By Allan Wall
08/28/2007
Today (August 28th, 2007), Elvira Arellano — the recently-deported Mexican illegal alien mother who took "sanctuary" in a Chicago church for a year allegedly to avoid being separated from her 8-year-old son — met for 40 minutes with Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, in Los Pinos, the Mexican White House.
Her reason for meeting with Calderon: to ask him to help her obtain a U.S. visa so she can return to the U.S. [Se compromete Calderón a revisar caso Elvira Arellano, By Sergio Javier Jiménez, El Universal, August 28, 2007]
And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If you want a U.S. visa, naturally, you want to speak to the President of Mexico!
Calderon said he'd study her case, and the foreign ministry would do everything possible to help her. But he also said — what a shocker! — that her receiving a U.S. visa doesn’t depend on the Mexican government, but on U.S. authorities.
Imagine that, it’s a revolutionary concept! [Pide Elvira Arellano Ayuda a Presidencia, Jornada On Line, August 28, 2007]
In Mexico, the deportation of Elvira was, needless to say, condemned in the media, by the foreign ministry and the Permanent Commission of the Mexican Congress.
But, despite the hoopla, I don’t get the impression that your average Mexican in Mexico really cares much about it.
For example, some Mexican websites I visit include a section providing links to the most-read articles of the day. In those sections, I see links about politics, the hurricane, sports and a celebrity divorce…but not about Elvira.
Was this deportation a humanitarian tragedy? Was Elvira really just a mother fighting to keep her family together? Is she the new Rosa Parks? Should immigration law be changed to protect women like her from being deported?
That’s what the open border activists are telling us, as they promise more marches and protests on both sides of the border.
Hmm. By coincidence, I have a son who is the same age as Elvira’s son. I don’t want to be separated from him either, or from the rest of my family. But when I was deployed to Iraq, I was anyway.
Elvira’s saga in a nutshell: She was born in 1975 in the Mexican state of Michoacan, illegally entered the U.S.A. in 1997, and was deported. Within the space of a few days, she illegally entered again and resided 3 years in Oregon.
While living there, Elvira had a son, Saul, out of wedlock, in 1999. This child, whose father is unknown, is technically a U.S. citizen because of the "anchor baby" misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. He became the main prop for Elvira’s campaign.
In 2000 Elvira moved to Chicago where she acquired a job as a janitor. (So much for security — she was actually working at O'Hare International Airport and her job was to clean airplanes!)
It took 2 years for the Feds to find out what was going on. In 2002, Elvira was arrested for using a fake Social Security number and was sentenced to 3 years probation (but still not deported).
In 2005, she was still not deported, but granted a stay, while waiting for bills pending in Congress to somehow legalize her.
On August 15th, 2006, Elvira was scheduled to appear before immigration authorities in Chicago. Fearing deportation, Elvira requested sanctuary, taking refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church. She was already an active member and co-lay leader in the congregation.
This proves the point I've argued before: just because Hispanics become Protestants doesn’t mean they are becoming Americans. Elvira, after all, has never bothered to learn English although she has been in the U.S. for ten years.
Elvira holed up in the church for a year, the cause célèbre of the open borders crowd, making a great spectacle of her "plight."
Even before asking for sanctuary, Elvira was already an activist. Despite being a non-citizen illegal alien, she had founded an activist organization, "La Familia Latina Unida" [United Latino Family], which fights to keep immigrant families from being separated.
Elvira’s activism was also sponsored by an organization called "Pueblo Sin Fronteras" [A People without Borders], led by Emma Lozano, who also operated the "Centro Sin Fronteras."[Center Without Borders]
And who is Emma Lozano? She’s the preacher’s wife. Yes, that’s right, her husband is Walter Coleman, long-time leftist activist pastor of the Adalberto United Methodist Church, where Elvira requested sanctuary.
Back on the second day of Elvira’s stay in the church, Coleman gushed of Elvira that
"she represents the voice of the undocumented, and we think it’s our obligation, our responsibility, to make a stage for that voice to be heard."[Feds warn she cannot claim sanctuary By Don Babwin, Associated Press. August 16, 2006]
And that’s exactly what the church did, for a whole year, until Elvira thought it was safe to leave and fly to Los Angeles and then to Washington, D.C. continuing her campaign for the families.
Naturally, given our government’s usual lackadaisical attitude to immigration control, she thought she could get away with it.
But on August 19th, she was caught and deported to Mexico.
