SIDE 3: Advocates want the laws obeyed, too

Gregg Ramos is a longtime Nashville attorney and chairman of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Nashville. He is a constant advocate for social justice, not only for Hispanics in Nashville but all people. He also is part of the community advisory board established by Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall for his 287g deportation program.

Gregg is a hero of mine and a fellow Mexican-American. Both our fathers served in World War II. Gregg grew up in Arizona; I grew up in Kansas. Our parents are gone, but we share their same faith. His Spanish is much better than mine, but I am improving each day.

English was the only language spoken in my home. So I had to get the basics of Spanish in college. Now, my immersion in the Hispanic community in Nashville through Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church has made me courageous enough to try my weak Spanish in public.

Here is Gregg's response to Jody, the sister of one of his childhood friends:

Thanks for your powerful perspective. But please, don’t let so many of the bad people you see there in the Maricopa County jail skew your entire outlook regarding all the good, honest, and hard working immigrant families who are there are in Arizona and throughout the United States.

Unfortunately, the greater and tighter the enforcement, especially there at the Arizona border and in the other border states, the more important those damn coyotes become in providing immigrant families with their only viable access to this great country of ours.

Sheriff Arpaio unreasonably refuses to comprehend and acknowledge that all his efforts, and those of his “posse”, are only exacerbating the very problem he (allegedly) is seeking to prevent, thus leading to even more of the human suffering that you so vividly described in your email, especially the unbelievably tragic story of the 17 yr. old girl. I sincerely believe that Arpaio’s efforts effectively cause the coyote system to become even more entrenched!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone illegal immigration. The problem however, is that our entire immigration system is broken. It makes absolutely no sense.

One example: Our country creates, and thus needs, more than 750,000 new, unskilled or low-skilled employment positions each year. These jobs largely go unfilled by American workers however, who are either unable or, more likely, unwilling, to perform the hard labor required.

This means that we drastically need foreign workers to fill the jobs. This documented need notwithstanding, our country only provides 5,000 visas each year for unskilled laborers. Needless to say, this ridiculous figure comes nowhere close to satisfying what we actually need.

So, for most of the unskilled workers coming from Latin America, there is not even a line for
them to get in should they want to try and come across the border legally. Faced with no lawful opportunity to come to America, too many immigrants have no alternative but to come across the border unlawfully.

Again, by concentrating on enforcement alone without trying to fix our broken immigration system at the same time, we in the USA are just adding fuel to the already out-of-control immigration fire. We are creating even more need for the coyote system – that which you and I seem to agree is a plague on our society. This will be the true legacy of Sheriff Arpaio.

Wouldn’t it make much more sense if we knew exactly who was coming to our country in the first place? This would be a primary goal of a guest worker program, which is at the core of comprehensive immigration reform. Such reform would allow us to weed out those with a criminal history as well as more efficiently keep track of those who overstay their visas.

Believe me, the last thing in the world I want is an immigrant population that comes here and violates our criminal laws (I was an Assistant Prosecutor in Phoenix from 1980 to 1984, so I know about, and advocate for, law and order). These criminals, especially the drug dealers, coyotes and drunk drivers, make it much more difficult for the overwhelming majority of immigrants who will do just about anything to avoid the spotlight, choosing instead to lead peaceful, law abiding and uneventful livrees.

I don’t want the criminals here in the first place and if they manage to get here, I want them gone! Comprehensive immigration reform will help make this happen much more than enforcement efforts only.

Can you imagine how horrible life must be for these folks in their respective native countries that they are compelled to literally risk their very existence by crossing the brutal Arizona desert in order to come to this great country of ours? Surely, we Americans can do better; we must be more humane.

We have to remember that these folks are God's creations - living, breathing human beings. We must resist the efforts of Sheriff Arpaio and others like him to de-humanize these folks. We must live up to our lofty American ideals. In our Pledge of Allegiance, we say that we are "... one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In this respect, Martin Luther King said, "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." When we fight for MLK's vision, I believe we truly fight for "one nation, under God, indivisible."

As for the children of undocumented immigrants, many find themselves at a dead end upon graduating from H.S., even when they graduate with honors. This is because they find themselves unable to proceed to college without SS nos. or not being able to afford to pay out-of-state tuition because of their status as undocumented immigrants. This is true even if they have lived in the United States for most of their lives.

We are trying to change this sad reality with the DREAM Act, thus providing these young students the hope of a brighter future. Without hope I’m afraid, too many tragically turn to a life of crime. Moreover, many (way too many) young students drop out of HS before graduation precisely because they see no hope for their lives beyond HS. They reason, “What’s the use?” “What possible reason do I have to stay in school?”

I believe we as a country can do better. I myself would not be where I am today if it were not for a lot of good people who helped me along the way, especially my father who was raised in Northern Mexico. My father only had a 3rd grade education and didn’t speak English at all until he was an adult.

Yet he served our country in WWII (he served in the U.S. Army in 1944 and 1945, and was in Europe during the last year of the War). My brother served our country in Viet Nam. The point is that my father and many other good people along the way provided me with the opportunity for success. With this opportunity came hope for the future.

As a Mexican-American, the only thing distinguishing my young life in Arizona from today’s immigrant children was that I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States of America -- land of opportunity, where dreams really do come true. This is the America I know and cherish. I truly believe this is what we can be again.

We are, after all, a country of immigrants. Sheriff Arpaio and the Minutemen on the other hand, at least in my humble opinion, represent racism, intolerance and fear – everything America is not and hopefully will never be.

Gregg

P.S.: Please feel free to share this with the Joe Arpaio and his staff there at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. I’m sharing it with our Sheriff and Chief of Police here in Davidson County, TN so they hopefully can more readily understand my perspective regarding Sheriff Daron Hall’s 287(g) program.