselves with minimal options for moving forward.

THAT’S ACTUALLY THE sad part. As a third-generation Mexican-American (albeit one with no ties to Pilsen nor its bordering community of Little Village), I’d like to think the reason Mexicans are moving out is because we’ve progressed beyond the ethnic enclave.

But as one who sees my own home neighborhood of South Chicago turn into a place for people with few other options, I know it’s not true.

I also know that the talk in recent years of turning the one-time U.S. Steel South Works plant into an upscale community of its own scared many South Chicago residents for the same reasons being expressed in Pilsen – the idea that this project was meant to chase out the existing residents.

I actually get why outsiders would be interested in Pilsen. It is fairly close in to downtown Chicago and has direct contact with the Loop through the ‘el.’ Someone living in Pilsen would have easy access to a downtown job, or to other places throughout Chicago through mass transit.

IT MAKES ME wonder if Pilsen is destined someday to become like Lincoln Park – which once upon a time ago was a Puerto Rican enclave, until developers saw that lakefront site and figured other people would benefit from it more.

Just as I’m sure some people probably think a place like Pilsen with good mass transit is being wasted on people who never want to leave the neighborhood.

The key to this situation is to comprehend that there are people already in the places where other people would like to live – if only they can get rid of what’s already there. The most drastic case of this may be the modern-day Cabrini-Green – whose near North location was always seen as wasted on the public housing that was built there back in the 1940s.

Now, many of those former public housing residents are scattered throughout the Chicago South Side and suburbs – where they are disrupting the decades-old routines of those communities. Which could easily happen with the Mexican ethnics whom the whites would love to move out of Pilsen – if things are not handled properly!

  -30-

Meeting Chicago's Mexican population just as important for Calderon as UN or "Arnold"

When this week is over, Mexico President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa is bound to have some unique memories of his first official visit to the United States.

He’s going to be able to have seen Harvard Yard and the United Nations. Calderón will have met with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (one of this country’s highest-ranking Hispanic politicos), and he’s also going to be able to get his picture taken with Hollywood celebrity-turned-“governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger.

AS FAR AS the public perception is concerned, his Chicago stopover scheduled for Tuesday has the potential to be the weak end of the Calderón U.S. tour.

To me at least, a meeting with Gov. Rod Blagojevich pales by comparison to the other pseudo-celebrities he will be meeting. You’d think we could at least dig up Oprah Winfrey to add some Chicago glamour to an official state visit.

Yet the Chicago appearance, if not as politically sexy as the other stops on his five-day visit, also has the potential to be the most important. Mexico President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa participated in ceremonies Sunday allowing the Mexican Air Force to show off its strength, just before leaving for a five-day tour of the United States where Calderon hopes to show off his political strength on behalf of Mexican citizens now living in the United States. Photograph provided by Mexico President's office.

Calderón is going to get a chance to meet face to face here with that unique breed of Chicago’s ethnic soup – the Mexican-American, who accounts for roughly one of every six Chicagoans. (It is when combined with Puerto Ricans and other Latino ethnicities that Hispanics account for 26 percent of the city’s population).

THE PRESIDENT OF Mexico is going to attend a rally at Lawndale High School that officials expect to be attended by about 700 people, many of whom are the children of immigrants who make up the population of the Little Village neighborhood on the near Southwest Side.

Officially, Calderón says he is coming here this week to remind U.S. government officials that Mexican citizens who have emigrated to the United States have rights as human beings – rights which he believes are sometimes neglected by federal officials who cite national security as a reason to single out Mexican people.

Yet if that were his only concern, Calderón would have had his flight go directly from Mexico’s Federal District to the District of Columbia. He could have spent his time trying to influence the D.C. politicos and perhaps get a state dinner in his honor at the White House.

Instead, Calderón is bypassing Washington to see the actual countryside for his first official U.S. visit. By escaping the D.C. “Beltway,” he’ll get to meet up with people of Mexican descent scattered across the country.

