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Immigrant Hatred Kills: The Real Problem -- Ileto Murdered For Taking 'American' Jobs

[ Posted On: 2006-04-29 ]

April 26, 2006:--The more immigrant haters are booed in public, the more they become vicious in their opposition to any humane treatment of illegal aliens in the country. With attitudinal murder in mind, they show their ugly mood in many threatening ways, scaring the wit out of the confused public: They come here illegally and take our jobs, devour our welfare system, let’s hunt them down like criminals and shoot them if they resist.

Racial freaks are joining the immigration debate now snowballing across the country. Viewing their blogs on the Web is frightening to anyone that looks like Joseph Ileto.

Joseph Ileto is Asian-American, specifically Filipino-American. His murder and other similar slaying illustrate the danger of xenophobic minds out of control. He was killed not just because of the color of his skin, but also because he took “American” jobs. It was history that kept on repeating itself.

“In 1982, a young Chinese-American named Vincent Chin was bludgeoned to death outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Detroit. His killers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, were white auto workers who cursed him for putting them out of work.”

Joseph and his family were among the recent wave of legal immigrants from Southeast Asia. He took a government job as a postman. Anti-immigrant supremacists and separatists like Ebens and Nitz thought he shouldn’t have.

His murder took place in Chatsworth, California on August 10, 1999. In behalf of racists who argue that immigrants are taking away “American” jobs, especially illegal immigrants, Buford O. Furrow, Jr. shot Ileto dead without mercy. He was shot nine times even when he was already lifeless, showing how the gunman was consumed by xenophobic hate. Alarmed, President Bill Clinton went on national television and presented his “compelling argument for the passage of the hate crime legislation.”

This immigrant slayer thought that he was doing a service to the country. He confessed that he shot the Filipino-American mail carrier because he was “`a good target of opportunity to kill' … he was 'non-white and worked for the federal government'," an “American” job.

The hard working Ileto was not an illegal alien, but he was not white either like Furrow who really believed that the whites, his forebears, “owned” this country. Ileto had two jobs – one in the post office, and another in a private company. Supporting his parents and family, Ileto had to work hard to make both ends meet. In Furrow’s twisted mind, Ileto didn’t take only one but two jobs away from “native” born Americans like Ebens and Nitz.

This don’t-take-away-our job horror is a xenophobic insanity that haunts all “colored” immigrants. In fact any immigrant, legal or not, that looks like Hispanic or Chinese, is in extreme danger, stalked by this kind of vigilante type anti-immigrant crackdown.

Even at this moment, those who play the race against the humane treatment of illegal immigrants stir deranged xenophobic to commit murder. They are the real problem -- not the illegal aliens who, with a civilized approach to their predicament, and with our determination to enforce our immigration laws, need not create a national rape of our democratic processes and tear this country apart.

We have to be reasonable. It is catastrophic to lead this nation to a pre-civil war situation back in Abraham Lincoln’s time. Immediately prior to the outbreak of armed hostilities which American history recorded as the Great American Civil War [1860-1865], those who sympathized and determined to liberate slaves from their bondage, were looked down as mortal enemies of the South that should be resisted, while those who would enslave and protect their way of life in the South, were ostracized and considered sworn enemies of the North that should be suppressed.

It was the angry sympathizers of both sides swearing against each other like what we have now in the heat of this nationwide immigration reform debate – the fighting public with attitudinal murder in their mind similar to what is openly shown now -- that created events leading to one of the world’s bloodiest civil wars.

We paid dearly for this apocalypse. More than 600,000 Americans died. Countless were wounded, maimed and crippled. Massive destruction was enormous, and human misery was all over the land. The extensive cost of this horrific tragedy was beyond monetary estimation.

As if pre-conditioning the mind towards the same disastrous end, Ileto’s murder haunts millions of minorities across the country [specifically Filipino-Americans in this particular case] like a ghost from the past.

Way back in 1930, similar racial hate that killed Ileto occurred in Watsonville, California. Like what were occurring in the pre-revolutionary era, hundreds of rioting white men beat Filipino farm workers, burned farms and left lettuce picker Fermin Tobera dead with a bullet in his heart. His death alarmed the whole nation. Xenophobic killers thought that would stop people of other countries from coming here and “steal” their jobs!

This grim reality validates my thesis in this disquieting debate -- the existence of attitudinal murder in the mind of those who hate immigrants whether their coming here is illegal or not. And, I might add: It is unfortunate that the community’s indifference exacerbates this situation from bad to worse.

What is appalling about it – and indubitably regrettable -- is that Ileto’s murder is a traumatic reality that minority communities self-deny. Instead of recognizing it as a problem and do something about it, hate-targeted minority immigrants bury their heads under the sand.

It is a stigma that non-white immigrants are running away from just as white immigrants are running away from when bigoted by blacks or “colored” segregationists [reverse discrimination].

Hated and being killed because we are of a different race, like the Asian minority groups that according to the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, Audit of Violence Against Asian Pacific Americans: 1998 Annual Report sustain a high rate of hate crime casualties, we are not heard nor want to be heard as a community. We just want to be led, not want to lead; it is a subdued mentality that prefers to be incognito, leading immigrant haters to believe that we are a muted community of bipeds in the animal kingdom that unheard of, are about extinct. I could be wrong, but it is my declaration ex-cathedra until the contrary is proven right.

For, we could no longer ignore that anti-immigrant maniacs are on the loose. Unfortunately, we have no idea what Ileto’s murder and similar other murders should mean to multi-racial immigrants in this country.

What we should be more apprehensive about is that xenophobic with attitudinal murder in mind are encouraged by instigators to think that we are all Iletos and Toberas in the community that for taking one or two jobs, deserved to be gunned down. It is a terrible reality which we self-deny as something unreal that in time we thought would go away.

To this I say that we cannot deny nor escape our responsibility as a thinking community to act let alone respond to this threat, given the rare opportunity to connect Ileto’s murder to the issue as to how immigrants of color accused of taking local jobs away from Americans born here, regardless of whether their entry into the country is legal or not, should be humanely treated.

Un-American Americans that had not come out of their cocoon of boondock ignorance and xenophobic paranoia -- which is the real problem in this immigration imbroglio -- do not only threaten our security and well-being but also shame the whole nation in the eyes of the world, especially when we claim to be a civilized society.

In this free country, rather than be indifferent, we must act our choices -- oppose President George W. Bush’s guest-worker program to humanize the treatment of illegal aliens, not just with a good reason but with the best of reasons if we disagree, otherwise if we agree, we must endorse it and support the President not only honestly but also wholeheartedly.

It is not just bereft of logic but lack of intellectual grace, if it is not by its own account already disgracefully suicidal, to be unmindful of being slaughtered as sacrificial lambs in the altar of xenophobic hate.

Notes: The Author- Edwin A. Sumcad -- written published, unpublished academic papers; long years of newspaper experience, writing daily and magazine editorials, essays, feature articles, columns, novelettes, short stories. Academic, other works -- has degrees in literature and journalism, masters in development economics, and in civil law; journalist, practicing lawyer, Finance Attache, ASEAN specialist, retired diplomat, and former deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Edwin A. Sumcad is former deputy representative to the U.N., a recent recipient of Excellence Award in Journalism, San Diego, California, and a 2005 Awardee in Journalism and Diplomacy, Municipal Board of Ibajay, Aklan, Republic of the Philippines. Click here to read more articles by Mr. Sumcard

| View Profile & All Articles By: Edwin A. Sumcad |

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