Along with that undocumented young adults are launching a DREAM Letters campaign addressed to Barack Obama. This social media campaign is inspired by a similar effort that the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network implemented for the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. This is the second letter in the series (the first letter was published on Monday):

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Yahaira Carrillo and I’m undocumented.  As I write this, over 20 undocumented youth are risking arrest and deportation to demand that Congress take action for the DREAM Act.  Just over two months ago, I, along with two others, became one of the first undocumented immigrants in U.S. history to do the same.  Like Mohammad Abdollahi, who wrote you a letter on Monday, I too am queer.  I risk being deported to a machista country, Mexico, where killings related to homophobia are rising.

I was born in 1985 to a barely-turned 16 year-old who had been kicked out of her house while she was pregnant for being a disgrace to the family. I lived with my mother in an abandoned house in Guerrero, Mexico. She struggled to find work, but was either harassed or asked for sexual favors. She said no. She was 17 in 1986 when the 8.1 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico. She decided to take me to the U.S., but we didn’t stay that long. At my grandmother’s request, we returned to Mexico. The hits kept coming: my mother ended an abusive relationship with a military man and feared for her life.

Then, my father called- after abandoning my mother while she was pregnant and being MIA for most of my early years, decided he wanted us to join him in California. My options have always been limited. I was 8 years old when I came to the U.S. When I was 14, my 18-year-old boyfriend wanted to marry me. I said no. When I graduated from the top of my high school class, I thought I couldn’t go anywhere. My parents were migrant farm workers- college wasn’t likely. But years later, I found a private college in Kansas that would accept me. I worked myself to the bone, and obtained an Associate’s Degree. Today, I am working towards my Bachelor’s degree. According to my calculations, it will take me eight years.

I’ve had people tell me that it’s not a big deal, that I should keep on waiting for the DREAM Act to pass. My life has been on pause, rewind or replay for years. Waiting is not an option.  That is why undocumented youth like myself are risking everything, right now, to pass the DREAM Act, this year.  If we’re putting our lives on the line for this, Mr. President, the least you can do is call members of Congress and ask them to do the same.

It started with 3 undocumented youth sitting in John McCain’s office, and it has escalated to 20.  How many more will it take before Congress passes the DREAM Act?

Sincerely,
Yahaira Carrillo

This list was signed by “Concerned Citizens of the United States” and indicated that this group observes people in public and included language that blamed undocumented people and those on the list for increases in crime, domestic violence and substance abuse. There was a message on the list urging officials to begin deportation procedures.

Yesterday I was able to speak with Tony Yapias, who heads up the Proyecto Latino de Utah, who has seen the list and has been responding to individuals and families who were listed. Yapias offered an interesting glimpse into what is happening in Utah in regards to immigration and provided some context for how he became involved in addressing this list.

On June 30, Yapias received a phone call from a woman identifying herself as a state worker and a Latina. She went on an angry tirade criticizing Yapias’s involvement in the immigrant and Latino communities. She did not identify herself by name, but she was angry about the immigration situation and expressed that state workers wanted to have a forum with Yapias. She also sprinkled her phone tirade with sentences in Spanish.

Accustomed to receiving threatening calls from anonymous people who harbor anti-immigrant sentiments, Yapias felt that something was different about this call because of the woman’s statement about state workers wanting to have a forum with him. When Yapias asked the woman what agency she worked for, she replied “I’m all of it.” This tipped off Yapias leading him to believe that it was someone from the state of Utah’s Workforce Services, which he describes as a “one stop shop” for applying for medicaid, food stamps and other services.

On Monday, July 12, Yapias received a copy of the list, and as he read it over, he initially felt shocked and terrified. Realizing that what was contained in the list was an egregious breach of confidentiality, he decided to contact the governor’s office to request that an investigation take place. Yapias expressed to the governor’s office that he suspected that this list may have come from Workforce Services because of the kind of information contained and because of the call he received on June 30 from the unidentified state worker.

Plainly the list singled out the Latino community because of the Spanish surnames, leaving out the possibility that other non-Latino immigrants could very well be using state services or in fact be undocumented. Last week, in another media interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Yapias said,”…They don’t have any other names on this. I mean, yes, most of the undocumented immigrants in our community—in our state or throughout the country are Latinos. But, you know, what about the 35 percent or so who are non-Latinos—Asians, African—from Africa, from Europe, from the rest of the world?”

Utah Governor Gary Herbert asked that an immediate state agency review take place on Tuesday, July 13, and by Thursday, July 15, the state had found at least two state workers who may have been responsible for the creation of the list. The employees who do work for the Department of Workforce Services have been suspended from their jobs pending the ongoing investigation, but the person who made the call to Yapias apparently has not been suspended from her job and has even admitted to her supervisor that she instigated that phone call.

From what has been revealed at this point, it does appear that state and federal laws have been broken in the distribution of this list of “undocumented people”. Furthermore, some of the people on the list were in fact legal and one person on the list was even getting ready to take the citizenship examination. Yapias indicated that he suspects charges will be filed within the next week against those workers who breached the laws of confidentiality with this data. When asked what he felt about the attorney general prosecuting this case, he said, “Nothing lesser than full prosecution should be accepted.”

