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Immigration! Problem & Solutions? A Chicano Historical Perspective

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Immigration or Labor Issue?

by Herman Baca / Reprinted from the Herman Baca UCSD Archives

To date it never ceases to amaze me that in the U.S. after the economy & terrorism issues, that the foremost issue for the great-great-great grandchildren of immigrants is, IMMIGRATION? I can readily understand if Native Americans were stating the above, but the great-great-great grandchildren of immigrants??

Since I first became politically involved with immigration in 1970 (45 years ago) I have witnessed (politically) every administration from President Nixon (Republican) to President Obama (Democrat) proposing the same old solutions… law and military enforcement, guns, barbed wire, false amnesty, never enforced employer sanctions, slave Bracero programs and calls to increase the “Gestapo” Border Patrol to supposedly secure the U.S./Mexico border. Costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars; has it worked? I doubt that anyone in their right mind could honestly state (today) that the U.S. is anywhere near in solving the so-called immigration issue.   [Read more…]

The Absurdities and Alternative Realities of Republican Politics

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The Republican political arena has become the theater of the absurd largely thanks to the emergence of Donald Trump as the new standard bearer of the Republican Party. He has stood all the rules on their heads and made a mockery out of political correctness. Somehow this has breathed fresh air into the stodgy world of Republican memes and mantras.

For example, let’s take the birther controversy which the Donald was a big part of a few years ago when he and others made an attempt to prove that President Obama was not a “natural born citizen” as required by the Constitution in order to be President. In fact, as Trump and others maintained, Obama was born in Kenya. Turns out not to be true.

Then enter Ted Cruz and The Donald is up to his old tricks maintaining that Cruz is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada.   [Read more…]

No, You Are Automatically Disqualified: DACA Should Be a Gateway

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By Leobardo Aviles

As I was about to graduate I realized there was no future.

Bringing me into this country for a chance at a better life was my parent’s mistake.

Growing up without ever thinking about what could stop me from receiving further education was mine. Regardless if all my schooling was done here, I have to throw my opportunity out the window for someone else to catch it, all because I am undocumented.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: The Future of Post-Bordernity

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The wall is the materialized representation of this idea of a border. In English people call it a “fence” and in the U.S. that fence means “defense”; something that in American minds brings protection. Interestingly enough you would have to ask them, “Protection from who or what?” And this same wall or barrier or fence means an “offense” to Mexicans.

—Norma Iglesias Prieto

By Perry Vasquez

The U.S./Mexico border is falling apart. Like Chipotle Swiss cheese, it is shot through with gaps, holes, lacunae, erasures, and stretches of emptiness. The border exists—but at times its existence seems to collapse beneath the weight of its own sovereignty.

How does the border both exist and not exist at the same time? How does it manage to appear in strategic locations and disappear in non-strategic ones? Why do we think of the border as having a fixed and permanent national identity instead of a contingent and temporary one?

Like every national myth, the U.S./Mexico border began life as a collective act of imagination.   [Read more…]

Children Caught In Sweep as Feds Kick Off Mass Deportations

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By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

The New Year was just hours old when the administration of President Barack Obama began rounding up and deporting at least 121 people, some reportedly as young as four years old, presumably back to the drug wars and violence they are fleeing in predominantly Central American countries.

The coordinated raids over the weekend focused mostly in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday, and constituted the first wave of mass deportations that could impact up to 15,000 people. The plan wasrevealed just before the Christmas holiday, which many criticized as particularly inhumane timing.   [Read more…]

Friendship Park in 2015

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Making new meanings and memories through friendship

By Jill Holslin / Friends of Friendship Park

It has been a busy year for Friendship Park, the little park south of Imperial Beach where you can go to visit with people on the other side of the border wall in Tijuana. Friends of Friendship Park has continued with our mission this year: to maintain public access to the park on the border where friendships can blossom, and families separated by deportation, by mixed immigration status, and by the injustice of border militarization can come together and maintain family bonds.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Refugees, Late Summer Night

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By Steve Kowit

Woke with a start, the dogs barking out by the fence,
yard flooded with light. Groped my way to the window.
Out on the road a dozen quick figures
hugging the shadows: bundles slung at their shoulders
& water jugs at their hips. You could hear,
under the rattle of wind, as they passed,
the crunch of sneakers on gravel. Pollos. Illegals
who’d managed to slip past the Border Patrol,
its Broncos & choppers endlessly circling
the canyons & hills between here & Tecate.
  [Read more…]

Central American Refugee Families Once Again Crossing the US-Mexico Border

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It’s only a matter of time until one of the nattering nativists at Fox News ‘discovers’ the latest wave of refugees from Central America showing up in ever-increasing numbers at our southern border.

