Dr. Gonzalo Santos' Letter in response to LATimes Jean Guerrero Opinion piece
Dear Ms. Guerrero, December 10, 2021
I am what you might call an activist professor at CSU-Bakersfield, who has taught the Sociology of Immigration and participated in the modern immigration rights movement since it began in 1994.
I want to commend you for your excellent column today in the LA Times. You hit three nails in the head, so to speak, with clarity, eloquence, and great insight:
1. The Dems – whom I never stop criticizing for their infuriating timidity & treacherous duplicity – keep taking the bait of falling for the anti-immigrant narrative of the Republicans, as you point out; so they concede the conceptual framing of the issue as one of crime, drugs, national security, “invasions” and “floods,” etc. You exposed well the fallacy and counterproductive adoption by Obama (and prior to him Clinton, who signed the worst anti-immigrant laws since 1924) of the “good” immigrants vs. “bad” immigrants – or “families, not felons.” You point out how this self-inflicted, unsuccessful defensive strategy on the part of the Democrats is paving the way for Trumpism 2.0.
2. The mainstream media has been deeply complicit in transmitting and amplifying the fearmongering and anti-immigrant narratives of the two parties – explicitly, deliberately, and relentlessly by the rightwing media, but also implicitly by the “prestige” or liberal media, and even progressive non-commercial media. You are right the latter media causes more harm by legitimizing and naturalizing the nativist narrative.
3. You also criticized the media like few other journalists have done for their constant reliance on the Tanton white supremacist network of anti-immigrant organizations as their souces - for “balance” among the liberal media, or affirmation of their explicit editorial line among the rightwing media – without either giving adequate context to the nature of those hate groups.
As a way to encourage you to continue your work on the last topic, I am copying Mr. Rick Swartz, an advocate for immigrants who works in Washington, D.C. and who has done extensive research on the Tanton network, and who is an excellent and reliable source.
I end by saying that your column stood heads and shoulders over the daily barrage of badly-framed debates over immigration policy and I thank you for this much-needed corrective.
Best regards,
Gonzalo Santos, Ph.D., Emeritus
Department of Sociology
California State University, Bakersfield
9001 Stockdale Hwy, DDH24, Bakersfield, CA 93311
Academic web site: https://www.csub.edu/~gsantos/Public web site: https://www.facebook.com/KernCoalitionforCitizenship
