“We are human beings looking for a means to survive”

April 3, 2009 by Ken Brown · Comment
Filed under: Immigration 

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. Read more

Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Rise for Fourth Year in a Row

October 31, 2008 by Guest Blogger · 1 Comment
Filed under: Immigration 
Originally posted on SPLC’s blog, Hatewatch, by Mark Potok on October 29, 2008

Hate crimes targeting Latinos increased again in 2007, capping a 40% rise in the four years since 2003, according to FBI statistics released earlier this week.

As anti-immigrant propaganda has increased on both the margins and in the mainstream of society — where pundits and politicians have routinely vilified undocumented Latino immigrants with a series of defamatory falsehoods — hate violence has risen against perceived “illegal aliens.” Each year since 2003, the number of FBI-reported anti-Latino hate crime incidents has risen (see table, below), even as a swelling nativist movement has become larger and more vitriolic. read more

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