The number of unaccompanied children crossing the US-Mexico border over the past two months has more than doubled over the same time period in 2014. Health and Human Services Secretary Burwell has notified congress that the Administration for Children and Families — the HHS agency responsible for caring for the migrant children — could face significant funding problems, even with budget numbers requested by President Barack Obama.

The US Border Patrol has already opened shelters in Texas and California. Figures for October and November indicate that 10,588 unaccompanied children along with 12,505 family members crossing together have been apprehended at the US-Mexico border.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: The Skybridge Opens and Wagon Man Dies

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The Skybridge opened on Wednesday, which crosses from San Diego into the Tijuana International Airport. The bridge requires a toll, a passport and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol inspection. The skybridge was built with investor money that included Chicago billionaire Sam Zell who is also known as the chairman of Equity LifeStyle Properties, the largest mobile-home landlord.

Will this be the beginning of more bridges in U.S.-Mexico relations? In 1959 entrepreneur Allen Parkinson set out to create an international skyride that would cross from San Ysidro into Tijuana, relieving congestion and becoming a tourist attraction at the same time. Plans were foiled by construction of the I-5 freeway. During the 1970s a monorail was planned between San Diego and Tijuana, but the project that also went nowhere.   [Read more…]

Now Is The Time to Welcome Refugees, Not Shut Them Out

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By Rebecca Paida

Now is the time to welcome refugees, not shut them out. Given the recent controversy over refugees, I am compelled to write about my refugee story and call on cities to create inclusive Citizen Commissions on Refugee and Immigrant Affairs. My refugee journey began in 1997 when my family escaped from Sudan to join my father in Nairobi, Kenya. We stayed in Kenya for nearly three years as part of our vetting process.

During this time, we were subjected to rigorous and comprehensive background and health screenings. My parents provided a myriad of confidential documents to different U.S. agencies, participated in live interviews, as well as attend a mandatory cultural orientation. On June 3, 1999, my family and I came to the United States as political refugees and began establishing our roots in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, California.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Livin’ La Vida Logan

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Barrio Logan is one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Diego. It used to be one whole community called Logan Heights, named after congressman John A. Logan, but the creation of the Interstate 5 freeway that bisected the neighborhood changed that. Then the building of the San Diego–Coronado Bridge changed it again. Thousands were displaced from building the freeway and the bridge. Now Barrio Logan encompasses a relatively small patch of land sandwiched between the San Diego Bay and the I-5 freeway and north of National City and south of San Diego’s East Village.

Fewer than 5,000 people inhabit my barrio. Thousands more come during the day to work here in the shipyards, the Port of San Diego and the other companies that line the bay side of Barrio Logan. Of those 5,000 barrio denizens about 85% of them are non-white, most of which are of Mexican descent. But things are changing.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: From the Border to the Fields

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By Juanita Lopez

It is the year of 2014 and both of my grandparents are very old but alive, though suffering from dementia. I decided to pay them a visit to interview them. Believe it or not, they still live in the same one-bedroom apartment in San Ysidro where they established their U.S. residency in the late 1970s. From their yard, I am able to look at the thousands of tiny houses in Tijuana, where they once lived, dreaming of crossing over for a better opportunity. I look at my dark-skinned grandmother and admire her toothless smile. Her eyes light up every time she sees me. She normally asks me how my brother is doing, and I tell her he’s okay, working like always since he has a baby to take care of now. She smiles and two minutes later asks me the same question. I go over to her kitchen and wash some strawberries that were in her refrigerator. I offer her some after I cut them and sprinkle some sugar on top—my grandmother smiles again and starts telling me about her life, a not-so-sweet story about the times she labored as a farm worker picking strawberries and cutting flowers.   [Read more…]

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