I GET concerned about the news these days which call my attention more than the after-election stunts of Filipino politicians. I mean, the Arizona immigration law and the incidents of a Filipino home and a car, and more, being burned in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The TV news of arson committed against two Filipinos and an Indian family in Northern Ireland was called by the Police Service of Northern Ireland as “racially motivated.” An SUV was set on fire, which then caught and burned away a good part of a neighbor’s house in an otherwise peaceful village. Some 7,000 Filipinos live and work in Northern Ireland in hospitals and caring homes.
The day before, there were other such incidents, the TV news added. It made note that the Filipinos there are skillful and have good jobs, thus, to some jobless Irish nationals in Belfast, it’s like usurpation, of role and power?
I also remember what a friend, who lived in Washington, said about African-Americans not so long ago being jealous of what Filipinos could do, as shown in some stories of harassment.
As for the Arizona immigration law, there is this law signed by Gov. Jan Brewer which will become effective in just a few weeks, but now pending the results of a federal suit filed by the federal government to say that the Arizona immigration law preempts the federal law, that the power to regulate immigration is in the federal government, that “these are concerns that belong to the nation as a whole, not a single state.”
But what’s wrong with the Arizona law?
It requires that immigrants (especially Mexicans slipping in through the border in southern Arizona) must carry their alien registration documents at all times anywhere (even while they’re in a swim?). Any policeman has also the right, according to the new law, to question the immigration status, etc. of a suspicious person. That is scary, yes.
But the federal government has filed a suit, saying that the Arizona immigration law makes everyone “subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”
The thing is, the results of an Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted a few months ago said 57 percent of Americans would back up the Arizona law. only 37 percent oppose it.
But President Barack Obama says that the Arizona law would “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
If you remember the Filipino farm workers in the winter between 1929 and 1930, they were harassed “for taking jobs from whites.” Objected to was also the fact that Filipinos men mixed with white women. There were a number of Filipinos killed in violent incidents, their places dynamited. There was even a “race war” in the Bay Area where White gangs pulled Filipinos out of their dwellings.
Writer Carlos Bulosan was in the middle of this; in fact, he was in the bunkhouse which was burned by Whites. Such incidents were part of his bitter years in the place where he had earlier hoped to see happiness.
Bulosan wrote: “I know deep down in my heart that I am an exile in America. I feel like a criminal running away from a crime I didn't commit. And this crime is that I am a Filipino in America.”
I hope a small recurrence of the racism issue won’t destroy the world’s sense of oneness in a peaceful universe. Otherwise, a resurgence of it anywhere in the world could catch fire and one of the races most affected as a people would be the global Filipino.
As it is, with the world as the Filipino home, we don’t have to look back to the times when racism was every nation’s top agenda, when there were no “international” meetings, no summits.
That was a long time ago and I have read somewhere that Whites (and racists?) are running out in the world, with the international migrant experience of people and the birth of new cultural colors in the blood of the next generations. Or so we hope.
(ecuizon@gmail.com)