Of Immigration

We find ourselves at another time in the American history where there are people yearning for legitimacy in a society sometimes wrapped around an ideology of what America is and who Americans are. We find ourselves watching human beings taking to the streets to protest and to demand the right to be considered legitimate. This is, to me, the matter before the American people of all ethnicities and skin colors.

Legitimacy is the force that is driving this issue that is long overdue. The need to be ligitimate is an ingredient crucial to the end result of self-worth, self-esteem, value and respect. The need to be legitimate provokes the cries of the voiceless and unrepresented.Legitimacy allows individuals to walk in and around members of the same society feeling like and actually being integral members of their society.

All people from the rainbow of the Latin world have entered the quasi-political scene of open protest and freedom of speech. Mexicans, Salvadorians, Central Americans, Islanders and the like all entered into American streets to show their faces, ethnic pride and desire to be a legitimate member of the ideology of America that states everyone has the right to live, be free and pursue happiness.

It is my belief that my Latin brothers and sisters have come up against what many minorities (and women on occassion) encounter on a regular basis-the ideal of supremacist ideology that provides an inherent belief that one group is superior to the other. When you digest the fact that 15 million people (and co-incidentally a larger amount in key voting states such as California and New York) there can be no confusion among the onlookers that "granting" legitimate citizen status to a large group of people who's ideology may differ substantially from that of the power structure provokes fear and suspicion.

Ultimately, like DuBois, we as a nation will have to offer an answer to his question of what it feels like to be a problem. DuBois asked this question in 1903 concerning a large group of African descendants turned loose in America without capital and without rights. My Latino brothers are asking not too exist in this nation as a problem, they want to be legitimate and seen as an important piece of the American fabric, to be included in the discussion on what happens to their lives and for them to able to legitimately have a hand in their destiny-to be an American without an asterisk. It appears that they, like African Americans and the founding fathers, have the same idea.