When I asked if there were other vigilante type acts happening in Utah in the name of immigration enforcement, Yapias said that there really isn’t much vigilante behavior except for this one. He also commented about the situation in neighboring Arizona creating an environment for the states wanting to take immigration matters into their own hands and offered this:

“These workers had access to information that was very confidential. We trust that this information should remain private. They [those who compiled the list] thought that they were being patriotic by identifying the “illegals” to turn into the feds and other state agencies, but they didn’t calculate how this could backfire.”

Because in Utah, the LDS church (Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints aka Mormon Church) is heavily involved in civic and political life, I did ask Yapias if the Mormon Church has commented on immigration more recently because of what is happening in Arizona and because he has asked the President of the Church for an official declaration, much like what the Catholic Bishops have offered on the immigration issue.

“Unless the LDS church takes a stand like Bishop Wester did on behalf of immigration reform in representing the US Catholic Bishops, we will have a similar law to the one passed in Arizona here in Utah,” Yapias opined.

Russell Pearce, one of the lawmakers behind Arizona’s SB 1070, is considered a “devout Mormon.” And ironically, Mormons have had their own immigration history migrating to Utah and settling there as squatters when it was still part of Mexico, and today some of the break off sects of the Mormon church have settled in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to avoid polygamy laws in the US. I have noticed that the traditional media doesn’t explore the LDS connection, but it is a dimension worth exploring since this faith and members of it are heavily involved in both Utah and Arizona politics.

For more information about this case, read and watch the following:

“They Have Terrorized Our Community” via Democracy Now!

Footage from KSL TV in Salt Lake City

And since Mitt Romney is back in the news, this blog is worth revisiting regarding the Mormon Church and its history with people of color.

On 11 February 2009, Celia Alejandra Alvarez-Herrera was arrested by a sheriff’s deputy in a workplace raid during which her jaw was dislocated against a wall.  Regrettably, my notes are obscured by a teardrop that escaped me as she described being beaten with a clipboard for crying out for medical treatment while in Sheriff Joe Arapaio’s custody.

Tears were status quo yesterday afternoon in the packed committee room in the Longworth building on Capitol Hill.  Some staunch stoics (like me) fought them.  Other impassioned advocates (like Rep. Jared Polis) did not.

“They called me bitch,” Alvarez-Herrera testified, in Spanish, about her detention. “They called me ‘doggie.’”  They told her to go back to Mexico, she said.  They also threw her Bible in a trash can and would not give it back, she continued, in Spanish, in tears.

“It’s true that we’re migrants,” Herrera-Alvarez admitted, in Spanish, during her testimony, “but why don’t they ask us why we migrated?”

“Why do they ask us for papers to work but not to go to war?” she cried.

Alvarez-Herrera’s arrest separated her from her four children, she testified, the youngest being only three months-old at the time of her arrest.  Her five year-old son, she continued, nearly died during his mother’s detainment, from complications due to asthma.

Before she was arrested, Alvarez-Herrera worked as a street cleaner in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jurisdiction — one of millions of employment opportunities just-indignant-enough during Boom Times to require brown staffers.  Once in the Arpaio’s custody, Herrera-Alvarez “never received medical attention,” according to her biography distributed to press at the hearing.  “Now, she requires continued medical treatment due to this negligence.”

Herrera-Alvarez did not come to Capitol Hill alone.  She did not testify alone before our congress.  Silvia Rodriguez testified alongside her.  Rodriguez, 23, “was left homeless when her family decided to move to another state due to the increasing anti-migratory laws in Arizona.”  At the time, Silvia was a student at Arizona State University studying for dual bachelors degrees in political science and Chicano studies.  Nevertheless, she graduated Cum Laude and has been accepted to study at the Harvard Education School this autumn.

“A group of benefactors offered to pay her tuition,” according to Rodriguez’ biography, “but may rescind the offer because of language in SB 1070 about retaliation against those who help anyone who is undocumented.”  She too fell to tears during her testimony.  “The state I call home criminalizes me,” Rodriguez said. “I did not have control over where I was born.”

Rodriguez was 2 years-old when her family immigrated to Arizona.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching of the day’s testimony came from Katherine Figueroa, 9, whose parents were arrested by Arpaio’s deputies in a workplace raid and detained for three months.  Katherine spoke of nightmares she has in which “they” come to arrest her other relatives, as well.  “Please tell President Obama to stop putting our parents in jail,” she pleaded, in English, in tears.  “All they want is a better life for us!”

A better life, too, was why Alma Mendoza came to testify before our congress.  “My children and I survived domestic violence for 15 years,” Mendoza said, in a press release distributed at the hearing.  “Now with SB1070, women will be afraid to call the police.  They will suffer in silence.”

Rep. Judy Chu, from Los Angeles, noted that already women from Arizona are coming to California seeking services resulting from domestic abuse.

Congresspersons Chu, Luis Gutierrez, Gwen Moore, and Hank Johnson made statements, but only Rep. Raúl M. Grijavla, chairman of the ad-hoc hearing on “The Impact of Arizona’s SB1070 on Women and Children”, and Rep. Polis, stayed for the full hearing.

Prakash Khatri, an attorney and the former Citizenship and Immigration Ombudsman in the Department of Homeland Security in the previous administration, recently sent out a press release explaining that Mexican immigrant visa applicants would have to wait 131 years ‘in line’ to immigrate to the United States. And this hypothetical scenario is one in which the visa applicant has a US citizen relative sponsoring him or her. Should the relative pass away during this time, the applicant’s place in line becomes void and he has to start again. In what imaginary world do people live to be 131 years?

