An article on "Black April": For many in Little Saigon, memories of what they went through still shape their reality. Others -- many born here -- look to Vietnam for opportunities and for ways to improve lives. By My-Thuan Tran, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer (April 30, 2008) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-me-saigon30apr30,1,1738706.story?page=1&track=rss">Lives remembered, lives rebuilt, attitudes changing -- 33 years after South Vietnam fell...

My grandmother never learned to speak English, other than what was required for her citizenship test. After immigrating to the United States in her 30s, she spent most of her life in Chinatown, and then living in a senior housing complex with other Chinese people.

Because she only spoke Cantonese, my grandmother was never fully able to participate in society’s larger discourse. But she raised five children who did. Four of them went onto become public servants who spoke fluent English.

I wonder what my grandmother would have thought of the latest flap over ''Nuestro Himno,'' a Spanish-language version of the national anthem that was recently released by a British producer as part of the growing immigrants’ rights movement.

Adam Kidron, director of the record label Urban Box Office, wrote "Nuestro Himno," which is sung by artists including Gloria Trevi, Wyclef Jean, Pitbul, Olga Tañón and Carlos Ponce, Ivy Queen, Tito "El Bambino" and the band Aventura.

Conservatives have been quick to label this an insult, and proof of increasing cultural balkanization.

“I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English,'' President Bush said. ''And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.''

Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles’s first Latino mayor since 1872, told CNN he was offended “because, for me, the national anthem is something that deserves to be respected. Without a doubt, the vast majority of the United States also took offense on that. Our national anthem must be sung in English, the Spanish and Mexican anthems in Spanish, the French one in French, so that's why I took offense.”

The debate over whether immigrants should be required to learn English is an old one, but this latest iteration is even more inflammatory because it lies at the intersection of patriotism and multiculturalism.

One can make a reasonable argument that people should learn English so that they have access to more opportunities and can more fully participate in our democracy. But too often, insisting that new arrivals learn English is an easy cover for immigrant bashers.

Demanding that the national anthem only be sung in English is short sighted. After all, don’t we want other cultures to understand ours?

Consider a recent, similar dispute over the Pledge of Allegiance. Thousands of Spanish speakers stood on Washington’s National Mall and recited the pledge from phonetic fliers at a recent immigrants’ rights march. While the phonetic pledge was touching, and a little odd – “Ai pledch aliyens to di fleg/Of d Yunaited Esteits of America,” it read – its readers likely had no idea what it meant. Isn’t it better for people to understand what they are pledging, or singing, particularly when it pertains to values fundamental to our nation?

The salad bowl and melting pot metaphors are unfortunate and simplistic devices for thinking about assimilation, though I am unable to come up with a better one. What I do know is that the different fragments of culture that immigrants bring to our country enrich it, and, combined, they are what make us uniquely American.

As Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs, professors emeriti at Cal Poly Pomona point out, performing the national anthem in a foreign language is nothing new. German and Latin translations appeared in the 1860s, followed by a Yiddish version, they note. The U.S. Bureau of Education printed it in Spanish in 1919. And you can find it in Spanish on the current State Department website.

A few years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came under fire for being a member of the advisory board of U.S. English, a group that wants to make English the official language of the United States.

Gabriela Lemus, who was then director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), told me then that Schwarzenegger's membership on the board of U.S. English "does not bode well for Hispanics. So many of us support bilingualism and bilingual education and maintaining our culture, and he's essentially saying it's not valid by being part of this board that has got this whole anti-immigrant, underlying racist mentality," Lemus said.

LULAC, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group, called on Schwarzenegger to resign from the board. He never did; his name is still listed on the group’s Web site, along with fellow board members Charlton Heston and Alex Trebek.

Insisting that people learn English has always been a political issue, but this time it seems particularly hypocritical, too. President Bush, who has often spoken Spanish to appeal to Latino voters, was the first president to give his weekly radio address in Spanish. (The Spanish wire service Agencia EFE once said he spoke the language poorly, ''but with great confidence,'' the New York Times reported.) Villaraigosa has also spoken Spanish on the campaign trail, and was successfully propelled to office last year by his ability to patch together a winning coalition of black, white and Latino voters.