WHEN ONE CONSIDERS that Chicago has had a sizable Mexican population since the end of World War I, there would be no way he could skip over, “La Ciudad Segunda” on his U.S. tour.

To those people who attend the rally, the event has a chance to be a life-long memory. Regardless of what one thinks of the government of Mexico, common decency implies that you show a certain amount of respect for a nation’s leader – similar to how some people think it is absolutely disrespectful to the United States of America to be overly critical of George W. Bush.

And to someone of Mexican descent who is struggling to comprehend a strange new language and customs while also working a crummy-paying job (or two), the notion that your motherland’s leader has not forgotten your plight can be a boost.

It is even an event of significance to people like myself who were born in Chicago and have to go back a couple of generations to find the immigrant presence in our family trees.

ALL TOO OFTEN in the past, there was an attitude among the Mexican population remaining in Mexico (usually the upper classes whose lives were so financially secure they had no reason to think of leaving) that the people fleeing to the United States were disloyal to their country.

While I see my two grandfathers as being courageous for leaving behind everything they ever knew in life to try to build a new life in a foreign land (the farthest I have ever strayed from Chicago was a five-month stint living in the District of Columbia), Mexicans of a certain generation would lambaste them as cowardly.

Hearing firsthand from Mexico’s leadership that we have not been forgotten is reassuring. It is nice to know that another piece of past ignorance is being put aside.

Personally, I want to hear what Calderón has to say, in part because I am enough of a government junkie to find the inner workings of Mexico’s version of Democracy to be intriguing. Calderón’s 2006 election was as controversial to Mexican citizens as George W. Bush’s 2000 election was to U.S. citizens.

BUT I ALSO am interested in seeing how U.S. officials respond to having Calderón rub the plight of Mexicans in the U.S. “in their faces,” so to speak. Will he get openly hostile reactions from some social conservatives who, “don’t want no Mexican” telling them what to do?

Will he get polite applause, then have his words forgotten once his return flight slips south of the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande? Or will someone heed his words and actually try to do something of significance toward immigration reform – other than building a concrete barrier along the southwestern U.S. border that will come to be graffiti-ed to the point that it will resemble the Berlin Wall of old.

There is one part of the Calderón U.S. tour that I wish I could be present for – the finale in Sacramento, Calif., where he will meet with Schwarzenegger at the governor’s California Statehouse office.

SCHWARZENEGGER, HIMSELF AN immigrant from Austria, is on record as favoring the U.S./Mexico border barrier along with tougher restrictions on Mexican emigration. Will he try to justify his views with Calderón? Or will the California first lady (Kennedy cousin Maria Shriver, an ‘Obama girl’ of sorts who disagrees with his choice of John McCain for president) manage to get Arnold to hold his tongue?

It is particularly interesting that Schwarzenegger is such a high-profile governor that he can get a foreign president to come to him, rather than having to link up with Calderón when the Mexico president visits Los Angeles.

I can’t imagine a Mexican president making a similar trip to Springfield, Ill., where the last Mexican official to visit the Illinois capital city was former Agriculture Secretary Francisco Labastida – and that was 10 years ago.

EVEN WITH BLAGOJEVICH’S bloated sense of self-importance, I can’t imagine our governor having the nerve to demand that foreign leaders come to his turf.

Of course, since Gov. Rod does not put in much time at his offices at the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., or at the Thompson Center in Chicago, Calderón would have to make a trip to the Blagojevich residence in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

You have to admit, watching a presidential motorcade try to wend its way through the streets of the one-time German ethnic enclave (which is slowly going upscale) in search of the gubernatorial bungalow would be an unforgettable site.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Mexico President Felipe Calderón’s U.S. visit (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-calderon_09int.ART.North.Edition1.450f3b1.html) is meant to promote (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/world/americas/09mexico.html?ref=americas) good relations between the United States and Mexico.

Calderón says his government is trying to crack down on drug trafficking taking place (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-mexico-president-interview-feb07,1,3288667.story) between the two countries.