In essence, current policy encourages illegal immigration because ‘who is willing to wait in line for two lifetimes?’, especially when families are broken up because of immigration status. The upshot is that Khatri suggests that any immigration reform make family reunification a goal especially with regards to US families with relatives in Mexico. The current arrangement is unjust and unworkable. And furthermore, nationality based immigration quotas should be eliminated. Because of the existing quota system, immediate relatives of US citizens from other countries are able to legally immigrate to the US in about ten years, while people from Mexico with US citizen relatives have to wait two lifetimes.

For a politician to talk about this proverbial line without breaking down the reality of what it means to immigrants and their American family members is disingenuous in my view. But this ‘line’ is tossed around to the public, making it sound so easy to follow the current immigration policies. Just this week at the 5 de Mayo festivity at the White House, President Obama referred to ‘the line’, and we have heard California GOP candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, also mention ‘the line’ as well. It’s time for someone to have an honest discussion about what this ‘line’ means without being so flippant in mentioning it to the public.

This morning I heard this clip on YouTube, where a journalist even suggests that Obama should consider replacing Clinton as Secretary of State because of the mixed signals:

Seneca has offered this in response:

Obama is not going to boot Hillary out over the Honduras fiasco. But the cumulative unsettling evidence of this foreign policy team begins to define the Administration: actions (or pratfalls) in Latin America over the recent Colombian-US agreements on military cooperation have become muddled, the contradictions to 40 years of US policy on the Israeli settlements issue resulted in Hillary backtracking to recover, the Cuba policy was not seriously addressed before the President stumbled onto it at the US-Latin Summit last spring nor has the administration (nor the previous two administrations) ever defined Chavez as a national security threat if in fact he is, the Plan Merida to help Mexico appears to have fallen into the doldrums of policy fatigue, the corrosive effects of the Afghanistan war (“where empires go to die…”) are increasing, the Iraq pull-out has been turned over entirely to Secretary Gates. The most intriguing question is: How can an inspirational and uplifting leader on the world stage choose some of the best and the brightest of Americans to handle foreign policy fall so short too often by carelessness or lack of focus?

Since 1992 and the fall of the Soviet Union, US policy toward Latin America has been generally ‘insufficient’ or one of ‘benign neglect’.  In fact, many observers have concluded that both the Clinton and W. Bush administrations basically handed the lead on Latin policy to the Cuban American lobby in order to secure Florida, a swing state in the Presidential elections. The Summitry Process began by Clinton which some critics considered an every four year photo op and not much more. It did have two substantive themes: a hemispheric free trade area and strongly endorsing democracy by pointing out that Cuba was the only non-democratic country in the region.

After 9/11, Latin America was readily served up and all but forgotten so it seemed. At first, the Bush Administration catered to the fiercely anti-Castro sector which had strongly voted for him. In W’s second term, the policy was pretty much given to the bureaucracy to manage and handle. This disappointed many hardliners. The objective evolved to keep the region’s problems from distracting Secretary Rice from more serious and important areas of concern. The designated hitter for Latin Policy became a fourth level bureaucrat, an Assistant Secretary was left to fend for himself without much visible top cover. Obama reached the White House and Hillary Clinton was ensconced as Secretary of State after having successfully blocked Bill Richardson from the job. Admittedly, Gov. Richardson was in the midst of a brewing scandal in New Mexico. Several political and media wags noted that all the key Latin foreign policy slots have been given to Latinos. These included Dan Restrepo at the NSC, Arturo Valenzuela at State, Frank Mora at Defense and Carmen Lomellin as Ambassador to OAS. This has been applauded notably by the Latino constituency groups. The issue has become now one of policy. Does the Obama administration care about the Latin American region? Where does it stack up? The fact is that the region once again finds itself vis-a-vis the US on the back-burner. It is not on the cutting edge of foreign policy. Yet early on Obama found himself in a tussle on two issues: Cuba and Chavez.

When Obama attended the Summit of the Americas meeting in the spring in Trinidad Tobago, he ran into unexpected or unscripted situations: is the US now ready to re-admit Cuba to the OAS? The vast majority of the Hemisphere’s countries were angling to get Cuba back into the OAS. The Obama team seemed surprised and almost unprepared for this challenge. The other one was how to deal with Chavez. Obama showed class and engaged Chavez briefly but certainly in awkward photo ops. The Cuba question dogged Hillary in the June OAS ministerial in Honduras. At the eleventh hour the Obama team was able to scramble and cobble a mutually acceptable communiqué that did not re-admit Cuba but addressed the irregularity of Cuba being absent from the OAS family. Some labeled the new Administration’s performance “Bush Light.” At the same time the US Mexico relationship was steadily moving forward. Obama revealed his support of Plan Merida to enable Mexico to better take on the drug cartels which have created enormous instability. But the funding for Merida was largely held up because of bureaucratic lack of clarity and other requirements. The other US Mexico challenge is undocumented immigration. No political bravery has emanated from the White House to wrangle with this most sensitive political public policy issue. In fact, no one is able now to predict if immigration reform will be an agenda item in the first two years of the Administration. So far it seems like the Democrats have concluded that the immigration reform bill is a lose-lose situation. The post 9/11 anti-terrorist sentiment coupled with the global economic downturn has inflicted pain on the US body politic. The US public has become more reluctant if not hostile to new immigration flows. This has plainly put a crimp into Obama team’s outlook. The continuation of building the border wall and draconian Homeland Security illegal-immigrant raids on job sites have not been seen sympathetically in Latin America and among Latino audiences in this country.