More troubling than arguments over the national anthem, though, is an attempt by a group of House Republicans to do away with bilingual ballots and translation assistance at the polls. As Congress prepares to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the legislators are asking colleagues to let the act’s language assistance provisions expire.

I don’t know what my Cantonese-speaking grandmother would have made of this attempt to deprive citizens of their right to vote simply because they have not mastered English.

I do know, however, that she raised a son – my dad – who believes passionately in serving his country. He devoted his entire career to public service, beginning as the first Asian American in the Lane County, Ore. sheriff’s department, then going on to work for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Ten years ago, he retired from his job as an agent at the U.S. Department of Defense. Now, he works part time training local law enforcement recruits at a South Bay police academy. Not bad for the son of a Chinese immigrant who never learned to speak English.

Tomorrow, May 1, advocates are organizing what they have dubbed “The Great American Boycott,” urging immigrants to demonstrate their economic clout by staying home from work and school and refraining from making purchases.

What will happen? No one knows. For this boycott – and the larger immigrants rights movement – to be successful, it must attract broad support. Until now, many of the faces associated with it have been Latino. But there are some signs that more Asians and blacks are supporting the movement. In Los Angeles, the Korean American Apparel Wholesaler Assn. asked its 1,000 members not to fire anyone who takes Monday off, the Los Angeles Times reported. And members of the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, National Korean American Service and Education Consortium and the Council of Korean Churches in Southern California are urging members not to go to work that day. In fact, there are plans to shut down all businesses in Koreatown, New America Media reported.

The Chinese-language World Journal recently published an article advising companies on how to treat Latino employees who do not show up for work on May 1, suggesting they treat the boycott as they would Election Day, when employees have the right to leave work to vote.

There are also encouraging signs that the Asian American community – 60 percent of which is foreign born – sees parallels with its own struggles. In an editorial in the Vietnamese Nguoi Viet in Orange County, Calif., Ky-Phong Tran wrote, "Thirty years ago, Vietnamese people came to this country without documents either, looking for the very same things as those out there in the streets: a chance at a stable job, education for their children and opportunity." He continues, "In their struggle, I see my struggle and I cannot turn my back to it."

And the Rev. Jesse Jackson has said he will participate.

In cities around the country, some radio stations will go silent, honoring the boycott. Eduardo Sotelo, known as Piolin, Los Angeles’s highest-rated morning radio show host and a major architect of the March 25 immigrant rallies, will not broadcast his seven-hour show tomorrow. Instead, he plans to join two marches in downtown Los Angeles. Other DJs in Dallas, Nashville and Las Vegas, have said they will go silent, too.

Will the economy grind to a halt? Again, no one knows. But statistics and some quotes provide some indications. More than a third of Los Angeles County's population is foreign-born, according to 2000 figures from the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit public policy research organization in Los Angeles. Stephanie Williams, senior vice president of the California Trucking Assn., told the LA Times a boycott “is going to be devastating to us because we are going to be 30,000 containers behind" if truckers don't show up to transport cargo at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Still, many could stay home because they are afraid of being fired, as has been the case for some who participated in other recent marches. And undocumented immigrants may fear that they could be caught by federal immigration authorities’ sweeps, although there has been no confirmation that this could happen. (In one article, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice refused to say whether agents would be present at Monday's rallies.)

Despite these concerns, one survey predicted that about 70 percent of Latino immigrants are planning to miss work. The survey, by Garcia Research Associates of Burbank, Calif., showed the strongest support in Los Angeles, where 79 percent of those interviewed said they would not go to work and 94 percent said they would not buy anything on Monday. (The survey was conducted by phone in Spanish to 761 Latino immigrants living mainly in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston and Chicago.)

In California, neither the Senate nor the Assembly will conduct business on Monday. Several Democratic legislators said they would participate in the demonstrations, and the Senate approved a resolution designating Monday as the "Great American Boycott 2006."

