This land is OUR land!

An old friend of mine responded to the Edgar Ayala story with a very different opinion from the one I sent to the Forks Forum (see below). He felt strongly that he supported legal immigration, but he characterized illegal immigrants as "despicable." And he objected, though very kindly, to my characterizing those who disagreed with me as being nativistic or xenophobic because they disagreed with my stance. He suggested that we could remain friends while agreeing to disagree. And he sent his own letter to the Forum expressing his approval of the checkpoints and arrests.

Here's my response to both his note to me and his letter to the Forum.

Hi, __________ , Let's say there is a difference between an immigrant and an illegal immigrant. But first of all, I would insist that the adjective illegal is inappropriate. The adjective illegal, according to Merriam-Webster, means "not according to or authorized by law," so when applied to a person there is an implication that there is something in that individual's very existence that is unauthorized by law, when it is really merely his status which does not conform to the law. That's why I don't like to hear that term used. I think it smacks of nativism, even if the speaker doesn't intend that. A better one, in my opinion is undocumented. The former is derogatory and inflammatory, and probably shouldn't ever be applied to a human person. A person can be a "criminal," but not an "illegal." So I'm going to say there is a difference between an immigrant who has made it through the system and has the right papers and one who is here in violation of the law, but I refuse to criminalize his presence.

There are many ways one can be in this country and be undocumented. One can come on a temporary visa and overstay it. One can hire a "coyote" and be smuggled in. One can come in the arms of parents who may have come on a visa or who may have waded the Rio Grande. Is the child who grew up in this country - because he or she was brought here as a child - despicable? (Your word from your letter in The Forum Forum.) Let's look at that adjective: Merriam-Webster defines "despicable" as "deserving to be despised: so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation."

The young man who was picked up in the checkpoint near Forks and was the subject of the article to which I was responding came here as a child with his parents who probably came as undocumented workers (I don't know whether they came illegally or stayed illegally), but there's no way that I see that he did anything illegal at all. His status was not legal. That does not make him illegal.

That boy (or young man since he had recently turned 18) merely grew up where his family was living - as all of us did. He went to school. He behaved well enough to be considered an honor student. He played sports for our school. He intended to enlist in the Navy. He would have been allowed to, of course. "Illegal" immigrants are often admitted to military service, and then they are often given a preferential road to citizenship. Thousands of them are in the military. Does that make them less despicable?

My forebears, John and Elinor Whitney, arrived in this country without documentation in 1635. They had no permission to land in Massachusetts. They held no title to the land near Waterton, Massachusetts, where they settled. They were not particularly welcome. But they settled down, prospered, and many of their descendants have played notable parts in American history. They may well have been seen as despicable by the Native Americans whose land they appropriated. Were they less despicable that the migrant worker who came here because our farmers begged him to, needed him to? Because our country made it possible for him to stay even without the right papers? We haven't just been lax in enforcement. Our agricultural industry, businesses, etc. have actively encouraged the presence of undocumented workers and have benefitted from their presence. And in practical terms, there really are no ways available for Mexicans and other folks from South of the Border to come here legally any more. We have slammed the doors on legal immigration for those people, while still enticing them to come.

The economy of Forks benefits from the undocumented workers in our community. If they were to suddenly all be rounded up and deported, Forks would collapse entirely. Their presence in our schools brings in state funding and keeps the school afloat. Thriftway would take a lethal hit. The gas stations wouldn't be filling up the vans and pick-up trucks that bring in the salal harvests. Those who are working under forged social security cards (I doubt there are a lot of those here) pay into the system, but never reap benefits, so they subsidize my social security checks. They pay taxes, though indirectly. The businesses which employ them under the table would fold. They bring us far more economic benefit than they cost us.

My great-grandparents, and Don's, moved into California shortly after it became a state - in the 1840's. It belonged to Mexico until 1848. Were our "immigrant" forebears who came here in covered wagons or by stagecoach despicable? I suppose to the Mexican government it would have seemed so. And perhaps to the Native American people who lived in California's Sacramento Valley.

Don's great-grandfather, we're told, owned thousands of acres of the upper Sacramento Valley, land that had been part of Mexican land grants. The current population of Colusa County is about the same as before Europeans settled there. Native Americans were 100% of the population then. They are now 2.3% of the population When Don and I grew up there, most of the population was white. Now it's about half Hispanic. Don's share of his great-grandfather's holdings was about 100 acres when his parents died. What gave our family the right to live in and own land in Colusa County more than the great-grandchildren of those who owned it before 1848? Did the white settlers who displaced the Rancheria owners who displaced the Native Americans have more right to be here than the Hispanic people who now make up half the population? Or is it just what people do? They go where the opportunties are.

My grandparents on my mothers' side arrived in California much later than those on my father's side. They came in the Dust Bowl migration. Like hordes of others who had lost their livelihood in Oklahoma and Texas, they had to find a way to survive. They packed up their belongings in a decrepit automobile. They saw flyers advertising jobs in California. My mother says she was told that the trees in California grew fruit salad. They were met at the border by law enforcement authorities. They were allowed (reluctantly) to enter. They lived in a tent in a labor camp in Fresno. They were called Okies. They experienced prejudice and discrimination. They were considered outsiders. They were unwelcome. They were considered despicable by many Californians. My mother never really forgave a sister-in-law who described "Okies" living in the labor camps in the 1930's near Marysville, CA as "filthy, immoral animals."

My mother was 12 when she arrived in California. She spent her life obliterating any trace of southern speech patterns and accents from her vocabulary, and she was fierce in eradicating southern idioms from her children's speech. There was an unofficial "English only - and NOT the Okie version" - law in force in my home and in California generally. When I was growing up in California, I saw the same thing happen in school to my Mexican classmates. I was punished by my mother for calling my bedroom slippers "house-shoes," a term I had heard used by my grandmother. My classmate was punished by the teacher for speaking Spanish. Those experiences are both grounded in xenophobia.

My mother's family made it out of the tent in Fresno and upgraded their wardrobes from the flour-sack clothing they wore as children. My grandparents didn't pick fruit. My grandfather was a carpenter, but my grandmother divorced him and married a postman. She saved her money, bought real-estate, and died rich.

So here we are in Forks. I know we can't go back and unravel the past and make it all fair and "legal." We got what we got because of energy, enterprise, trickery, conquest, luck. But there's no way that I can claim a better right to be here than another immigrant, documented or undocumented. I want the criminals rounded up and dealt with. But I think the draconian measures underway here, where checkpoints spring up between Forks and the turnoff to LaPush, are NOT based on valid concerns for catching criminals and terrorists. They are terrorizing families in Forks. They are racial profiling. They are aggravating law-abiding citizens like myself. Even though I am generally waved through - I don't fit the profile - I can't believe that I could be stopped and asked to produce papers to prove my right to be on Highway 101. That's something from the old movies from the 40's and the 50's where people in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia had to carry papers and produce them for perusal by authorities. That's not the USA I grew up in, nor the one I want to live in now.

And I do think that we are seeing lots of very good people being affected by nativistic language and xenophobic rhetoric. Even liberal democrats like yourself. Because I really don't think you would have seen Edgar Ayala or his parents as despicable when you were in the classroom in Forks High School. There were some students you and I might well have liked to have deported to some place other than FHS, and to whom the adjective "despicable" might have applied, but we'd have liked Edgar, I think, and we'd have tried to prepare him to someday take his test for citizenship when he got home from military service.

So I don't want to agree to disagree. I'd rather persuade you that there is merit in my position.

Best regards,
Marsha