by José de la Isla

MIAMI BEACH — U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton sees the human factor as topmost in confronting hemispheric trade and immigration issues.

In an exclusive interview with this correspondent the morning after she participated in the Univisión-sponsored Democratic Party presidential primary debate here, Clinton took the opportunity to expand on these two issues of major interest to 49 million U.S Hispanics and nearly 400 million more in some two dozen countries south of our border.

Clinton had shared the spotlight the previous night with six other aspirants for the Democratic nomination in front of a national television audience of 4.6 million.

Frontrunner Clinton expressed to me the event’s stand-out moment as “the fact it occurred” at all. It was the first time in U.S. history that the major candidates appeared before a largely Latino national audience to debate the issues.

A similar event for the Republican candidates is in question. Only Senator John McCain has accepted the invitation so far.

In particular, Clinton emphasized to me the need for a hemispheric engagement that reaches all people and communities. Trade issues, for instance, ought to concern how workers and their families gain, both abroad and in the United States. She observed that while many of the wealthy in some Latin American regions have benefited, trade reforms have yet to reach the less privileged with significant impact. Obviously, not enough to stem illegal immigration into the United States.

Asked whether this country could pay serious attention to the interests of its Latin American neighbors, given the Iraq war and its other worldwide commitments, Clinton responded that the need for hemispheric cooperation doesn’t go away.

Dialogues “do not go up or down,” she elaborated; they should endure. Clinton made reference to her travels in Latin America and familiarity with the region’s many issues. In particular, she noted regional economies, energy, the environment, health, the poor and democracy as essential areas to engage Latin countries.

I brought up our relationship with Mexico President Felipe Calderón, who has led an aggressive police and military confrontation with narco-traffi ckers. He has made recent statements calling on the United States to do more in curbing demand for illegal drugs.

Expressing sympathy with Calderón’s efforts, Clinton agreed the United States should do more by diverting drug-users to treatment and increasing its efforts to push down the crime rate.

She added the caveat that Mexico itself has to re- store public order and take its own measures to curb narco-corruption among police and others. The two nations should partner in developing a comprehensive approach, she said.

Official ties linking Canada, Mexico and the U.S. — the three North American Free Trade countries — would work better if their ongoing “standing committees” worked “smarter” and their dialogues more promptly addressed issues and concerns as they arose.

“All good ideas,” she emphasized, “do not start in the U.S.”

She said the way to get smart about trade is to apply a strict standard and measure NAFTA by how it improves the lives of working people. Reforms that do not reach the middle class and poor exacerbate immigration problems. Clinton has consistently favored comprehensive immigration reform. In particular, she told me, this nation’s changing demographic profi le, with a Latino population approaching 50 million, is a refection on how “America is constantly reinventing itself,” adding the oft-repeated refrain, ”We are a nation of immigrants.”

She addressed the recent wave of demagoguery and immigrant-bashing that has created a public dissonance, blaming much of the current fault-fi nding on the fact that many in this country are susceptible to demagoguery “because Americans don’t see themselves getting ahead.”

Even though the nation has realized real benefits from immigration, those who don’t see themselves as touched directly by the benefits don’t believe it.

Demagoguery, she said, “unfortunately falls on receptive ears.”

Clinton made a similar observation the night before in front of the television audience. By the next morning, she was animated about her statement and the interplay between domestic and transnational perspectives.

At a stand-out moment, as one of seven candidates vying for attention, she referred to demagoguery polluting the waters of the immigration debate.

But now it seems she wanted her message to go the next step. Open minds, she suggested, see the connection between what happens abroad as a link to what happens here. And the judgment about good or bad policy is how it impacts people far away as well as nearby.

[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.] © 2007

by Cecilio Morales

Since parity in health care was good enough for Republicans at a recent presidential debate, perhaps their anti-immigrant followers ought to consider parity for today’s immigrants. Immigration restrictions today should be no greater than they were when the majority of this country’s forbears came.

That would be in the spirit of the declaration by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who stated during the debate: “Either give every American the same kind of health care that Congress has or make Congress have the same kind of health care that every American has.”

No Republican spoke in contradiction to that notion.

So let’s let immigrants in as easily as the great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents of our current crop of patriots arrived — or else send their descendants back across the ocean until they can meet modern immigration rules.

The sepia-tinted memories of the millions upon millions of U.S. residents whose ancestors came through Ellis Island usually include images of immigrants of yore who stood in line patiently awaiting their turn. All 22 million of them who checked in there between 1892 and 1924.

In fact, until 1882 there was no legal barrier whatsoever to entry into the United States.

That’s how millions of Irish immigrants could flee the genocidal policy of Britain that produced the infamous Potato Famine of the 1850s. The only barrier they faced on these shores was the ethnic prejudice of the Anglo-American vigilantes.

Some things don’t change much, do they?

Indeed, the history of U.S. immigration law is the history of prejudice. The first law of this kind was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. As its name 7suggests, the act was meant to keep out one specific group of people for reasons not even worth considering.

Many non-Chinese immigrants’ ancestors could still come into the United States without limit so long as they did not have an infectious disease (a reasonable health consideration in the age before penicillin).

The free-for-all intended for Europeans ended in 1922 with another law grounded in prejudice. It explicitly sought to preserve the then-current ethnic composition of the country by severely limiting immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

The flow was still fairly large and easy for most other Europeans until 1924. Indeed, that flow actually turned outward during the Great Depression, when more people left the United States than came.

Another myth stricken. It’s the economy, not the Statue of Liberty, that draws in immigration.

Want to curb immigration?

Make sure the economy is so lousy you lose your job and stand in soup lines.

Otherwise, observe the following catastrophe that befell the United States when the nation had nearly open borders:

Through Ellis Island alone, the nation got novelist Isaac Asimov, body-builderCharles Atlas, composer Irving Berlin, children’s book writer Ludwig Bemelmans who authored the beloved “Madeline” books, actor and director Charles Chaplin, makeup expert and entrepreneur Max Factor, Boys’ Town founder Father Flanagan, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, comedians Bob Hope and Stan Laurel, actor Bela Lugosi, dance master Arthur Murray, journalist James Reston and football star Knute Rockne.

Most of these and other immigrants, who came as nobodies, were the best gift the world has given the United States.

Now what about the Hispanics? Aren’t they overtaking the country?

While they are among the newest immigrants, they are also among the oldest. They didn’t face a passport inspector at the border, either.

St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States was established by Spaniards. It was already 42 years old in 1607 when there was still doubt about the survival of Jamestown, Virginia, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.

So let’s hear it for parity. Let’s accord the same legal treatment to newcomers that was accorded to the great-grandparents of the vast majority of today’s model citizens.

(Cecilio Morales is executive editor of the Washington, D.C.-based weekly Employment & Training Report. Reach him at Cecilio@miipublications.com.) ©2009