The more defining moment for the Obama Administration has been the on-going Honduras ‘golpe’ or coup crisis. The Obama team initially sided with the ousted President Zelaya and declared that the sacred principles of democracy had to be adhered and respected. Hence, Zelaya’s restoration to power became the battle cry for US interests in the initial months. Five months later the Obama administration is backtracking on the defense of democratic principles. The Administration appears to have tired of the Honduran crisis. The de facto regime in Honduras dug in and used PR and propaganda cleverly. More interesting seemed to be the Administration’s inability to persuade the defacto regime to cede power. Honduras is small with no political influence, no economic power nor military might — only diplomacy is in its arsenal. The US having all these options thinks in exhausting the first three before employing diplomacy. Hence, the Hondurans readily resorted to the old small country approach to concerns: use diplomacy but follow the rules of not speaking first, do not get angry and finally if unable to resolve favorably the problem then tangle it more. In using these tactics, Honduras wore out the US. The Obama administration slowly began to show  impatience and wariness. They saw Honduras as a small pesky country becoming increasingly more annoying and troublesome on the international stage.

Finally, the US after having declared itself initially pro-restoration of Zelaya and passing the problem to the OAS and Nobel Laureate President Arias of Costa Rica to resolve saw itself being drawn back into the fray. The contentious process dragged out in the discussion of whether the ouster of the Honduran President was legal or not. It attracted Republican die-hearts who defended the coup (because of the Chavista factor against Zelaya) while the Administration and the whole international community condemned the coup as anti-democratic. Obama’s team began to see themselves politically caught between a rock and a hard place: do we support and restore a Chavista (enemy of the US ) while defending democracy? After five months, Secretary of State Clinton and her Assistant Secretary for Latin America (who was being denied confirmation as Ambassador to Brazil by the Republicans) sought to cut a deal and injected themselves finally into the process to basically extricate themselves from this tar-baby. This required an about face or a betrayal of the previous US position. This has now become most troubling in Latin America to see the young dynamic US Administration as less than gracious in this process. In fact, many pundits in and outside the US are remarking or noting that the Administration not only demonstrated confusion or ineptitude or at best a maladroit approach, but callously left most of the OAS membership holding the bag.

To shore up support and bring someone high-level from the US Administration, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis was chosen to be the senior US participant in a so-called Verification Commission to secure the recent signed accords now being hailed as the final solution. Solis, practically unwitting or unfamiliar with the situation, was carefully choreographed by the State Department to ensure that she would stick to the diplomatic script and not become a freelancer. Hilda had been initially hailed as the most liberal member of the Obama cabinet but by the time she left Tegucigalpa she was seen as apologist for the defacto ‘golpista’ government. She now takes the hit, not Hillary. Rather clever and cynical maneuvering it was indeed. As soon as Tom Shannon, the State Department’s overseer of this whole show announced that the Hondurans no longer had to restore Zelaya to get international recognition of the upcoming elections, the defacto government felt it was off the hook and home free.  The Brazilians, who are housing Zelaya in their Embassy and waiting for his restoration, feel the US has behaved at best negligently and indifferent. The problem could have been avoided or minimize by having initially forceful high-level US leadership on the issue. The OAS  had its Secretary General and all the countries in the region had their Presidents or Prime Minister through their Foreign Ministers decry this US perfidy. The US has had a fourth-rung bureaucrat (the Assistant Secretary) in the lead.  Obama’s team failed to recognized from the beginning the limitations of the State Department if not given top White House cover. Moreover, in handing over the volatile issue in this case to the bureaucracy, it plainly did not understand that ‘diplomats seek the path of least resistance, they believe in nothing and everything to everyone’ and as bureaucrats they adhere to: never get between a bureaucrat and his/her ambitions. They mow you down….the additional factor is that while the US behaved like a world power during the Cold War: it basically ordered everyone except the Soviets to do its bidding. In Spanish it was referred to as the ‘dedazo’…now in the post Cold War-era even the tiny insignificant powers have begun to lose their fear of the US. Yet this muddle and lack of focus produce the image of a Gulliver with Lilliputians throwing ropes over his back to bring him down. The US Latino community regardless of partisan bias will feel that if this is all the Obama Administration can provide in terms of moral leadership and support for democratic ideals and most of all the lack of consistency in policy toward Latin America then a closer  look at the expectations must be undertaken. Disappointment is the only word to describe the first real test of fortitude, skill and determination in dealing with Latin America. Arturo Valenzuela the new Assistant Secretary will now have to rectify, re-define as well as need to provide the real Obama vision of the region.

Some pundits and politicos are suggesting that we close the border, but closing the border will not stop the spread of this virus. As Secretary Napolitano aptly asserted that closing the borders “would be a very, very heavy cost for what epidemiologists tell us would be marginal” effectiveness to contain this virus. The fact is we live in a global society with plenty of international travel and trade. Even if we closed the Mexican border, could we contain the virus along the Canadian border at at other points of entry? I don’t think so, plus at this point, we already have the virus here in the US. Scientists are perceiving this particular strain of the swine flu to be rather mild.