Mexican presidents traditionally visit the United States during their first year in office. But Calderón's U.S. tour was delayed due to floods that struck Mexico. You may not (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/nino-martinez) have paid much attention, but it was as devastating to the morale of Mexico as Hurricane Katrina was to the U.S.

Calderón will use this site (http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/en/) to promote his visit, and other initiatives.

Mexican Sanctuary, the Sequel

There was a time last year when a certain segment of our society considered Elvira Arellano to be the most hated woman in the world. Somehow, I don’t see Flor Crisostomo achieving the same notoriety, even though her actions are no different. 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.

-30-

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.

Chicago the image of U.S. ideal

One of the aspects of Chicago’s character that I enjoy the most is the fact that the city is such an ethnic mishmash.

The African American population is larger than any other group in Chicago and the number of Mexicans is growing to the point where roughly one of every six Chicagoans is of Mexican descent. For all Latino ethnicities, the total is roughly one of four Chicagoans, and officials estimate they will account for about one-third of the city by 2020.

But ethnicity is not something limited to non-white people in Chicago. The Irish remain a visible presence in the city and there are more Poles here than anywhere outside of Warsaw. In fact, just about every ethnicity imaginable has some sort of neighborhood or enclave somewhere in Chicago.

The latter is what gives Chicagoans a unique perspective with regards to the debate going on in this country on the issue of immigration. In Chicago, even the white people have a sense of who they are and what they descended from.

That’s not the case elsewhere.

When I lived in rural Illinois (college, then later a reporting job covering news at the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill.), the white people surrounding me were just white. Most were not really clear as to what they were descended from, and some acted as though it was downright un-American to even be curious about an ethnic past.

I still remember one person I encountered in Springfield when she and her husband moved to the Chicago area due to him getting a better-paying, more stable job. She was dreading the move out of some fear that she would be the lone person on her block who could speak English.

Of course, the home they bought was in a lily-white suburb to the northwest of Chicago. Her fears were irrational, but there was nothing I could say to make her realize that.

I think of these differences whenever I hear the latest tidbits about immigration and the desire by some to tighten the laws concerning people entering this country. Some go so far as to want to erect a wall along the southwestern border between the United States and Mexico.

Appealing to those people and their votes is the motivation behind the Republican presidential candidates in trying to see who can make the most xenophobic comments on immigration policy.

But in places like Chicago, where Democratic politicians prevail, such talk does not play very well. I’d like to think that in Chicago and other urban places, people are forced into contact with one another. While we don’t always “play nice” with each other, differing ethnicities are forced to see each other as people.

In more isolated areas of the country, the homogeneity of the population causes people to fear anyone who is not as homogeneously non-ethnic white as they are.

As one may gather from reading this, I was disappointed to see Congress do nothing in recent years with regard to reforming the immigration laws. What people are going to have to accept is that the United States is basically an ethnic and racial mutt, and that is good.

It means that this country is basically receiving the best bits of everyone on the planet and becomes stronger as a result.

Now for those people who invariably are going to say they are only against illegal immigration, I have to say, “That’s a lie.” When one gets these people to elaborate on their beliefs, it ultimately turns out that they have strict ideas about who should and should not be allowed to have legal status in the United States.

It amazes me the numbers who think that Mexican people should fall into the latter category, especially in parts of the country such as California and Texas that were once states in the Republic of Mexico, now known officially as the United Mexican States.

Even if somehow, a Jim Crow-like mentality managed to prevail and government officials did enact a batch of laws that allowed for mass deportations back to Mexico, there would still be a strong Spanish-speaking presence in this country on account of the fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth and because of all the Cubans who were allowed easy access to the United States as our way of “flipping the bird” at Fidel Castro.

The numbers of people already here are just too massive for any racist crackpots with ridiculous rhetoric to overcome. In the end, the crackpots will lose.

People in isolated areas may look around them and see a white mass and assume they are an overwhelming majority. But places like Chicago, which contain a bit of everyone, bear more resemblance to the real world than places like Pekin, Ill., ever will.

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