That’s Hitting below the Border

I grew up in a bi-lingual home with a bi-lingual family. My mother was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, my father in Romania (German and Italian heritage) and my step-father in Hungary. We spoke Bulgarian to my Baba (cute for “grandmother”), although a U.S. citizen (she mistakenly described a bill of lading when asked about the Bill of Rights, which impressed the testing officer back then), but her English was as best stumbling and went against her grain. OK, my Bulgarian was “baby talk,” what was a Slavic “diminutive” manner of speech and which did not evolve into adult-speak because she passed before I was old enough to make the change.

Believe it or not, in my birth city of Washington, D.C., there was a small Bulgarian community, and when they got together, I understood everything that was said, and in my diminutive, I could carry on a very appropriate conversation. They were fiercely pro-American and anti-communist. Each of my parental group not only spoke many languages fluently, but each one of them (only my mother kept her accent) spoke impeccable English, never making grammatical errors and commanding a vast and nuanced English. My father was a journalist (in English, of course), my mother an analyst for the U.S. Department of State and my step-father was a senior career U.S. Foreign Service officer-turned professor.

Nobody ever told us to “speak English or go back where you came from.” Nobody threatened to call the immigration authorities on us. Nobody ever questioned our commitment as U.S. citizens, our loyalty or our priorities. Nobody looked at us as unwelcome outsiders.

In local public schools, which by the way were uniformly then excellent (today, the D.C. public school system is a joke), I learned that we were a nation of immigrants (no, we didn’t study much about Native Americans back then; sorry) and a mixing bowl that combined to make us the most powerful nation on earth. Mixed ethnicities and racial blends brought diverse thinking, new approaches, to problem solving. Immigrants, cherishing the freedoms we once had, that once-omnipresent upward mobility and that now-past ability to achieve the American dream through public education and hard work. That mix was our strength. No one had the slightest inkling of “income inequality.” Nobody thought that the United States needed help to compete with the rest of the world.

Our infrastructure exploded. President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) instituted the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956, which created that extraordinary web of interstate roads that hyper-accelerated the United States into a well-connected and highly productive economic machine. Our massive increase in research and educational spending, our reaction to a Soviet launch of the first orbital satellite (Sputnik) in 1957, also under Republican Eisenhower, pushed the United States to become the global educational, technology and innovation leader for decades to come. We are still living on the investments of that era, having elected to pull back on research and education with obvious negative results. We no longer invest in ourselves.

Indeed, just about everything in current GOP economic and immigration policy is directed at growth for only one segment of this nation: the rich. Everyone else is part of a massive “big loser” pool. And to justify this folly, the GOP has turned our twisted immigration reality into the “big scapegoat” for their horrifically failed and failing policies.

Nothing screams injustice and short-sightedness like our current immigration enforcement choices, and contrary to AG Jeff “zero tolerance” Sessions, they are choices not legal mandates. By choosing to prosecute as a felony anyone who crossed the border illegally, we have literally forced any accompanying minor children to be separated from their parents.

That we have actually lost track of 1,500 minor children so separated shows our callous disregard for basic humanity. That too many of us now characterize adults who were brought to this nation as children, often very, very young children and know of no other country (the DACA Dreamers), as unwelcome undesirables is testament to our complete rejection of the most basic Judeo-Christian values. That police officers are ready to stop persons, even US citizens, just for speaking the second most prevalent language in this country, Spanish, that ICE has swept up and inadvertently deported US citizens because of their Latino look and accent, tells you how cruel and bigoted a nation we truly have become.

“Spanish, the first European tongue to take root in North America, has established itself as perhaps the most relentlessly polarizing language in the United States… Two decades ago it sparked an emotional debate in California about banning bilingual education, a topic that divided even Latino families. During heavy immigration into California and other border states, Spanish was the language of choice in whole neighborhoods.

“Now, the presidency of Donald Trump has reignited the linguistic divide. Trump has railed against illegal immigration, attacked the character of those who cross the border and once said ‘this is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.’

“At the same time, Spanish is making inroads in American pop culture. Luis Fonsi’s global hit ‘Despacito’ broke numerous records on the pop charts and became the first YouTube video to hit 5 billion views… ‘When we’re living in a world where symbols become dividing lines, language can be one of those,’ said Brian Levin, director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino… In this environment, two recent incidents seared themselves into the long tradition of people being berated for speaking Spanish, while also illustrating the power of video and social media to launch a counterattack.

“In one case, New York attorney Aaron Schlossberg yelled at Latino restaurant workers at a Fresh Kitchen in Manhattan for speaking Spanish and threatened to report them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement… ‘My guess is they are not documented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country,’ Schlossberg said in the recorded incident. ‘I pay for their welfare. I pay for their ability to be here. The least they can do ... is speak English.’… After a barrage of criticism that included an ironic serenade from a mariachi band, Schlossberg apologized on Twitter and said he is not racist.

“The same week as the New York incident, a Border Patrol agent was recorded stopping two women in Montana and asking them for identification… ‘Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here,’ the agent can be heard saying in the video… A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the incident is ‘being reviewed to ensure that all appropriate policies were followed.’

“It’s hard to know whether there has been an uptick in confrontations over the speaking of Spanish. Such incidents have been reported for decades, and the share of Latinos who can speak Spanish has declined over the last decade, with 73% of Latinos speaking Spanish at home in 2015, down from 78% in 2006, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Many Latinos grew up in households where only English is spoken.

“Since the presidential election, dozens of Latinos have reported verbal assaults for speaking Spanish through Documenting Hate, a project that tracks bias incidents and hate crimes around the country. The reported incidents include insults over a truck driver radio channel and confrontations in a movie theater and at a hotel pool.

“‘The prejudice against Spanish is not about Spanish the language; it’s about the people who speak Spanish,’ said Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College. ‘Who tend to be people of color, who tend to be people from a lower socioeconomic background and who, not always but sometimes, are immigrants and are in the center of a lot of negative targeting in the political arena.’” Los Angeles Times, May 28^th. Just like those white lower class immigrants of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th century.

I know that 50% of the CEOs of successful Silicon Valley start-ups, huge job-creators, are immigrants. I know that so much of the food I eat was grown with massive undocumented labor, proud, hard-working and dignified. I am the proud son of immigrant parents. Why am I acceptable? Why were my parents acceptable by the same country that is turning against immigrants, even educated and skilled immigrants, today? Because we were/are white and Protestant? I’m sorry, that’s not good enough!

That is most definitely NOT what made America great! That is NOT the country that my parents fled from communist Europe to find freedom and the American dream! I am ashamed of this malignant populist force that is eroding those aspects of my country, a nation, that I as a lawyer and officer of the court, was sworn to protect under a system of justice, freedom, fairness and equality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I will rail and scream until my voice turn hoarse against that massive tide of un-American populists, whose ignorance of democratic principles and willingness to allow bigotry and sloganeering to guide America, is literally destroying this land that I love, piece by piece.