Richard Webby, a leading influenza virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, has stated, “This virus doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to kill like the 1918 virus.” The 1918 virus killed an estimated 50 million victims worldwide.

While science and policy makers have taken an approach of issuing statements of caution and common sense for all of us in recent days in preventing the spread of this illness, conservative media pundits have placed the blame squarely on undocumented immigrants. The folks at Media Matters have put together a pretty good clip of some of the more outrageous claims made by these news hosts and radio personalities, adding to the hysteria. I encourage you to listen to it, and then if you feel so compelled, contact these media outlets using the list in this link to express concern.

Different Mexican Administrations since President Echeverria in the 1970s have openly sought to court the ‘Mexicans Abroad’ and the longer established US residents and citizens of Mexican heritage in the US. Plainly, the driving motive has been to create a pro-Mexico constituency in the US.

This idea is certainly not alien to the US political landscape. Ethnic lobbies have abounded in the US since before the Civil War. Besides the English and the Scott–Irish, the Germans in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania were the only other European population living in the original colonies that made up the US, along with thousands of slaves and Native American tribes. So, it was in the 1840s that the great European migration to the US began with the Irish and several of other nationalities. Many came from Middle Europe including Poles, Austrians, Czech, Slovaks and Hungarians. Scandinavians and southern Europeans also began to arrive. Southern Europeans, such as Italians and Greeks, continued to migrate to the US throughout the rest of the 1800s and into the 1900s. Several of these groups formed ethnic societies and organizations reflecting their country of origin; most were initially formed around their churches and religious affiliation. Some developed into political organizations representing the ethnic group’s domestic political agenda within the US political process. These groups often sided with their country of origin’s squabbles or conflicts in Europe. Financial aid and political support were usually forthcoming from the expatriate populations living in the US. Ireland, which did not achieve independence from Britain until 1921, had scores of Irish American groups openly supporting the independence struggle against the English occupation and repression. Financial assistance to the insurgent groups back home was one example of the expatriate’s support. As soon as the Irish Americans were politically enfranchised to vote in the US they began to ‘lobby’ the US government and public for support for Ireland’s cause. This political effort lasted late into the 1900s with the support for the IRA in Northern Ireland. In the late 1800s, the Italian-Americans clamored for political support of Italian unification and recognition of Italy. Later the Italian American groups became more domestic focused and ceased to seek political support for the political process or government of Italy. With time, these movements became mostly cultural affinity groups centered on the Catholic Churches in the old Italian urban areas of the US. 

By the latter half of the 1900s, the most significant ethnic lobbies included:  the Jewish groups helping Holocaust survivors and other humanitarian needs. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) emerged during this period as part of the pro-Israel Lobby to galvanize support in the US for the survival of the State of Israel. The motivation here is that Israel has continuously been under ‘siege’ by its Middle East neighbors. AIPAC is generally agreed to be the best financed and most influential ethnic lobbying effort in the US. The China Lobby existed prominently in the 1950s composed by a mix of prominent Chinese exiles from Communist China and influential Americans seeking to restore the old guard of Chang Kai Chek who had been displaced in 1949 by the Communist victory led by Mao Tse Tung. The fall of China to Communism was a rallying call for this lobby. These lobbying efforts also engendered an odious internal political witch hunt in the US known as McCarthyism. However, when Nixon went to China in 1972, the remnants of this lobby had ceased to exist. The Armenian-Americans’ lobbying group appears to advocate primarily support against anything that benefits Turkey. The Turks’ slaughter of millions of Armenians in the early 1900s is the driving force behind this lobby. The Greek lobby, one of the best funded groups, seeks also to deny Turkey any positive political benefit from the US. On the Cyprus division between Turks and Greeks, this lobby readily obtains effective support for the Greek Cypriots. The remarkable aspect of this lobby is the rather small number of Greek Americans (less than one million). Still another lobby, the Tibet, is primarily focused on the restoration of the Dalai Lama to his religious supremacy in Tibet, as well as liberating Tibet from Communist China. This lobby is made up of a few Tibetans but many American followers of the Dalai Lama.

The only Latin American group to have established an effective lobby in the US has been the Cuban Americans. Yet, their numbers are quite small in comparison to Mexican Americans. There are about 1.3 million Cubans in the US as opposed to 28 million Mexican Americans (out of 45 million Latinos). The reasons for the Cuban Americans’ success in organizing are varied. They fled a Communist take over of Cuba during the height of the Cold War. Hence, they were readily embraced by the US, especially among the politically conservative movement. The Cuban Americans have behaved politically like an ‘exile’ or ‘irredentist’ group, not as a traditional immigrant group. The driving force for the Cuban émigrés has been liberating Cuba from the Communist Castro regime. The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) became the most effective vehicle for keeping the heat on Castro’s Cuba. The late Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Foundation was readily recognized by many pundits, political groups, senior government employees, and members of Congress as the most effective and successful Latino power broker in the 80’s and 90’s. No other Latino group has produced such a leader. When he visited Washington the white establishment of both parties eagerly sought him out. It was humorously described in Miami that CANF was the inverse of the AIPAC: it bought Republicans and rented Democrats. Mas Canosa reportedly noted that he wanted his Foundation to be as effective as the Israeli lobby. He reportedly admitted that he had hired two lawyers who helped the AIPAC to set up the CANF. Though their numbers were small overall, The Foundation delivered bloc votes in a key Presidential swing state, Florida, and raised significant amounts of money for politicians of both parties. The hard-fought 2000 election contest between Gore and W. Bush was the most critical. The Cuban Americans laid claim to the victory. The Cuban Americans have traditionally voted in-block for the GOP, but enough voted for Clinton and Obama to help swing a Florida victory for each of them. Hence, the strength of the Cuban American lobby has been to deliver a vital swing state in hotly contested Presidential elections. When both Clinton and Obama won the Presidency, the Cuban American Foundation in an almost bi-partisan way appears to have tilted to the winner. In 1992, it tacked to Clinton’s side and even more egregious in 1994 from a GOP point of view it backed the Democratic incumbent Governor of Florida Lawton Chiles’ successful re-election campaign against Jeb Bush, President George W. Bush’s brother. By 1998 when Governor Jeb Bush came to power, Mas Canosa had disappeared as leader because of an untimely death in 1997. The Foundation fractured and weakened with Jeb’s and GOP Congressman Cuban American Lincoln Diaz Balart’s influence. Since then, the political strength of the Cuban Americans in both domestic and foreign policy is beginning to wane.

