Immigration & Racism (Falls Church News-Press Editorial)

It was the perceptive Aldous Huxley who wrote that the greatest discovery in life is to learn that you’ve always been exactly where you are supposed to be.

Behold, in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, I am supposed to be in Falls Church, where I launched my weekly newspaper almost 17 years ago, and I am not supposed to be in nearby Herndon or Prince William County.

That’s been confirmed for me by the radically different approaches the aforementioned jurisdictions, all relatively close by, have taken on the matter of immigration. To me, such an issue, insofar as it involves dispositions and relationships between persons on the most fundamentally human level, is decisive for life itself.

Herndon and Prince William have enacted mean-spirited laws that subject the entire immigrant populations of those places, legal and otherwise, to intimidation and discrimination. In doing this, they’re following suit with similar nasty initiatives underway all over the country, incited by right wing Republicans mostly, and blowhard sycophants like CNN commentator Lou Dobbs.

Prince William leaders have defied existing laws to mandate their police subject anyone suspected of committing a crime, no matter how trivial, to an investigation of their legal standing in the country. That is a call for the most brazen, discriminatory form of racial and ethnic "profiling" excess, targeting an entire ethnic class. Based on outward physical characteristics, the police in the county are required to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for speeding, or suspected of shoplifting.

Most recently, this week a GOP-dominated Virginia Crime Commission revealed that it intends to pressure Democratic Governor Tim Kaine to cave into its set of recommendations, which include the use of state troopers to help enforce federal immigration laws in ways similar to Prince William County. The only difference is that the commission wants to restrict background checks to suspected perpetrators of more serious crimes.

Kaine and other Democratic success stories in Virginia the last few years can credit the state’s most progressive region, that around my home of Falls Church, along with Arlington, Alexandria and eastern Fairfax County, with their overall margins of victory.

So that’s why it is doubly important that Falls Church followed suit with Alexandria and Arlington, its City Council unanimously adopting a very strongly worded repudiation of the racist underpinnings of many immigration laws over the years. "Many aspects of the history of U.S. immigration law and policy are less than exemplary of our ideals as expressed by our founding fathers," it reads.

It goes on to assert that the jurisdiction is resolved, in programs funded by local dollars, to provide essential services to persons without regard for legal status, as well as providing language accessibility and allowing all resident children to enroll in its schools without regard to citizenship.

It concludes, "The City of Falls Church hereby petitions the government of the U.S. to reform its immigration laws, to provide a coherent, worthy and enforceable system of regulating the migration of people, in order to secure to our nation now and into the future the economic, social, cultural, religious and other blessings and contributions of the many peoples of our world."

Thus, little Falls Church, with its 11,000 people, stands up, looks out over the Potomac, and waves a strong finger at Washington.

And, looking the other way, it is the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Falls Church and its feisty neighbors, having given Gov. Kaine and other Democrats their margins of victory, now buoys their collective resistance to those in Virginia who would have it repeat some of the uglier aspects of its past.

It’s an uphill battle. Somewhere around 80% of Americans think that state and local authorities ought to intervene on behalf of the federal government on the immigration issue. It is no time for equivocation or timid steps. It is the kind of bold action little Falls Church has taken that will make a difference in how people think.

And, oh yeah, Lou Dobbs: if you want to fight for the disappearing American middle class, why don’t you try locking horns with the 1% of the nation’s superrich who are actually causing it, rather than inciting political riots against the most vulnerable.

FCNP owner and editor Nick Benton - arguably the most flaming leftie liberal journalist in Metro DC - bloviates about the Falls Church City Council's recent Resolution to "support immigrants" by continuing to provide city services regardless of "legal status" and refusing to become engaged in anything related to immigration status.

Benton fails to mention that Falls Church City has among the highest income levels and real estate prices in Metro DC (and the United States) and therefore doesn't support the same kind of huge and brazen illegal alien presence found just a few miles away in Herndon, Manassas, Prince William County, and even in Culmore/Bailey's Crossroads, only one mile from the City line.

So the resolution isn't really courageous, it's a cheap publicity stunt (evidenced by the announcement on the main page of the City's web site, which links to a press release, and not to the resolution itself).

Benton's opening reference to Aldous Huxley is deeply ironic in the immigration context, since the British Huxley lived his last 25 years in America on a resident visa. A man of utmost honesty and commitment, Huxley blew his (and his wife's) applications for U.S. citizenship only at the last moment, when he confessed to an immigration judge that - being a longtime pacifist - he could not swear to the Oath Of Allegiance. Unlike many "immigrants" in America, when Huxley had the opportunity to fib, to dissemble, to "hop the fence" and to thus gain his U.S. citizenship, he stood on the truth and on his respect for both America and for the common law which we share with Huxley's Britain.

Behold our Nick Benton, a man of zeal, with the best of intentions, heart of gold, no ugly scars of racism or bigotry have invaded his lofty mind! He knows better than you or I, how to handle “immigrants”, it’s only our bigotry and stupidity which leads us to oppose all of the Washington amnesty programs. Let’s wave the magic wand, make them legal, give them status, sanctuary, freedom! And Lou Dobbs, stop trying to incite the masses. That privilege is reserved only for leftists, socialist and communists.

Let’s wave the magic wand, make them legal, give them status, sanctuary, freedom!

Ummmm.... so long as they live in Culmore and Annandale, and not in Our Fair City!

Good thing those Section 8a housing developments in Seven Corners are on the OPPOSITE side of Wilson Blvd. and not in OUR financial jurisdiction!

Good thing Fairfax County picks up all their bills, eh Nick!

It's so easy to be an ideological Big Spender when you have no bills to pay.

Maybe not any illegal presence at all, except while working during the day

Nicholas Benton is purposefully giving you a false picture of Herndon. First of all, it has, in substantial part, an immigrant population ~ legal.

It also has a bunch of illegal aliens trashing up the place.

The new town council is very much pro-immigrant, and anti-illegal alien, and have elected to use the law to protect the citizens and the immigrants against the illegal aliens.

This Benton guy appears to be unhappy that lawful immigrants are to be protected from him and his friends.

What a thuggish sort.

Thirty years ago, while I was in school at UCLA (and was a flaming Liberal), I took a job at a bank at the corner of Pico & Alvarado in Los Angeles. I worked in New Accounts and also assisted the business owners in the neighborhood with their issues. I had to learn some Spanish because the local non-business residents were all Hispanic, with quite a lot of illegal immigrants.

I will admit that my command of Spanish was not very good, but you have no idea the abuse that I took for being a non-Hispanic American with a lousy command of Spanish! I was told to "go back to college, chica, you don't belong here!" I was insulted and harassed. (There were some Hispanic business owners in the neighborhood who had been in the US for 20 years and who refused --or couldn't -- speak a word of English!) Finally one day, I had enough of the insults and abuse and, when this guy insulted me, I said, "As far as I know, this neighborhood is still in the United States of America and the language of the US is English. If you don't speak that language, I am sorry, but it is You who need to learn English, not me who needs to learn better Spanish!" The guy gave me the dirtiest look I have every seen, walked out the front door of the bank, unzipped his fly and peed on the front in broad daylight! He then stuck his head inside, and said, "This is what I think of English, America and you!"

My father was an immigrant to this country, so this was not some xenophobia on my part -- my dad was the biggest American flag waiver I ever met. I was just stunned by how brazen the anti-American feeling was in this Los Angeles neighborhood full of immigrants! And that was 30 years ago!

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