F.A.I.R. and Current Nativist Trends in New Jersey

by: lsanchez490

Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 06:00:03 AM EST

This will be an evolving and lengthy diary. I can't help myself. I should probably tell all of you that I was born in Pereira, Colombia. My family crossed the Mexican border to escape the puppet state that is Colombia. I love Englewood because it is as diverse a municipality as you will find in all of Bergen County.

From Wikipedia:

As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 26,203 people, 9,273 households, and 6,481 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,056.3/km² (5,322.0/mi²). There were 9,614 housing units at an average density of 754.5/km² (1,952.7/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 42.49% White, 38.98% African American, 0.27% Native American, 5.21% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 8.50% from other races, and 4.50% from two or more races. 21.76% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

7.17% of Englewood residents identified themselves as being of Colombian American ancestry in the 2000 Census, the ninth highest percentage of the population of any municipality in the United States.

That is not including the massive Colombian-American colony found in the other D37 municipalities, namely Hackensack, Bergenfield and Bogota.

I'm not sure where this post will go. Inevitably, this will all conclude with more thoughts on the Hispanic leadership in Bergen County. And some of the policies that many of the organizations in New Jersey that claim to represent us support that are a betrayal to our community. But before I get there, I will indulge myself with some personal reading/references/musings. I hope to refute absolutely every single conclusion in FAIR's report.

And yes, I will have to comment on LADA (The Latino American Democratic Association of Bergen County)and why LASO-NJ must succeed and move beyond our seemingly inauspicious birth.

No joke. I watch these videos daily to get through my day.

Don Omar: Reggaeton Latino

Don Omar: Reggaeton Latino Remix.

This is their welcome letter to the report:

I believe you will be interested in a study that FAIR has just completed of fiscal costs to New Jersey taxpayers from programs heavily burdened by illegal immigration. The study focuses on expenditures for public education, emergency medical care and incarceration.
Our finding is that the burden on each native-born household in New Jersey resulting from these public expenditures is about $800 per year. The estimated more than $2.1 billion dollar annual expenditure on these programs means that cuts have to be made elsewhere.
Besides the fiscal burden, the loss to New Jersey families of loved ones working in New York City on September 11, 2001 should make New Jerseyites especially concerned about the difficulty of identifying foreign terrorist plotters when there are an estimated 372,000 foreigners illegally residing in the state, most often with counterfeit identification.
We point out in the report that there are measures that state governments may take to confront the rising tide of illegal residents, such as developing cooperative programs with the federal immigration authorities, as a number of states have done. We hope that you will use this study to focus on programs that discourage the settlement of illegal aliens in the state and look to us as a resource as you study immigration legislative initiatives.

To summarize: There are many Hispanic undocumented immigrants living in New Jersey.  I guess we're just a whole bunch of terrorist plotters.

"See, sometimes...
You gotta flash em back
See n----z don't know where this s--t started
Y'all know where it came from
I'm sayin we gonna take y'all back to the swords
We bounce, yo"
GZA - Liquid Swords

Maybe a little history will help...

From Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol's "Natives and Newcomers"

The Italians, the Irish, and especially the Jews bore the brunt of early American nativism at the hands of their earlier European counterparts, who often considered their southern and eastern brothers and sisters to be members of an "inferior" and "beaten" race. The description of Italians are telling:
The Italians were often thought to be the most degraded of the newcomers. They were swarthy, more than half of them were illiterate, and almost all were victims of a standard of living lower than that of any of the other prominent nationalities. Also, they soon acquired a reputation as bloodthirsty criminals. (John Higham, STRANGERS IN THE LAND: PATTERNS OF AMERICAN NATIVISM 1860-1925, at 65 (2d ed. 1988))

The demographic changes of the United States are significant, dynamic and my hope for this nation, Latin America and humanity. The Latino population is the future of not only the state of New Jersey, but of the United States. However, FAIR is just one of many emblematic entities or attitudes that our society harbors and fosters. They actually produced a report focusing exclusively on Jersey!

The late Edward Said spoke of the "Other" in his seminal work Orientalism (1978) and argued that these views of the undocumented only perpetuate the underlying xenophobic lie behind FAIR's assesment of Nueva Jersey: only through such inflammatory literature, can FAIR delude the public that undocumented immigrants do not contribute to the economic well-being of the communities that they enrich with spontaneous energy inherited from a struggle 500 years in the making.

I will spend the rest of this post pleading to New Jersey to think otherwise (that is, anti xenophobic public policy and attitudes towards the undocumented Hispanic immigrant). Undocumented immigrants  are the very foundation of this nation. And I know that I'm preaching to the choir here in bluejersey, but this will go beyond FAIR. Many Latin American organizations and political leaders in  New Jersey have (and here I will give them the benefit of the doubt), in the interest of political pragmatism, compromised la gente and nuestro futuro.

Nosotros llegamos a este país a trabajar. A mi no me tocó vivir the collective trauma of crossing 'el hueco' for a chance to live in this nation.I did walk across but was entirely too young to grasp the monumental risk undertaken by my Mother and Father.  But my parents did y nosotros somos aquellos that Cory Booker spoke of when he said in Street Fight (and this may not be the exact quote he used): "Much is expected of he to whom much is given." Esa es nuestra responsabilidad. Quiera o no quiera mis padres sacrificaron absolutamente todo para que yo pudiera sentarme aquí, esta noche, a escribirle todos ustedes a través de la red.

a little spanglish!

And back to FAIR's report. Representing New Jersey's 5th Congressional District is Scott Garrett (born in Englewood) proudly quoted with this gem:

Illegal immigration must be dealt with. We must improve interior enforcement and border control. The laws on the books must be enforced and the brave men and women in uniform on our borders must be provided the necessary resources.

It is not shocking that Scott Garrett would say something like this. What did kill me was learning that so many of our Hispanic organizations in New Jersey supported the militarization of the Mexican-United States border, as well as a guest worker program.

More to follow.