llamar al pan pan y al vino vino

OK, the Spanish doesn't exactly translate as "Call a spade a spade," but Ruben Navarrette nails the nativist nonsense that passes for immigration debate in Iowa (and everywhere else). Anti-Mexican sentiment in Iowa is the same as the anti-Mexican stuff I heard from snowbirds in Arizona last month. It wouldn't take much to create anti-Mexican mobs today that would echo the anti-German mobs of 1917 or anti-Japanese mobs in 1941. There is latent rage about 9/11, but the Jihadist culprits are unavailable for a good ol' lynching; the Afghan-Pakistan border is far removed from Iowa or Arizona or Texas. Instead, we have the Brown Menace creeping over our porous southwestern border. First, they "took over" Texas and California with bilingual signage and official government forms. Now, the anti-Mexican element hears Para Español oprima numero dos ("For Spanish, press 2") following "For English, press 1" on most automated call systems. Blinded by xenophobic rage, the anti-Mexicans seek the equivalent of the Great Wall of China from California to Texas along the border with Mexico. Damn the cost! Stop the Mexican takeover! Now, the Wetback takeover is imminent in Iowa! If this is (fair & balanced) jingoism, so be it.

[x San Diego Fishwrap]
Something's wrong in Iowa
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

What's the matter with Iowa?

Maybe I'm experiencing a little geographic jealously. When I moved to California, I assumed that San Diego — as a border town — would be ground zero in the immigration debate. So when did Sioux City, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids cut in line?

If Iowa is, in fact, the new center of the immigration debate, what sense does that make? If you've been paying attention, you know that despite the lip service given to border security and fighting terrorism, much of the debate is driven by demographics and the concern that the United States is becoming too Latino. In some parts of the country, such anxiety might make sense. But who would have imagined you'd find traces of it in a region that is still overwhelmingly Anglo?

According to the 2000 Census, Iowa is about 94 percent white, 3 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black and 1 percent Asian.

That is not exactly a majority-minority state in the offing. And yet, we're told the outcome of the Iowa caucuses — especially on the Republican side — could come down to the candidates' views on immigration.

For that, you can blame those Iowa voters who, from the sound of it, can't find anything else to talk about at town hall meetings throughout the Hawkeye State.

That's fine. Folks in that red state can talk about immigration until they're blue in the face. But they should at least have the decency to talk about it honestly.

Instead, some of them give the impression that Mexican immigrants are launching a full-scale invasion of Iowa, soaking up public benefits, subverting the culture and undermining the English language. They never acknowledge that immigrants are making their way to the heartland because someone there is offering them jobs, profiting from their labor and pumping tax dollars into the local economy to the benefit of everyone — even the complainers.

Someone needs to tell that to the retiree who grilled Fred Thompson at a recent gathering at the Music Man Square museum in Mason City. Concerned that Mexicans were plotting to retake the Southwest and insisting that illegal immigrants were a burden to taxpayers, the woman finally quit beating around the bush and got around to what really bothered her.

Surprise: It's the changing culture, and specifically how — even in Iowa — the Spanish language pops up at the most inopportune moments. In what was obviously a gross exaggeration, the questioner claimed that, when Iowans call the power company, "everything is in Spanish" and that she finds it all "sickening."

You want sickening? Consider Thompson's lily-livered response. "You are so, so right," he told the retiree. He even suggested that English be the national language. Instead of providing leadership by telling the woman to knock off the nativist lingo and acknowledge that illegal immigration is a self-inflicted wound, Thompson opted to pander. Just like everyone else.

Doesn't any of this immigration narrative sound familiar to native Iowans? It should. Nearly 100 years ago, another ethnic group found itself on the cultural skillet in that state. Its members had last names such as "Schultz" or "Braun" or "Kalb."

As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge points out in "Denison, Iowa," the first German immigrants arrived in Iowa shortly after it became a state in 1846. For several decades, they built "Germantowns," created German schools and churches, and founded German brotherhood associations. And, about this, no one seemed to mind much.

But then the United States entered World War I in 1917. And an anti-German crusade began. It might have been cloaked in concerns over the war, but it quickly focused on the German language, German newspapers and German culture.

In Denison, which is now a town of about 8,000 people, German Americans were beaten and piles of German books were set afire. English-only laws were passed.

Critics will reject the comparison and point out the obvious: that many of the Latino immigrants now streaming into Iowa are coming illegally and that the Germans came legally.

That's true. German immigrants who helped settle Iowa in the late 1800s did come legally. There was no way to come illegally until the 1920s. And yet it made little difference. They were still mistreated. That's because the issue was never legality. It was the same thing that fuels the discussion today: fear of change.

It all makes for an ugly chapter in history that Iowans would be wise not to repeat.

[Ruben Navarrette Jr., a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union-Tribune, is a fresh and increasingly important voice in the national political debate. His twice-weekly column offers new thinking on many of the major issues of the day, especially on thorny questions involving ethnicity and national origin. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group.

After graduating from Harvard in 1990, Navarrette returned to his native Fresno, CA, where he began a free-lance writing career that produced more than 200 articles in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Fresno Bee, the Chicago Tribune and The Arizona Republic.

In 1997 he joined the staff of The Arizona Republic, first as a reporter and then as a twice-weekly columnist, before returning to Harvard in the fall of 1999 to earn a master's in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government. He joined the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News in July 2000, and in 2005, moved to the Union-Tribune. His column has been in syndication since 2001.]

Copyright © 2008 The Washington Post Writers Group

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