Ohtli award
Sacramento, California
May 4, 2010
Award recipient: James F. Smith
Honorable consul Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez
and your very able staff
Honorable Cruz Reynosa, and
Members of the bench and bar
Sacramento Police Chief Rick Brazil y former Sacramento Chief of
Police Art Venagas
Honorable guests
Words fail me to express my gratitude and surprise for even being considered for this prestigious award.
Ohtli is a Nahunta word that means the way. The outstanding author of preconquest civilizations, Miguel Leon Portilla, has noted that in the Codice, the poets of the Anahuac speaking people, or commonly known today at the Aztec civilization, posed the question, “Which is the way that your heart must follow?” and their answer “The right way is to fulfill your destiny, to follow the way of your heart.”
Because this award is in recognition of my work in the area of immigrant rights and because immigrant rights are severely threatened today, for example most recently by the new Arizona law, I want to address the issue of what is the right way – the way that our heart dictates.
Today the experts tell us that there are some 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. In 2006 the Kennedy McCain Immigration Reform legislation was narrowly defeated. This “illegal” population is not some isolated recent arrivals but rather an integral part of our families and communities. According to the 2000 census 47% of children in California reside with one or two foreign born persons. So when we are talking about the “illegals” we are talking about members of families that include citizens, lawful residents, person qualified to immigrate that must, under current law, wait years to lawfully immigrate. All too often family members are kept in indefinite legal limbo in that while they may qualify to immigrate lawfully they cannot do so within the U.S. and if they leave to do so cannot return for 10 years.
How did we get into this dilemma? In the first hundred years of US immigration history our borders were open and immigrants were welcome. The U.S. needed the population to prevent foreign encroachment and to establish productive communities. Mexico enjoyed a special relationship in that first century in that following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexican nationals could become US citizens simply by remaining. From that era forward Mexican workers worked the mines, railroads and in agriculture. In wasn’t until the Great Depression of the 1930s that Mexican immigrants were targeted for mass deportation.
For the next half century there was an ebb and flow to US immigration policy toward Mexico. Due to the labor shortage caused by the Second World War the bracero program was initiated authorizing temporary status for Mexican workers. Not surprising many acquired families and strong communities ties while here. But following the war, anti immigrant sentiment dominated, - in 1952 legislation know as “The Wetback Act” was passed and “Operation Wetback” was launched in 1954. During the 1960s and 1970s, the economy boomed and cheap labor was in damand. But the legislation of the period imposed the same immigrant quota for Mexico as for any other country in the world. Yet, Mexico is not France. The waves of European and British Isles immigration had subsided. But the unique historic and geographic circumstances of the Mexican immigrants has never been recognized by U.S. immigration law, despite the backing of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for such realistic can fair legislation. This period has been described by many US immigration scholars as “Bring them in when they are needed and send them back when they are not.”
Because of the failure of US immigration legislation toward Mexico to reflect the US labor needs and the huge backlogs of immigration petitions since the 1970s this population has been an attractive target for nativist (anti-immigrant) sentiment and the xenophobia of political and media demagogues that may not be a majority but can defeat meaningful reforms.
Clearly “illegal immigration” is not a good thing. It undermines the host countries laws and creates a permanent subclass of families forced to live in fear. But there is a ready remedy. Ronald Reagan was quite correct in saying in the 1980s that the way to solve the problems of “illegal immigrants” was to make them legal. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 did just that – to a significant degree - in that it offered legal status to some 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants. The 1986 legislation also – for the first time – made the knowing employment of undocumented unlawful. But the 1986 reform did not end the recruitment and employment of undocumented workers by employers because the employer sanction law was never enforced nor did it realistically address US labor needs.
By the 1990s the anti-immigrant scape-goating for all the countries ills was reached a fever pitch. Republican governor Pete Wilson tried to exploit the issue for his unsuccessful White House bid. In 1994 California voters passed Prop. 187 – barring public education to the children of the undocumented. Fortunately, the Supreme Court had already ruled such measures unconstitutional (Plyer v. Doe) and Prop. 187 never went into effect.
But clearly by the 1990s a new, more sophisticated and decidedly punitive anti immigrant strategy was winning the policy debate. Led by the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (“FAIR”), state legislatures were successfully lobbied to deny driver’s licenses to undocumented workers. Prop 187 and the drivers license ban were part of an anti-immigrant strategy to: 1) restrict the avenues for legal immigration and eliminate legal status; and 2) make life as miserable as possible for the immigrants that remain thereby driving them out of the US or forcing them to live underground.
The 1996 legislation, signed by President Clinton, accomplished the former by: 1) barring the undocumented, despite the family ties such as marriage to a US citizen, from adjusting their status within the US and barring them from returning to the US if they attempt to do so at a US consulate abroad (unless the 10 year bar is waived which is most difficult), and 2) greatly expanding the grounds for deportation (permanent banishment) of lawful permanent residents for a wide variety of criminal offenses, many of them minor, despite the years in the US or family ties. (Most cases involve lawful residents with 15 to 20 years of residents.) Moreover, under the 1996 legislation such residents must agree to remain in immigration detention sometimes for year while defending themselves from deportation. Instead many agree to the deportation so they can resume supporting their family only to risk lengthy imprisonment.
The Arizona law is just the latest move by FAIR and their allies to restrict and reduce lawful immigration and punish those who remain. This is not the right way. This is the path towards an apartheid society with a permanent underclass of persons who are members of our community and deserve our support and protection. As Sacramento Police Chief Brazil has recognized driving these families underground will destroy effective law enforcement.
There are two distinct paths. The inclusive one is to embrace and protect all members of our community. The other path is to stigmatize persons whose only crime is to work to support their families, as US immigration policy has encouraged for decades, and to drive that population underground. This is the wrong path and we as individuals must reach out to those in the community who are targeted by these measures, to let them know that we do not agree with the punitive approach.
I do not want to end on a negative note. Just last month the United States Supreme Court in the case of Padilla v. Kentucky, ruled that non citizens have the right to be informed by their lawyer of the immigration consequences of any criminal conviction. The high court recognized that to ignore the importance of deportation to the individual would be severely detrimental to his or her family and to the community. This welcome decision underscores that immigrants whatever their status are members of our families and communities and to pretend otherwise is not in our interest.
For me personally, the Ohtli award was a powerful affirmation of the correct way, namely to follow my heart and a lesson to us all that we are a community and attempts to divide and stigmatize are never correct.