Is immigration defining us?
Despite the fact that more than 60 percent of U.S. Hispanics are born in this country, it’s hard to dispel the notion that we’re all immigrants – and undocumented. This perception seems to prevail in the political debate on immigration, feeding fear mongers who are lashing out with unprecedented vitriol at undocumented immigrants, but that inevitably, is affecting all Latinos in one way or another.
I recently heard social activist and Hollywood producer Moctesuma Esparza, himself the son of a Mexican immigrant, express concern about the current labels pinned on all U.S. Hispanics, so I asked him to share his perspective and elaborate on his views that immigration is creating a false image of Latinos in this country. He’s very clear on what’s wrong with that picture, what we can do to change it, and whom we can learn from in order to re-shape the image of Hispanics living in the U.S.
Esparza has seen the anti-Latino immigrant sentiment come in waves – in the 1960’s, the 1990’s, and now again in this decade. “It’s an extraordinary repeating of history that so many generations of American Latinos and Chicanos have been afflicted by xenophobia, nativism and negative anti-immigrant consciousness that seems to sweep certain political circles in this country whenever there’s an economic disruption that people don’t comprehend and they look for someone to scapegoat.” The problem, he says, is people are responding out of fear and ignorance, and that’s influencing how the country views us, our self image, and the image others have of us: “Latinos in the United States have been constrained, boxed in by the political debate in the country that is defining us through immigration and through the perspective people have of immigration. It’s a false lens, a false argument that is being used in the body politic to inaccurately define us,” states Esparza, who believes “immigration is defining us as a consequence of the constant repetition of both news commentary and entertainment generated images in Hollywood that depicts us almost exclusively as immigrants; and further and most disturbing, as criminals, drug lords and other undesirables.”
It’s these stereotypes that are most damaging; yet they’re pervasive. The reality is that of the more than 50 million Hispanics counted in the 2010 Census, 63 percent are born in the U.S. and 37 percent are foreign-born. While the Census did not inquire about immigration status, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates, there are about 11 million undocumented Hispanics living in the country – not the majority. Even one of the most common accusatory assumptions that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes has been debunked. They actually pay over $11 billion a year in state, local, sales, income and property taxes, according to a recent report by the Immigration Policy Center. Yet, mainstream media doesn’t focus on these facts.
From Esparza’s perspective, Latinos can bring about change by supporting the things we believe in and avoiding those that misrepresent us. “As a community we have to object and use our economic power with sponsors, networks, and producers of programming to let them know those negative images and portrayals are biased, unbalanced and not reflective of the reality of our community in the United States. We need to use our economic muscle to support those who do support us as a fully engaged population and not support those who are stereotyping us or mis-characterizing who we are in the public discourse.”
Esparza, who fought for the civil rights of Mexican-Americans in the 1960’s, participating in Chicano student protests (memorialized in his 2006 movie “Walkout”), and is knowledgeable of Hispanic-American history, also believes we should learn from the strategies of other communities. He points to the American Jewish community’s effectiveness in shaping their image. “In a very positive way they’ve been able to emphasize those in their community who are high achieving in the arts, culture, business, science, philosophy, government and community service, and they have aggressively defended their image. We need to learn and use those same strategies and techniques to promote those in our community that are high-achieving in all those fields to let the American public know our contributions and the value that we bring and have brought to this country for hundreds of years.”
For Esparza, empowerment starts with action – with “people standing up peacefully for their rights, affirming their personal political power and participating in the body politic in a constructive, peaceful way.”
Meanwhile, he does his best to contribute to that change. He’s in the final process of developing a mini-series for HBO that touches on immigration issues, based on Victor Villaseñor’s best-selling novel “Rain of Gold” – a project he has been working on for several years.