Mexico’s attempts to help foster a Mexican American interest group or lobby in the US have met with disappointment by and large. First, any attempt to emulate the Cuban or Israeli lobby is not doable because Mexico is neither under ‘siege’ like Israel nor a ‘captive’ nation like Cuba. Yet Mexico’s current plight with organized crime and its enormous threat to the stability and well-being of the country is perhaps a good reason to explore the possibility of engaging the Mexican Americans. However, to galvanize Mexican Americans around a Mexico cause would be a monumental task.

The variety of US citizens and residents of Mexican descent makes this goal particularly onerous. The oldest established Mexican Americans are divided into those whose ancestors were here before the gringo conquest of 1848 (Tejanos, Californios and Hispanos from New Mexico and Colorado) along with those whose grand or great-grandparents came during the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). A second group came primarily in the 1940s during WWII up through the 1960s. The third group began arriving in massive numbers from the 1970s to the present. The members of the first group have largely assimilated into US society and speak English primarily. Those that belong to the second group are considered to be in transition but fairly assimilated. Whereas the more recent arrivals are less integrated and do not fully participate in the US political process. Clearly, the bounds keeping the Mexican American population’s identity together are tangled in history, language, ethnicity, religion, folklore, cuisine, music and the arts as well as being able to trace national origin to Mexico.

The descendants of many in the first group and some from the second spawned the social-civil–political activism of the 1960s and 70s called the “Chicano” movement. These Chicanos, self-identified as such, after concluding that they neither belonged to the dominant gringo culture nor to the prevailing culture of Mexico. They felt alienated by the Anglo-American ethno-centric society and the inability to relate to the country of origin of their ancestors. However, recently arrived Mexicans do not regard themselves as Chicanos but refer to the older established ones as Chicanos. Increasingly, these newer arrivals are becoming the majority.

The first two groups are the ones that are overwhelmingly US citizens and have potential political power at the ballot box. Recent studies suggest that well over twenty million Hispanics are eligible to vote, but only about 12 to 13 million are registered and well under ten million vote. These figures include all Latinos not just Mexicans. Latinos of Mexican descent comprise about 28 million of the 45 million Latinos in the US. Mexico’s political leadership in recent years has sought to reach out to the ‘brothers’ living in the north. Echeverria’s presidency openly courted the Chicano or La Raza Unida insurgent types of the 1970s. Up to this time only established Mexican American politicians like Henry B Gonzalez, Ed Roybal and Kika de La Garza had been recognized and invited to Mexico to be honored. Later, Raul Yzaguirre of the National Council of La Raza was honored as was Henry Cisneros and numerous other ‘prominent sons of Mexico’ living in the US.

Organizing a lobby-force Mexican American group that can influence the US public and the US Congress and other movers and shakers to favor or be sympathetic to Mexico’s agenda has been illusive. This would yield a more sympathetic Congressional Hispanic Caucus and more of Mexico’s agenda in the Latino advocacy groups’ efforts The recent contentious issue of immigration along with the vast numbers of undocumented Mexican citizens residing in the US has revived Mexico’s interest in helping foster pro-Mexico groups or entities in the US. Nonetheless, Mexico must be extra careful not to antagonize the American public at large by seeming to recruit Mexican Americans in a disloyal way. This will avoid a US backlash and minimize the sentiment against the lawlessness of illegal entry into the US from becoming an anti-Latino or anti Mexican expression. Moreover, the lack of passion among the targeted groups of Mexican descent derives from the fact that the Mexican political and judicial systems are largely held in contempt or disdain by these recent Mexican immigrants, as well as among the older established groups.  Mexico is largely viewed as ‘corrupt’ or ‘inept’ or ‘insensitive to its poor masses’. Moreover, many of the US Mexican descent groups feel ‘dismissed’ or ‘disdained’ by an elitist attitude detected among many in Mexico. The use of the pejorative ‘Pocho’ describes a Mexican who has abandoned the patria (the Homeland) for el Norte and no longer holds any loyalty to Mexico. This is an example of the divisiveness that exists between those who remain in Mexico and those of Mexican descent who now reside in the US. Furthermore, Mexican Americans feel that Mexico’s elite manifests gratuitous contempt in class and racial terms. In Mexico, the derogatory word “Naco” is used to describe a fellow Mexican (usually with apparent mixed white and Indian ancestry) as socially inferior. The connotation is that he or she is attempting to behave more ‘cultured’ (white) but invariably betrays his origins. Too often this word is used to describe Mexican Americans. This further undermines the less than successful attempts by Mexico to garner support in the US among its émigré population.