The boycott may also extend south of the border, where a word of mouth and email campaign is urging people to boycott American businesses in Mexico and other Latin American countries. In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, the Chamber of Commerce announced that its 5,000 members would neither buy nor sell U.S. products that day.

A Tale of Two Marches

Press reports have widely covered a divide over the boycotts. But such stories understate groups’ common goal of advancing immigrants’ rights, and overlook the critical role a more radical wing can play. Think Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. "Having what you might call a radical flank is advantageous to those people trying to bargain with the system because you can portray yourself as the reasonable alternative," David Meyer, a UC Irvine professor of sociology and political science, told the LA Times.

In Los Angeles, two marches highlight the story of the two related movements. One, sponsored by the March 25 Coalition, a group of mostly Latino grassroots organizations, is to begin at noon. The other, scheduled to allow people to come after work and school, will begin at 4 p.m. Backed by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, it is being organized by the We Are America coalition of labor, religious and community groups.

Critics of the boycott, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, have asked children to stay in school, saying they need a good education. But supporters say one day away from classes is a small price to pay, and that children may learn more by participating in a massive social movement than by sitting in class. While it is not encouraging students to walk out, the National Council of La Raza has issued a flier informing protesters of their rights.

Organizers hope to draw on a long tradition of using boycotts as an economic tool to bring about social change and win concessions from companies or the government. "The point is to show that without our help, it wouldn't be the same here," Southern California housekeeper Danira Hernandez told the LA Times. "People need us to support their lifestyle." (Hernandez, who is delaying surgery for a fibroid tumor because of the cost, decided not to participate in the boycott because she can’t afford the lost wages.)

Making Our Voices Heard

Those who support the goals of the boycott but balk at school or work walkouts are proposing a variety of alternatives, such as participating in protests after work or school lets out.

Some of the best ideas I’ve heard involve efforts to register new voters and help people apply for citizenship. Another good idea comes from Anjelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. She proposes a national day of community service, allowing immigrants to demonstrate their value to their communities and their commitment to the country.

Such actions could help avoid the backlash that has already begun. Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante have received death threats, and in Phoenix, one radio talk show host lost his job after telling listeners to “pick one night – every week – where we will kill whoever crosses the border,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In another instance of what anti-immigrant hate groups are capable of, a computer game called Border Patrol, found on a white supremacist’s Web site, lets players shoot figures such as a pregnant woman with two children. If they shoot the animated images as they run across the desert, they win points, and blood spatters across the screen.

Whatever happens tomorrow, I hope organizers will build on the successful elements of the massive March 25 immigrants’ rights demonstrations. Protesters there wore white T-shirts, waved American flags, and brought trash bags to pick up after themselves, at the urging of Spanish language DJs and others.

And they adopted a simple chant that speaks volumes about how they can no longer be ignored: “Today we march,” they said. “Tomorrow we vote.”

Everyone has her own point of view on immigration reform. Indeed it is a policy area fraught with emotion and sentiment. Both sides debate migrant workers’ effect on low skilled jobs, but research has not shown natives to be harmed by low skilled immigrant labor. We also debate whether social services are used disproportionately used by migrant workers. Again, evidence suggests that immigrants pay more into the social security system than they will receive, and their taxes cover on net the social services they usually don’t even use. Migrant workers pump an estimated $7 billion into the United States economy and have made an enormous cultural contribution to American society. Thus, it is hard to believe that a proposed solution actually taken into account by a sizeable portion of the American public involves building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico spanning four states.

The sudden debate about illegal immigration seems to have removed Rep. Tom Tancredo's impetus for running for President. Tancredo, who admits he had no real chance of winning, planned to wage an issue campaign to force a national conversation on immigration.

The surprise mobilization of half a million people in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and the protests that have followed, brought immigration to the public's immediate attention. What that attention is saying, however, isn't very clear.

How do immigrants impact our economy? Are they draining our social services system? Destroying our middle class? Or are they the backbone of our economy, working in jobs that Americans don’t want, subsidizing our Social Security system and paying millions in taxes? Like most of the discussion around immigration, there are no easy answers, and, often, there seems to be no middle ground on this issue.

