ustxtxb_obs_2001_10_26_50_00031-00000_000.pdf

Imagine the tenacity of a love that convinces a Cuban suffering the U.S. embargo, or a Central American or an Iraqi suffering U.S. invasions, to actually flee to the United States, to work for the United States and to ulti mately teach her children to love the United States. It is our bur den to remind each other that, for better or worse, the entire world is now our homeland and that our fates rise and fall with the fates of all nations. their stations. Roughly two-thirds of the people milling around the “U.S. Passport Holder Only” sign were of Latino origin while the rest were an amalgam of Asians and Arabs that left the remaining white folks in a clear minority. Thirty minutes later the officials arrived and the ropes were dropped. Everyone scrambled. It was like traveling somewhere else, in some other, less orderly nation. I did not expect the chaos and neither did one of the few middle-aged white men in the group. Completely flustered, he admonished the crowd for cutting in line, for losing order. Ignored, he finally let out a desperate cry of, “Hey, I was born in this country!” Incredible, but I was on his side sort of. Though his final appeal was pathetic, I agreed with him. I wanted order. I wanted process. I wanted ease; I wanted America. And in a sickening moment of self-awareness, I knew I wanted those Latinos and Asians gone. I wanted their passports revoked. I wanted it to be just us, the ones who knew how to line up without causing a mess. To write this shames me even now In a way the revolution I had talked so much about had quietly begun to happen and, for that moment, I found myself on the losing side, the wrong side, the white side. After the 2000 census it is no secret that the Los Angeles metropolitan area has experienced an influx of immigrants in such numbers that the acculturation process is happening in reverse. The dominant culture is having to get used to the ways of the newcomers, and that includes something relatively petty like scrambling for a place in line. Now the joke was on me. I was forced to admit that the walls of anger I had used to order my own world were coming down. My airport story is only one such experience. Lately I’ve begun to realize what every immigrant eventually learns. When you’ve set yourself afloat in the world, when you’ve opened yourself up to other cultures, a day comes in which you no longer recognize yourself; you change. Long before September 11th, mainstream America has been in the throes of change. Though this has long been the leitmotif of the American experience, immigration patterns of the last 20 to 30 years have catalyzed that change into something radical. Walls of difference the “us” and “them” we rely on so muchare fractured and falling. We are becoming a nation of global citizens; we are becoming, in a sense, open, vulnerable and naked. Consider the flawed logic of racial profiling as a measure of airport security. If it is extreme Islamic fundamentalism that we should fear, then how will racial profiling help us screen out Muslim extremists hailing from the Indian subcontinent, Asia and Southeast Asia or, for that matter, the black Americans or Latinos or Anglos that follow the Islamic faith and might, according to our worst fears, answer a fanatic call at any moment? Inversely, how will we keep from wasting time on the thousands of Arab Christians or Arab Jews that may match the feared race but not the feared faith? Recently our President has been unanimously praised for his foresight in opening the Office of Homeland Security. Unfortunately, his team of advisors seems to lack the insight available on most any street corner in the many immigrant enclaves \(soon to across this country. Many of us left lives filled with the daily threat of terrorist violence. Almost all of us left countries suffering economic crises caused for the benefit of the first world. We, the children of immigrants, have seen our parents take the jobs nobody wants, the abuse nobody deserves and, at times of mainstream American crisis, the suspicions nobody can support.Yet we have seen our parents, these immigrants, these people, turn indignation into dignity even as they have soothed their children’s anger into love. Imagine the tenacity of a love that convinces a Cuban suffering the U.S. embargo, or a Central American or an Iraqi suffering U.S. invasions, to actually flee to the United States, to work for the United States and to ultimately teach her children to love the United States. It is our burden to remind each other that, for better or worse, the entire world is now our homeland and that our fates rise and fall with the fates of all nations. Perhaps then, the Office of Homeland Security should be restructured as the Office of Global Stability. It is time now for Americans to recognize themselves. After all, we immigrants are a people who know that if your project is to build a better life for your family and your neighbors, that if you really care about giving your children a world free of terrorism, then national borders are small hurdles to cross and the sweet romance of a homeland is a small thing to give up. We are, in a word, Americans. It is time we recognized ourselves. Farid Matuk is a poet and freelance writer of Peruvian and Syrian descent. A long-time resident of California, he currently lives in Austin. 10/26/01 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 31