Despite a feigned concern about the distinction between “illegal” and “legal” immigrants, anti-immigrant forces in this country have helped stir up a general contempt for immigrants which goes beyond the status of documentation. The rhetoric of FAIR and other nativist hatemongering groups has contributed to a prejudice from which documented immigrants are not immune.

Seila Mosquera is part of the Ecuadorian immigrant community in the greater New Haven, CT, area—a community which itself has been the target of white supremacy and nativist hate from such groups as the Community Watchdog Project and North East White Pride, as well as citizenry in general here in the supposedly liberal Nutmeg State. As a community leader and resident of East Haven, a New Haven suburb where police harassment against Latinos/as seems to be the flavor of the day, Mosquera is tired of the presumptuous and pejorative beliefs about her culture and her community.

“Immigrants are no better or worse than anyone else,” Mosquera says in a recent opinion article in the New Haven Register. “We are human beings looking for a means to survive.” She passionately shares of her own journey and life in this country, making plain an obvious point that so many haters seem to miss: though immigrants are different, “different is not bad.”

We must continue to move beyond the anti-immigrant blather of the nativist movement in order to, as Mosquera exhorts, “learn from each other and prevent a lot of resentment and misconception.”

Read the full article at http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/03/23/opinion/doc49c44a3bc7e3c863749114.txt