--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Marta, I'm shocked to hear you talking like this.
> Why pit sick
> immigrants against disabled people? We've got a
> deeply fucked up
> health care system in the US. That's the problem.
>
> And what's wrong with 21 languages? I think the
> diversity of big
> American cities is wonderful. It's sad that the
> diversity comes with
> so much poverty, but we don't have to make it worse
> by seeing it as a
> waste of resources.
There is one aspect of it that you seem to be overlooking here - national identity politics. It is not really about 21 languages (which I think is wonderful thing), but about an immigrant minority conspicously displaying their foreign nationalism an allegiance in their host country - the flag, the language, the customs, the separate identity. That pisses a lot of people off, even progressive ones. What Marta said on this list I also often hear from otherwise tolerant and open-minded people.
One of the most frequntly expressed opinions I hear is that if the immigrants love their culture so much, why do not they go back to their country; that no other country in the world provides multilingual services to immigrant minorities, so immigrants do not have the right to demand it, especially when they are here illegally; or that they refusal to learn English and integrate into the local culture is an in-your face isult and annoying. Many legal immigrants are resentful that the "illegals" want an easy access to what the "legals" had to obtain the hard way by going through the process.
A few blocks where I live there is a large Hispanic area and an open job market where about 200 people congregate daily, waiting to be offered a job. We recently had a community meeting about that and things get really ugly, especially from the nearby public housing residents. The amount of in-your-face racist tripe these people threw on the Casa of Maryland speakers invited to the meeting would make the KKK swell with pride.
However, not all complaints were motivated by racism and bigotry. People, especially women, also lodged legitimate complaints that were related to cultural differences: drunk men making sexst slurs or accosting single women, people urinating and defecating on someone else's doorsteep, the amount rubbish and filth left behind. I think that cultural perceptions contribute more to the perceived urgency of the problem by most people than actual competition for scarce resources, as Marta seems to imply.
I pride myself in openly taking the side of the immigrants and publicly speaking on their behalf, but I am clearly in the minority in this otherwise progressive and multi-ethnic community. The views expressed by Marta seem to be the norm rather than an exception - and it definitely is not just a bunch of nativist xenophobes sharing them. It is really difficult trying to explain to to these people the root causes: tax cuts for the rich, gutting public programs, NAFTA destabilizing Latin American economies and other macro-economic factors - when all what they see is a bunch of illegals wrapping themselves in their national flags and peeing on other people's doorsteps.
So once again, cultural perceptions seem to be trumping ideology and objective material interests here. I think immigrant activists need to do some serious work in this respect to improve their image.
PS. one of the latest issues of the New Yorker magazine (for some reason I cannot google it up) had an excellent feature on a similar problem with the Muslim minority in the Netherlands. Again, the problem is cultural identity and lack of assimilation encourgaed by the Dutch system of pillarization.
Wojtek
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