“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
WHIPPING THEMSELVES into a frenzy, they prepare for war. The enemy are immigrant workers; invisible, yet ubiquitous. They lurk in the shadows, and pose an imminent threat to the American public. In case you weren’t aware of this “invader,” armed vigilantes, local politicians, governors, members of both houses of Congress, and the president are closing ranks to make sure you are afraid. Behind them, a phalanx of media pundits are joining the chorus to awaken a complacent population that immigrants are threatening to wreck society.
Anti-immigrant hysteria is pervading every corner of daily life, finding resonance and active support among a host of right-wing forces, and mobilizing the lower ranks of the state apparatus to take their own “initiative” to stop immigrants. The result is a volatile climate, where a hostile and often racist backlash against the presence of undocumented workers is manifesting itself across the United States.
In this environment, immigrants—in particular Latino immigrants—are criminalized and morphed into the next potential “terrorist threat.” Hate crimes against immigrants are on the rise across the country. In late December of 2005, a twenty-year-old migrant worker named Guillermo Martinez was shot in the back and killed by Border Patrol agents, leaving behind his wife and two young children.