Yet, in many parts of the US, especially in the Chicago area, Mexico has enjoyed success in promoting links between the Mexicans abroad and their former local municipalities or states in Mexico by having people-to-people exchanges, promoting investment in the Mexican municipalities or states’ development opportunities. Many Mexican Americans were exceptionally proud to see Mexico respond with direct assistance to the Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina. Sports exchanges and Spanish language television have also helped preserve cultural links with Mexico. Mariachi music, norteño music contests, salsa replacing ketchup, art exhibits, Mexican cuisine and Corona beer have all helped improve the cultural cohesiveness in the Mexican descent community abroad.

Mexico‘s efforts to reach out to the ‘Mexicans abroad’ and those of Mexican ancestry must be approached primarily through cultural endeavors like art, music, literature, folklore studies, language, historical writings, tourism  and perhaps best of all through Mexican cuisine. Any attempt to promote political interest or support of the Mexican government will be Sisyphean. The Italian American experience should be studied as an effective example. The influential National Italian American Foundation promotes and extols the history, music, cuisine, language and general culture of Italy. It annually celebrates Cristofo Colombo day in October with a large gala event honoring all successful Italian Americans in film, music, sports, business, journalism, academia, medicine, law, politics, government and the military. The US President, his Cabinet members and scores of Congressional members, usually attend. The Italian government is always present and additionally helps to promote Italian culture and language through its Casa Dante cultural centers found in large metropolitan areas.

Mexico, as the most populous Spanish speaking country in the world, comprises the largest portion of the Hispanic population in the US. Moreover, its close proximity to the US and its NAFTA partnership nurtures an ever-growing relationship with the US. Yet, Mexico must carefully formulate a plan or strategy to reach the Mexican Americans in a more effective manner. The treatment of the immigration conundrum in the US and the building of ‘the fence’ along the border will become key issues that could engender as note above, either friction or closeness between the two countries. Mexico has ample opportunity to appeal to the Mexican Americans by approaching them as an equals and convincing these ‘Mexicans Abroad’ to help ameliorate the potential conflicts that arise between the two countries. But it must be a truly Mexican effort without the unrealistic expectation to become either an Israeli American lobby or even a Cuban American Foundation. Mexico stands to gain influence in the US political discourse, but it must first attract the cooperation and understanding of the large Mexican American community. Some of the more positive outcomes will be a more internationally aware Congressional Hispanic Caucus and more educated Latino advocacy groups.

The US has sent Latinos/Hispanics as envoys to Mexico. The first one was John Jova in the 1970′s, a career diplomat born in Long Island of Cuban-Spanish descent. His aristocratic bearing made him most acceptable. The second one was not so fortunate. Julian Nava was chosen by Jimmy Carter towards the end of his Presidential term. Nava, a Mexican-born California college professor, became among the Mexican elites the caricature of the Pocho/Naco coming home. At times his mangled Spanish, sprinkled with Spanglish, and his sometimes maladroit demeanor made him a reason for many Mexicans to insist that sending a Gringo envoy with such a background and behavior is a manifestly insensitive effort by gringos to insult the Mexicans. Plainly, it suggests an insecurity of the Mexicans’ identity conundrum. The third one Reagan sent. John Gavin, the glamorously handsome movie star of yester-year whose mother was a high-born Mexican from Sonora cut his swath. He spoke impeccable Spanish, manifested a self-possessed élan and almost recklessly proceeded to alienate all Mexicans with a sniffy contempt not seen since Lane Wilson the execrable US envoy of the early twentieth century. Most recently W. Bush sent his Texas friend, Tony Garza, a Mexican-American from Brownsville. Garza has no patrician airs, but looked and behaved like a regular gringo. He was not revered like Jova nor disdained like Nava nor loathed like Gavin, but viewed as a light-weight but amiable friend of the First Family and who managed to romance and marry the richest woman in Latin America, a Mexican beer heiress. However, it is known in some Washington circles that Garza did deliver in the end for the Mexicans. When the Plan Merida appeared to be headed for the budget chop at OMB, Garza readily called the White House and successfully persuaded President Bush to restore the Plan Merida funding. This is the kind of envoy the Mexicans hoped that Obama would name. Instead Carlos Pascual, a former career foreign service officer (with a zen-like demeanor) has been selected but not yet given agreement  (approval or acceptance) by the Mexican Government. Pascual, a Cuban-born, Stanford/Harvard educated Hispanic achieved recognition mostly during the Clinton Presidency. He was sent to the CIS countries (former part of the Soviet Union) in the early ’90′s. He apparently has an academic concentration in Russian and related fields. Strobe Talbott, initially the State Department’s CIS head and later Deputy Secretary became aware of Pascual’s linguistic and programmatic accomplishments as a USAID development officer.  Pascual was subsequently detailed to the National Security Council to manage the Russian and CIS portfolio.

