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Response to Phx Councilman M. Johnson

Dear Mr. Johnson:
I am a registred vote in Phoenix' Distric 8. I found your recent article in the Arizona Republic disturbing and highly dissapointing. Actually, your article is an insult to the Mexican-American voters in your district. Your article, Sir, is the height of hypocrisy. Period. May I remind you that Rosa Parks broke the law when she chose not to sit at the back of the bus in the 1950s. You, Sir, would not even have had the opportunity to become a city council member if it were not for the sacrifices of the African-Americans who chose to enter a segregated high school in such places as Little Rock, Arkansas. Now, you may think that the issue of illegal immigration to this country can't compare to the generations of suffering imposed on African-Americans brought to this country against their will. I know...you're probably thinking that the undocumented immigrant has a choice to come to this country or not. I would argue that point. You stated: "We know the vast majority are decent, hard-working folks who come here to escape grinding poverty without hope." When has "grinding poverty" ever been a form of freedom? These undocumented immigrants are fleeing the tyrany of poverty, despair, mal-nutrition, unsanitary living conditions and a capitalist system that has left them out of their country's economic progress due to the policies imposed on the Mexican governtment by the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Globalization of the World's economy. Emerging nations often find their economic sovereignty compromised because of the institutions I have just mentioned. But, that is for a later time to discuss. The point is: these horrendous conditions are no less heinous than the poverty, lack of opportunity, prejudice and racist bigotry that has been experienced by African-Americans. You also know, as an African-American, that the fight for Equal Opportunity, Social Respect and Tolerance is a fight that never ends. Freedom comes at a cost and we Mexican-Americans who care about Freedom and Justice and whose history precedes the United States of America are fighting for the Human Dignity of our People in the same way Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for African-Americans. And frankly, because of their sacrifices the United States became a better nation and the benefits were became available to All Americans.

You have also stated that "Some local advocates for illegal immigrants want us to believe there are quite a few laws that should be exempt." No driver's license, no registration, no insurance? It's the same law the rest of us are governed by." You could not be farther from the truth and you must be sorely misinformed. We would love to have it be legal for these undocumented immigrants to obtain valid driver's licenses. Current laws do not permit them to do so. Who's fault is that? You can thank Russell Pearce and his racist co-horts for that! Undocumented immigrants should not be expempt from these laws as they go to the safety, well-being and ability to make restitution to damaged parties for the citizens of our state. I cringe every time I hear that an accident was involved with an undocumented immigrant and that he or she did not have insurance. It only makes the public perception about them worse and makes our job harder to argue the reality of why illegal immigration exists.

Furthermore, I would like to make it very clear that like the Jim Crow Laws that were only abolished in 1965, the current immigration laws are repressive, unintelligible, racist and highly impractical. Why is it that an American citizen can enter Mexico for his drunken debaucheries in its luxury resorts and beaches for ninety days without a visa and yet a Mexican citizen legally entering the United States has to go through months of an application process just to get a United States visa that lets him or her come to this country to spend their dollars in our shopping malls? And, while the Jim Crow Laws were supposed to create "separate but equal," and we know they didn't, ushering in almost another century of American apartheid, are not the current immigration laws and the state laws that our legislature and Arizona voters have recently passed undeniably written with the same intent of exclusion and derision? Perhaps, Mr. Johnson, you have moved too far away from your African-American roots starting with the day you became a police officer.

You owe the Mexican-Americans in Phoenix an apology for your insensitivy, and the obvious ignornace from which your article was created. You harm all of us.

I am including a letter that I recently sent to another gentlemen bemoaning the presence of undocumented workers in this country. You may learn something.

Paul N. Rubi
602.296.5200, ext 419
paulrubi@usa.com

Category: Articles