Illegal alien. Illegal immigrant. Undocumented immigrant. These are all terms, politically correct or not, that refer to the same thing: people who have crossed the U.S. border in secret, undetected—without a green card, a work visa, a passport, or citizenship. These are the people who come to the United States of America in search of something better than what they left.
It could be for money. It could be because their family is already here. It could be so their child will be born a citizen of the U.S. It could be to get away from all-consuming violence and oppression. It could be from a lot of things.
But, we are a nation of immigrants that’s attempting to stem the tide; this is the same tide, mind you, that started when Christopher Columbus and whatever other genocidal maniacs first landed on the shores of the land that didn’t belong to them, and then proceeded to kill, maim, and enslave whomever they felt deserved it.
But those were the good ol’ days. Now, we’ve got laws, dammit, and these people coming over here are ruining everything we’ve worked so hard to destroy. As one astute letter writer from Lompoc is letting Sun readers know this week: “It’s time to stop pandering to the misguided notion that all illegal aliens are here for honorable purposes.”
Let’s think about what else we can make that statement apply to: “It’s time to stop pandering to the misguided notion that all humans are here for honorable purposes.”
A recent very violent, terrible incident in Santa Maria involving an undocumented immigrant will make its way into election conversations under the guise of many things, all to further the politics of those who want to build border fences and deport everyone with brown skin—that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it all depends on who you’re talking to.
And those staunchly on one side of that argument can build their case using San Francisco as one starting point. On July 1, Kathryn Steinle, 32, was shot in her upper torso and later died at the hospital. The alleged perpetrator: an undocumented immigrant convicted of seven felonies and previously deported to Mexico.
On Aug. 13, protestors stood on the sidewalks in front of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse in Santa Maria. On one side: we’ll call them “against the tide of people crossing the border illegally.” On the other: we’ll call them “for equal treatment of people, no matter what country they belong to.”
The reason these demonstrators were there was because that day was the initial arraignment for Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, who’s allegedly involved in the July 24 violent sexual assault of Marilyn Pharis. Pharis, 64, died in the hospital on Aug. 1. The case has attracted national attention—because of the immigration status of one of the alleged perpetrators and its political staying power, not because a woman was brutally assaulted, attacked, and later passed from her injuries.
SMPD Chief Ralph Martin spoke at a press conference on Aug. 7: saying Pharis fought back while she was sexually assaulted, strangled, and beaten with a hammer. It’s awful, what happened. Unimaginable that someone could perpetrate such a thing. Unimaginable what her friends and family must be going through, what she went through.
Martinez Ramirez, 29, and Jose Villagomez, 20, were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances of burglary, mayhem, and rape during a felony murder. Chief Martin said Martinez Ramirez is an undocumented immigrant who’s been arrested six times in 15 months, including two weeks before the assault on Pharis.
“This is a national issue, I think it starts in Washington, D.C., with this administration that we see and these policies, I think you can draw a direct line over to Sacramento with the policies I’m going to say with this governor and the Legislature,” Martin said during the conference, speaking of AB 109 and Proposition 47—both designed to keep low-level, non-violent offenders out of jail because of California’s chronically over-populated prisons.
So Martin definitely turned this into a political conversation, too, which essentially means an agency throws up its hands and says, “It wasn’t me. It was them.”
On Aug. 16 in Oceano, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office responded to calls of a domestic violence incident. Upon arriving on the scene, they found one victim—Patricio Jacobo—dead from apparent knife wounds and the alleged suspect—Humberto Jacobo Chavez—suffering from self-inflicted knife wounds.
“The Sheriff’s Office has received numerous inquiries regarding the immigration status of Jacobo Chavez. We have information that he is a legal resident of the U.S. Jacobo Chavez has no prior contact with the Sheriff’s Office,” the SLO Sheriff’s Office said in a press release.
So that’s a question now. It’s a thing. One more thing to fuel the fire of anti-immigration sentiment. It will build itself much like the anti pit bull thing has—national media will seek out the local incidents where the suspect is what it wants because they know they’ll get eyes on the screen with those stories.
What about all the U.S. citizens who commit low-level crimes, eventually graduating to violence? Where do we deport them? Immigration and status have nothing to do with violence or violent crimes. And if you ask me, the conversation around crime in this country needs to take a deep breath and look at itself for what it really is.
Because it becomes a political issue, and it is a social issue. One that needs a measured approach that pays attention to the roots of where violent behavior and crime come from. Not chalking it up to another statistic.
Much like any argument that builds—each side skews its own sets of data to support the storyline it tells.
According to USA Today immigration reporter Alan Gomez in a recent opinion piece on immigration and crime statistics, “the truth always lies somewhere in the middle.”
So will the violent domestic abuse incident that happened in Nipomo fall to the back pages because the suspect isn’t in the U.S. illegally? All I know is that conversations like these tend to dissolve into incoherent opinions that are blatantly based on something other than reality and fact. Just ask Donald Trump for his opinion.
Or you could ask Tony from Santa Barbara, who spoke to the Sun during the protest on Aug. 13.
“There’s de facto sanctuaries. It’s where illegals can go and commit a lot of crime, and they know it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Santa Maria’s one.”
’Merica.
The Canary’s waiting for her stars-and-stripes lawn chair, so she can attend the next demonstration with creepy binoculars. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 20-27, 2015.