In 2000 before the Clinton Administration ended, Pascual was made Ambassador to the Ukraine. After a successful stint there, he returned in the first term of the George W. Bush Administration, and Colin Powell selected him as the first Director of the State Department’s Reconstruction Office. This office primarily focused on strengthening emerging democracies and faltering states. He later left State and the Foreign Service to replace Jim Steinberg at the Brookings Institute as Vice President International Affairs when Steinberg became head of the LBJ School at the University of Texas. Strobe Talbott had become Brookings’s President. Now in the Obama Administration Steinberg is Deputy Secretary of State (the old Talbott position). Susan Rice, also formerly at Brookings and an Obama confidante, is US Ambassador to the UN. Pascual is seen by his Brookings colleagues as a perfect fit for Mexico with his programmatic talents and his glowing accomplishments. Yet he has no Mexico or Latin American experience or connection except for being born in Cuba and may speak Spanish as good as Ukrainian. Clearly, the Brookings group promoted him into this job as a fellow member of the Institute’s guild. However, it is generally perceived that both Hillary and the White House leaped like trouts when Pascual’s name came before them with hefty recommendations from Brookings along with a Hispanic last name to boot. But the Obamites failed to appreciate the significance of a recent dust up in senior Mexican official circles caused by the public assertion or suggestion  by some high ranking US officials that Mexico was either a ‘failed state’ or fast headed towards that status. Now the selection of the former head of the ‘failed states’ bureau at State Department as the US Ambassador caused the Mexicans to scratch their heads or recoil in frustration. Hence, why did Hillary not make the scheduled announcement after she met with President Calderon? Moreover, Pascual does not have any notable direct links to President Obama. Adding to the Mexican concern is their natural distrust of Cuban Americans because of the Miami crowd’s animosity over the years towards Mexico for being the only Latin country to preserve continuously diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro. Certainly, Pascual does not appear to share the Miami Calle Ocho syndrome. Any President reserves the right to send whomever he desires to be his envoy. But the acceptance (agreement) by the receiving country has to be manifested. In this case, the US did not think this carefully through. Moreover, the Latino political leadership in Washington was either unaware of the appointment or equally ignorant of the consequences. Now the challenge for the talented Pascual, assuming he gets Mexican approval, will be to manage the disjointed Plan Merida program and be as successful as in the Ukraine. The problem will be that the Mexicans, unlike the Ukrainians, will not drop to their knees or kiss up to the US. The Ukrainians had good reason: they sought US protection from the Russians next door. Hence, their servility to the Americans was evident. The Mexicans with their historical and morbid suspicion of American intentions and actions will be harder to read, distant at times, unrelentingly independent, reluctant to be led or guided by the US…the question arises, ‘Is Pascual really a fit or a misjudgment by the Obamites and the Brookings crowd?’ He may have to choose between trying to conduct the bilateral relationship or just managing the US Plan Merida programmatic cast of thousands who will appear throughout Mexico. Sarukhan, who is already conducting the basic thrust of the bilateral relationship in Washington, will ultimately prefer having Pascual do the programmatic drudgery and he (Sarukhan) carry out the more glamorous weight of the bilateral relationship fraught with diplomatic sensitivity, sovereignty issues, political suspicions, the treatment of Mexican illegals in the US and the NAFTA political and bureaucratic thickets. Sarukhan has quickly mastered that a country knows when its relationship with the US is equal and mature. This is discernible when the bilateral relationship is conducted in Washington by the foreign country’s ambassador and not in the capital of his country with the American would-be pro-consul. The US can send as envoys retired politicians, used car salesmen, fat cat businessmen, and political party donors to countries like France, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, Spain and sometimes even to Russia and China. These countries in return send the US their top professional diplomats or statesmen to conduct the bilateral relationship directly with the White House, State Department and the myriad of US agencies in Washington. The US sends normally career diplomats as chief of mission generally to weaker, less significant countries to conduct the bilateral relationship in those countries. Mexico has joined the ranks of these more mature relationships. Hence, the US Embassy in Mexico is not as influential as in the past, but it remains a huge job.
 
Where were the Latino advocacy wags and politicos in Washington on this critical selection process? It was noted that several Latino advocacy groups were included in the pre-trip briefing dinner held for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before she set out for Mexico. Apparently, neither the State Department’s talking heads and analysts nor the domestic Latino groups present like the National Council of La Raza added any value to the expected substantive discussion. Plainly, Mexico appears to be treated as an appendage of the domestic Latino concerns not as a foreign policy priority. The appointments of Dan Restrepo, a Colombian American to the National Security Council, Frank Mora, a Cuban American to the Defense Department’s Office on Latin America, Pascual to Mexico and the pending appointment of Arturo Valenzuela, a Chilean American to be the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere appear to be solidifying. These selections have the Latin Americans already wondering if the Obama team is trying to address Latin America or the domestic Latino/Hispanic agenda. If it is the latter: what has been the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ role? And the advocacy groups’ input into such selections would be most interesting to examine. This zany selection process demonstrates that the Obama team has to be more surefooted in vetting not only for qualifications and ethnicity but for political sensitivity.  Moreover, it needs to distinguish better the domestic from the foreign policy concerns. This is a classic case where a perfectly sound and qualified Latino is selected but stumbles for more nuanced and complex reasons.

Photos: Secretary Clinton in Mexico, Mexican Ambassador to US Arturo Sarukhan, and Carlos Pascual