by José de la Isla
José de la Isla
HOUSTON – Oh boy, did The Los Angeles Times pull a doozy.
On Feb. 2 they carried an innocuous looking screed by Ira Mehlman. In it he excoriated, without naming it, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a group of 26 top Latino organizations. More than three months ago, they put immigration at the top of their reform priorities to press on the new Obama administration.
Mehlman thought NHLA should have used instead the priorities from a Pew Hispanic Center study based on public-opinion polling.
There is no confusing the 26 groups making up the NHLA. They have a long history advising presidential candidates and administrations. John Trasvina, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, heads the group.
The Pew Hispanic Center, in Washington, D.C., produces research but takes no position nor makes recommendations based on their findings.
And Ira Mehlman is simply listed as the Los Angeles office media director of the Federation for Immigration Reform, or FAIR.
For those who don’t know, FAIR was founded by and is “part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center website, announcing the release of a new report, “The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance.”
SPLC is a reputable organization that has been fighting and exposing extremist groups since the civil rights struggle.
FAIR is hardly in the same category as NHLA or Pew or SPLC, nor is it a reliable (forget sensible) source to tell the Latino community what’s best for it.
The right for FAIR to have its ludicrous viewpoint is its business. But regurgitating old and settled issues, criticism and bitter discussion to stimulate controversy over a closed matter in a public forum is something to ponder about this kind of agit-prop, to borrow a term from George Orwell.
Clearly we need to turn to a new page in discussing immigration. It is self-evident from a study, released in January, by The Americas Majority Foundation. It definitively shows that in 90 competitive House races of 2008, where immigration was used as an issue, candidates with less restrictive positions did much better than those who favored more restrictive ways. “[I]mmigration was a wedge issue benefiting the Democratic Party, but not the G.O.P.,” said their report.
So the public has already settled the matter, and all that remains to be done is to start coming up with perspective and good proposals about what to do next.
The other guys lost. We don’t have to replay their exaggerations and lies, unless of course newspaper editors never read their own papers.
That’s why there’s no need to regress back to the hours following the election more than three months ago to grouse about the people’s choice. It’s almost like arguing that John McCain really did win the election.
No he didn’t. And FAIR’s perspective lost decisively. Period.
Instead, there is a public need to provide a forum for those who do have something to offer. Instead, “immigration” is now serving as the petty excuse for resisting change and denying we need to move ahead and create opportunities.
For starters, those who are interested in living in the future instead of trying to prevent it would from happening would benefit from looking at “Latino Metropolis,” a book by professors Víctor Valle and Rodolfo Torres. It helps put some of the history of migration into perspective. It implies how grand opportunities are forming and how global cities connect into new cross-border networks.
Visionaries are needed. That’s the help-wanted sign some newspapers, websites and think tanks should put up on their front windows. Tell the losers with their hearts of darkness they need not apply and to just keep on walking by.
[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com]. ©2009
