President Obama’s visit to Southern California is an acknowledgment of the region’s importance to the White House. It would be an opportune moment for the new president to make a much needed statement on the value of immigrants and to condemn intolerant attitudes.
The locations selected for the president’s presentations lend themselves to precisely such statements.
For example, today’s first public event will be held in Costa Mesa, the city that has become a symbol of the region’s anti-immigrant attitudes, and the following day, another town hall meeting will be held at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, named after the Latino union leader who defended immigrant workers’ rights.
We believe now is the time to send a clear message against anti-immigrant sentiment and the distortion of the meaning of Latino and Hispanic across the United States.
For example, we are very concerned by the lies spread by CNN’s Lou Dobbs who has said that the mission of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was “Mexico’s export of drugs and illegal aliens to the United States.” The maliciousness of this statment drives him to ignore the millions of small business members of the organization that create jobs and are an integral part of the economy.
We are also concerned by the political environment that triggered the withdrawal of attorney Thomas Saenz’s nomination to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Anti-immigration groups torpedoed this brilliant attorney’s appointment because of his work with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). Critics reduced the importance of MALDEF to a caricature and Saenz to a simple defender of “illegals.” Given this situation, the White House apparently preferred to replace Saenz than hear —and refute—the misstatements made against the organization during his confirmation hearing.
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