“Why are some people so afraid of immigrants?  Why is xenophobia so in vogue?”

That was the question asked by a local blogger recently.  I’m not sure if he is referring to the hostility he shares with a few other Antiguenos towards white Christian foreigners, or if it was a veiled reference to Arizona’s recent legislation making it a state crime to be in the US legally.  Effusive reader comments would seem to suggest the latter.

I enjoy observing the art of message manipulation, and so seeing the hate that has spilled forth because the people of Arizona are tired of the federal government empowering the drug dealers, rapists and murders who happen to be in the country illegally is, frankly, entertaining.  As has been pointed out here and elsewhere many times, neither Mexico nor Guatemala tolerates illegal immigration and yet my countrymen are ‘xenophobic’ for preferring the rule of law.  Not to mention that it is already a federal crime to enter the country illegally, making the AZ law superfluous, especially relevant for those who oppose or are ignorant of a federal system of government and the growing legal battle by the states against the central government.  It’s gratifying to see that a dozen other states appear to be following my state’s lead.  The real fight is with the federal government of course, not the immigrants, but those are just details that get in the way of good propaganda.

You would think a people with a history such as those who are migrating would prefer law and order after so much civil unrest, abuse and corruption in their native countries.  But you’d be wrong.  Ask a local if you may enter their house without their permission and take their possessions and return to your home at a time of your own choosing and they will quickly agree this is wrong, but the idea of a nation controlling its borders and admitting who it wants when it wants is simply outrageous.  Until, that is, you remind them that Guatemala does this very thing.  Oh, but that’s different Don Marco, we don’t need you, but you need us. Tell that to my maids, my employees, or the Guatemalans I keep employed through my profligate spending around town.  There are even Guatemalans who live on the tourist industry here but secretly resent the tourists.  I’m shocked, just shocked!

In fact, of all the developed nations, the US has the greatest history of immigration-legal and otherwise.  Latinos now outnumber blacks, Indians and Asians continue to come to the US (if only to learn and then go home), and at every level of society first generation immigrants are thriving.  Most of them are legal and wish other immigrants would respect their new nation’s laws.  Perhaps all those legal immigrants are racist xenophobes too for wanting others to work and wait and play by the rules, like they did.

One ‘friend’ here called me a racist to my face for supporting the AZ legislation.  Of course, I found out immediately he was completely ignorant of the law, thinking as he did that cops could stop anyone they wanted and jail them if they didn’t have immigration papers.  I tried to explain probable cause to him without success (there is no such legal protection here, a point I found deliciously ironic), due process of law, etc.  I told him that I thought the AZ law didn’t go far enough, because in my opinion to enter the country to work and live you should have to pass a physical, demonstrate a certain net worth, pass a literacy test, and have the recommendation of three native-born citizens.

He was appalled and thought he had ‘caught me’ in my own argument by pointing out that I couldn’t pass a literacy test in Spanish.  When I pointed out that this higher bar for entry to the US was in direct proportion to the much higher demand for entry, I think I lost him.  When I offered military service as an alternative path to citizenship, he protested vigorously that military service was ‘offensive’ and that the Guatemalan people were ‘peaceful’.  Tell that to the families of the 16 people a day murdered here. He became apoplectic when I suggested that even better would be to allow anyone to vote, citizen or not, so long as they owned property.  Yes, even those dirty, stinky brown Spanish speakers, so long as they own land.  White and homeless, try again in four years.  Merit-based anything can make some people crazy.

The answer to Rudy’s question, of course, is that few people in the US are afraid of immigrants.  They’re afraid of losing their job to someone willing to work for less than the minimum wage, being run over by a drunk driver, having their little girl raped and murdered, paying ever-higher income taxes to support an exploding welfare class or getting beat up for walking on the wrong side of the road or wearing the wrong basketball jersey.  Having grown up in Tucson and Phoenix I’ve seen all these headlines on a near-daily basis, which perhaps to others is really just a mass delusion without basis in fact that we’ve cooked up (and convinced the leftist, pro-migrant media to support), to mask our hatred for our darker-skin neighbors.  We Arizonans hate everything about Latinos; we hate their tequila, their women, their food, their music, their soccer, their Christianity.  Yeah, that’s why you see whitey in their restaurants, at their concerts, marrying their women and supporting their churches; we don’t mean what we say we mean about the rule of law, it’s because we’re really just racists.  Como se dice:  red herring?

For my part, I never experienced racism and discrimination until I came to Guatemala.  Even in Mississippi at the black-run BBQ joint they didn’t charge me more for ribs because I was white or from the ‘Yankee’ state of Arizona, and when I asked at the Jewish deli in Philly if Catholics could order off the public menu they laughed and made jokes about wishing they had their own Pope to stop all the bickering.  But here in Guate I can’t get a work visa, after all, I’m a foreigner, and while I’m welcome to visit for 90 days at a time and pay higher prices for things based on my skin color, I can’t even serve as the registered agent for my own company.  You have to be a Guatemalan to do that.  Walk into the Secretary of State’s office in Phoenix to form your own corporation and as long as you can pay the $100 (it’s $600 here), they don’t care whether you’re legal or not, black, brown or white, carrying TB in your lungs or a nuke in your suitcase or even if you hate America.  That’s just how xenophobic we are.

What’s the old saying about hypocrisy?  Kicking with the hind feet while licking with the tongue? How apropos.