Señorita Ruth

Immigrations and Emotion
At a Q & A with the Monticello, MN Chamber of Commerce, Congresswoman Michele Bachman (R-MN) pointed out that America is being lost to immigrants, and that a fence at the border between Mexico and the U.S. from Arizona to Texas is a well-thought-out answer to the seeming problem. Following is the excerpt from the Monticello Times:

She touched on various topics, including the Iraq war, immigration control, healthcare and energy conservation.

She was particularly emotional about immigration, a subject that she made headlines with back in February when she was very critical of the system that allowed the woman charged with crashing into a bus in Cottonwood, Minn., to continue driving.

“We’re losing our country,” she said. “People are not assimilating themselves to America. They’re not speaking English, and you must speak it if you want to succeed here in this country.”

A Monticello businessman asked about a fence along the southern border of Texas and Arizona.

“The money is there. Why haven’t we seen anything?” he asked.

“Exactly. The money is there. It’s our (Congress’) fault. We aren’t doing our job here,” Bachmann replied. “And the argument that fences don’t work doesn’t hold water. Look at Israel and Palestine Fences work. Maybe people have too much interest or benefit from open borders.”

Where to begin! I’d like to address first the flagrant misunderstanding she seems to have regarding the “success” of fences in Israel and Palestine. Obviously a congressperson that hasn’t traveled to the region, or one who keeps up with international news, because if she did, she’d know that success is elusive in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and that the fence she so righteously champions is one put in place as a deterrent from a population with whom Israel is in frequent conflict, and whose goal is the ethnic cleansing of Israelis in certain areas they inhabit within that fence. In other words, the fence is part of a comprehensive defense system against enemies with whom they’re at war. At least one Minnesotan agrees.

To equate the necessity of the Israeli-Palestinian fence with one along the southern border of the U.S. is nothing short of ludicrous and incongruous. It minimizes the struggle between Israel and Palestine, equating it to the overblown immigration media circus in this country, and it further scandalizes an issue that gets little rational thought and much ideological abuse. This irrational urgency in finishing the fence between the U.S. and Mexico has lead to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, waiving (via congress approved waivers) more than 30 laws in place to protect property, environment, and people.

An immediate trigger of suspicion for me is the report that the congresswoman got “particularly emotional” regarding immigration policies. This is indicative of an opinion not based on fact or figures, but on a “gut feeling,” or a set of ideas cobbled together through hearsay or misunderstanding about the topic at hand. To be led, as a politician, by one’s emotions regarding any policy will inevitably cause one to proceed with blinders on, to champion things other than logical courses of action or clear-headed notions of the facts, thus motivating legislation that does not have a clear practical goal, but rather serves to stand as an ideological statement of such emotions. She appeals to those present by using words like “losing our country,” which is a baseless statement meant to rile the emotions. Again, a clear indication of a lack of knowledge regarding the issue, and furthermore an encouragement to others adopt similar myopic views.

Congresswoman Bachman would be well-recommended to visit the areas about which she speaks with such ignorant command. By standing next to and appreciating the full meaning of the wall between Israel and Palestine, I would hope she might come to appreciate its true purpose and reason for existence. By visiting the American Southwest and staring out across the vast miles of desert the border traverses, she might come to understand that what doesn’t hold water is her unilateral, uneducated view of what a fence will and won’t do.

A further discussion of immigrant assimilation, beginning with a critical view of English Only policies and the demystification of bilingualism will follow in the days and weeks ahead. Stay tuned!

Tell me a little about yourself
I’m always hard-pressed to fill in an “About Me” blurb or make an effort to “Tell [you] about [my]rself.” It’s certainly not an easy question to answer, and the more I think about it, the more complicated it gets. My reaction to such tasks is always the same: “Oh man. Where do I begin?”
Encompassing even some part, much less the entirety, of one’s being is challenging for many reasons. Self-identity is an abstract that is often hard to articulate successfully. How we view ourselves is dependent on outside factors and variables, many of which we have no control over. We internalize events around us, absorbing their effects on us and drawing conclusions about ourselves based on those experiences.
Self-identity is a complex matter. Not only is the average señorita plagued with questions of body image and adequacy as a person and a woman, but she is also bombarded with the meta conversations regarding these issues. Whether or not I should be worried about my weight, hair, the condition of my skin or how much money is in my wallet; it can all get rather confusing with experts and the media also weighing in. After all, the only way to get a good idea of who we might be is by looking at our reflection on the mirror of society. But the images we receive as feedback are often blurry, out of focus, or wholly questionable.
So, who or what are we?
Humans exist as a paradox between being unique and being just like everyone else. Our individuality is both precious and commonplace, as it is the most important journey we embark on, but only to ourselves. We talk about ourselves the most, we think about our own situations more than anyone else’s, and we view the world in an ego-centric way, one that often seeks out the benefit to the self above all else.
Contrasting with our self interest in the name of survival, we’re also social creatures who depend on each other for many of our needs and wants. We’ve created countless cultures and societies to fulfill needs that we can’t achieve on our own. Within these social groups we develop hierarchies, social networks, conventions, common ground and shared experiences, and many other indexes by which we identify with others.
Language is a telling marker of identity. We evaluate others by their speech, and are in return also dissected by the things we say. Words and specific ways of saying them announce to others where we’re from, our age group, our socio-economic status, and also betrays some of our world view. This reciprocal indexing occurs with nary a conscious thought, most of the time, and we operate in our day to day lives exacting very little effort to communicate our needs and wants.
So, really, tell me about yourself
A quirky grad student in the business of making observations about our language and culture. An immigrant with dual citizenship who’s been in the U.S. for over 15 years. A desert rat, born and bred all along the sands of northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S. A mother, sister, daughter. An aspiring writer interested in art, music, politics, and many other things.

This space is an expression of all those things, an analysis of what makes you, you and me, me. If you know the complexities self-identity in the Southwest, stick around, I’m hoping to unravel some of those intricate tapestries. If you don’t know what it’s like, stick around, and gain new insight into the people and places of this significant American region.