Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: Opinion

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When I see some of the written reactions to SB 160, the "California Dream Act," and the illegal immigration issue in California as a whole, I can't help but get Bob Dylan's classic song "Idiot Wind" stuck in my head. In the song, Dylan laments and riddles insults on his dream girl for abandoning him. By the last verse, Dylan recognizes that it was convenient for him to blame their separation on his lover, when it was him who had created a false, idealized image of her. Thus the idiot wind is shown to be those romantic ideals, and their lack of communication, responsible for their break-up.

Our multicultural movement might as well be a bowel movement as ignorance, ethnicization and racism still dominate Californians' understanding of illegal immigration. Our idiot wind breezes through the cacophony of empty canals between our ears: It turns out racism is just as convenient for Americans now as it was 50 years ago.

Textual diarrhea prevails over sense on websites like immigrantwatchdog.com and saveourstate.org. Go sniff around diggersrealm.com. There's a hootin' nugget of "truth" that "Digger" digs up for us, this following tidbit of insight in regards to the California state legislature concerning SB 160: "They aren't trying to turn California into Mexico, they're trying to turn American taxpayers into slaves while Mexicans can just come across the border and receive better benefits than the working people get."

Those are great benefits. Work for under minimum wage, do jobs even the poorest Californians won't do, and then, by attempting to make your life better, become ostracized by ethnocentric pseudo-intellectuals. Sign my 3/4 Hispanic ass up for that! Especially for that White Man's Burden remark with that whole "working people" bit, as if illegal immigrants didn't work.

It's ironic because the American working class is under the same system that pulls 'unskilled' Mexican emigrants to the U.S. The same system that keeps U.S. workers under a constant 4 percent unemployment rate has institutionalized working two part-time jobs (because companies won't hire them full-time: they'd have to pay them benefits). The same system draws English teachers from the U.S. to South Korea, where potential teachers with only a baccalaureate degree in hand can earn up to $32,000 to teach.

The system of this continuingly unregulated and ever-technologized global market creates the space possible for these situations whether they are beneficial or not to workers, whether they are legal or illegal. The market does not see borders, nor color.

The American worker loses the right to benefits, the ability to unionize, no longer has access to a stable job as employers move, without penalty, to "third-world nations," as corporate executives dump their American citizenship for a lower tax citizenship in the tropics.

It's not as convenient to recognize that there's an economic strategy behind the working class' fall, rather than one promoting "freedom" and "equality," one that guides racist quotas for how many immigrants will be allowed to enter U.S. soil from a given nation, or set of nations. It's not as convenient to hate the corporations or the politicians, to do something about the political negligence towards the regulation of the American companies, when there's the "other" right in front of us, easy to pick out by ear and by eye.

It's far easier for the worker to blame the problems of the Southwestern U.S.' educational system on Mexicans rather than an educational budget based on regional property taxes. It's far simpler to attribute all of our problems to some stateless people from the south. Stateless in their "unAmerican" transnational migration and their willingness to commit themselves to jobs people in the nation state won't do. Recall the Nazi justification for the Final Solution? Hitler blamed "International Jewry" for the downfall of Germany when, in reality, it had just lost World War I. Germany had to pay reparations and completely rebuild its infrastructure, for a start. See the History Channel for more.

But do you believe sentiment to differ with us? Start reading the comments referring to the Mexican "invasion," the insults towards MECHA and other organizations defending migrant workers. Submit your eyes to the unadulterated, deaf, blind and stupid hate of ignorance.

Escondido passed a city ordinance barring renters from housing illegal immigrants as tenants in October. Escondido announced the ordinance with pomp and triumph. A group of police stood on the podium in full riot gear overlooking the clamoring crowd. Then read how Escondido targets Mexican-American gangs in an ordinance shortly after.

Check out the digital landscape, the seedy realms of our blowiest blow-hards, and feel their delta breeze breezing by, our idiot wind. Catch a few whiffs yourself and, like Bob Dylan, you can "wonder that you still know how to breathe."

Frank Loret de Mola can be reached at opinion@statehornet.com

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