May, 2006

51 Arrests in Merced County put our morality to the test

By Salvador Sandoval, MD

Hundreds of events are being held throughout the country in response to HR 4437, which would have made it a felony to be in this country without documentation. It would also have made it a felony to assist in any way a person who later turned out to be undocumented. The response was spontaneous and on a larger scale than even rally organizers had anticipated. School walkouts erupted throughout the country, with students sensing that their rights, even if born in this country, were under attack. School officials and police played cat and mouse in many cities and towns, trying to herd students back into school. Student leaders were singled out for reprisal in several places. For example, Anthony Soltero, a 14-year-old from Ontario in Southern California and his family were threatened by a school official with going to jail after he helped lead students out of school last week. He was also barred from his eighth grade graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, he became the first casualty in this uprising. Anthony shot himself in the head in desperation.

The Merced April 10 event was part of national events that took place on the same day. However, it was also held to protest immigration raids that had taken place during the preceding week when students walked out of class all over the country, including in Merced. Although it was stated that the arrests of 51 people in Merced County had nothing to do with the student walkouts, the timing left many in doubt. What was particularly disturbing was that children were taken off of school buses into custody by the newly formed ICE (Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement wing of Homeland Security). Many expressed disbelief that this would happen in the United States, given that we condemn human rights violations throughout the world. All of these children were U.S. born. Another 18-year-old high school student, who has been in the U.S. since age 4, is still in custody, along with her 22-year-old sister, because she has refused to sign voluntary deportation after a 4:30 a.m. raid at their home.

We should feel proud that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, U.S. born Mexican Americans, and many others are asserting their democratic rights to express themselves. That is what America and the Statue of Liberty are all about. Rather than feeling threatened, I think the rest of us need to protest against unjust laws, just as our forefathers did. A little before the U.S. Civil War, non slave owning whites in the North refused to respect the Fugitive Slave Act, which required them to return runaway slaves to their lawful owners in the South. They felt that there was a higher law than a man made one.

Otherwise, we may find ourselves victims of laws that we thought were intended to make us more secure, but really take away our rights. In particular we have to ask ourselves why it is that Mexicans, Central Americans, Poles, and many others are having to leave their countries in the first place. How could things be changed so that they could stay in their own country and wouldn't have to risk dying crossing the Arizona border? Take into account that some policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have driven small farmers off their land in rural Mexico. Diversion of Colorado River water to build Las Vegas and Phoenix, among others, has dried up fishing for Mexican fishermen who depended on this river for their livelihood.

This explains the new defiant slogan heard on the marches: "Here we are, and we're not leaving. If we are deported, we'll be right back again." We can either look on the immigrant as the enemy, as our class enemy wants us to do, or we start thinking outside the box as our moral ancestors did on the eve of the Civil War. In an era when factories and jobs are shifted around the world and across national borders with impunity, all of us who work for a living have more in common with each other than with those that profit from our labor.