What of the charges that undocumented immigrants are free-riding ff the system? As we learned in economics recently, most research indicates that immigrants pay more in taxes than the services they consume. This, however, does not factor in the national military budget as a service consumed.

In addition, undocumented immigrants are shoring up our Social Security system, providing it with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year – benefits they will never reap upon retirement. That represented 10 percent of the budget surplus in 2004, the difference between what the system currently receives in payroll taxes and what it doles out in pension benefits.

What should the United States do about the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living here? It’s a question that’s dominated recent immigration policy reform discussions, and may have been what ultimately derailed a bipartisan effort to pass new legislation this week.

Missing from much of the clamor, though, has been any consideration of just who the undocumented immigrants are. According to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, undocumented immigrants:

• Account for about 5 percent, or 7.2 million, of the civilian labor force.
  
• Nearly a third of unauthorized workers worked in service jobs, and about a fifth worked in construction and extractive occupations.
  
• Undocumented workers also account for a large share of workers in certain job categories:
  
  • Farming (24%)
    
  • Cleaning (17%)
    
  • Food Preparation (12%)

• About 6.2 million people, or 56% of the unauthorized population, are from Mexico.
  
• Another 2.5 million, or 22%, come from the rest of Latin America, primarily Central America.
  
• Asian immigrants account for 13% of the undocumented.
  
• Male adults accounted for just under half (49%) of the unauthorized population. Female adults comprised 35%, and children were 18% of the total.
  
• As of 2005, there were 6.6 million families where either the head of the family or the spouse was an unauthorized migrant.
  
• Nearly two-thirds of the children living in unauthorized families are U.S. citizens by birth, an estimated 3.1 million children in 2005.

These are just numbers, of course. But when I hear people talk about illegal immigrants who slip across the border and consume social services, I think about the undocumented immigrants I met as a reporter, and the news articles I’ve read about their experiences. They’re far from the law-breaking freeloaders that some portray them to be.

I drove to Southern California last week seeking a relaxing spring break, but instead I discovered something even more interesting: traveling through Los Angeles on March 25, I found a city at the epicenter of the national debate on immigration. As I drove further south to San Diego, a city so close to the border that signs along its freeways warn motorists of undocumented immigrants darting across traffic lanes, the reminders of immigration’s significance to our state continued.

March 25 was the day the national spotlight focused on Los Angeles. That day, an estimated 500,000 people marched through downtown LA protesting proposed federal legislation that would make felons of illegal immigrants and penalize those who help them. Throughout the next week, thousands of students walked out of school to march for immigrants’ rights. Plans for more protests continued even as news reports noted that Senate Democrats were moving to force lawmakers to decide Thursday whether the immigration bill should be considered for a vote on the Senate floor.

The week I was in LA, the Los Angeles Times was filled with coverage of immigration, from stories about the demonstrations, to tales of how top-rated Spanish-language radio DJs nicknamed "El Mandril" (The Baboon), "El Cucuy" (The Boogeyman) and "El Piolin" (Tweety Bird) helped mobilize half a million marchers. The radio waves buzzed with listeners and talk show hosts spouting inflammatory rhetoric. Over dinner with friends and in bars chatting with strangers, immigration was one of the main topics of conversation.

The more I heard and read, the more I started to formulate my own ideal immigration policy, based on the proposals Congress is considering. I mostly support proposals by Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain. Here’s why:

· Guest Workers. I support a visa program for low-skilled workers that also allows them to pursue a path to citizenship. It is unrealistic to expect someone to come here for three years, contribute to our economy, build a life here, and then return home for a year before reapplying, as one proposal suggests. And these are not jobs that are being taken away from American workers: employers must first recruit US workers prior to hiring guest workers. What do the employers get out of it? A stable, legal workforce.

Starting this week Deb Kong will be providing a running commentary on the immigration battle.

Deb is a first year student at GSPP. Previously she was a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News, most recently the Associated Press where she covered race and immigration issues.

We are proud to have her.