Mexican Consul in LA Ruben Beltran complained that the quick deportation didn’t allow consular assistance. But in fact, Elvira and immigration officials were accompanied to the border by an official from the Mexican consul in San Diego. So Beltran’s wrong about that. The real truth: Mexican officials don’t want the U.S. to deport anybody.
The SRE — the Mexican foreign ministry — thundered its disapproval:
"….a fellow Mexican has been obliged to be separated from her minor child, of American nationality. This act is contrary to the principles of family unification that form a fundamental part of the current migratory legislation of the U.S. " Elvira permanecerá en México y su hijo en EU Jaime Hernández El Universal Martes August 21, 2007
So you see, the Mexican government understands our "family reunification" policy and the "anchor baby" issue — and is using them against us.
Family unification is a wonderful thing. But Mexican families could stay unified by staying here in Mexico!
Or, in the Elvira case, by not having a child out of wedlock and then breaking up with the kid’s father. Why, in all the Elvira hoopla, is the deadbeat dad getting off the hook?
As for the anchor baby policy, it’s high time that was changed anyway. So thank you, Elvira, for reminding us how important that is!
Besides, there is a simple solution to the entire Elvira/Saul Melodrama. Now that Elvira is in Mexico, Saul can just live with her there!
Legally, Saul is a Mexican national. According to Article 30 of the Mexican constitution, "Those who are born abroad of Mexican parents, of a Mexican father or a Mexican mother" are "Mexicans by birth".
By Mexican law, Saul is Mexican. (So are all American-born children of Mexican immigrants.) Therefore, there should be no impediment to the boy residing in Mexico with his beloved mother.
So there you go. Case closed.
In fact, Saul has already been to Mexico. He went to Mexico and appeared before the Mexican congress, who gave him a rousing welcome.
And soon after mommy dearest was deported to Mexico, Saul was taken down to Tijuana to see her. But then he was sent back to Chicago!
So who is separating this mother and son? It’s not the U.S. immigration authorities. It’s not immigration patriots. It’s Elvira and her activist comrades who sent Saul back to the U.S.
Why? So he can continue to be cynically utilized in a propaganda campaign to encourage the legalization of all illegal aliens.
So who does Saul live with now? He resides in Chicago…with the Methodist pastor Walter Coleman and his activist wife Emma Lozano. They have custody of the kid.
Won’t he miss his mommy? Don’t worry about that. The plan is for Saul to travel frequently to Mexico to visit his mother!
Now wait a minute. If these activists have the money to fly Saul back and forth from Chicago to Mexico, why can’t they just fly him to Mexico and leave him there?
If they are really concerned about "family unification", they would send Saul back to Mexico, and help the mother and son to get established here. After all, the cost of living is lower.
But, you see, it’s not really about helping families, is it? The family values argument is just a cynical scam. It’s a guilt trip to lay on middle-class Americans. It’s a strategy to justify the legalization of illegal aliens.
The real issue here is anti-Americanism and the transformation of our country.
Read this strikingly frank statement, co-authored by Elvira and preacher’s wife Emma Lozano:
"The popular coalition has made great gains. We have shown that we are not only for protecting the rights of the undocumented but we are struggling for Latinos to become a voice for justice for all of Latin America. We have supported self-determination and opposed assimilation into this nation’s individualistic, imperialistic values. We have taught that our people did not come here because of the American Dream but because of what the American nightmare did to our countries of origin. We have asserted that our demand to be here and to be fully enfranchised here is a right not a privilege [sic] and a destiny of our people to transform this nation." [UNIFY AND FOCUS OUR MOVEMENT NOW! Emma Lozano, presidente Pueblo sin Fronteras Elvira Arellano, presidente La Familia Latina Unida]
So that’s the real goal. Not helping families but Latinizing the United States. This is the Treason Lobby in action.
Ironically, Elvira spoke the truth upon her arrival to Mexico, when she said that the United States broke the law first by allowing all these illegal aliens into the country. Well, she’s right about that.
But the solution is not amnesty. The solution is to stop being intimidated by shameless con artists like Elvira — and start enforcing the law.
Today (August 28th, 2007) an interview with Elvira was released, entitled EU No Encontró a Bin Laden, Pero Encontró a Elvira Arellano ("The U.S. didn’t find Bin Laden, but it found Elvira Arellano"). Elvira was interviewed by Carlos Loret de Mola Jr., son of the Carlos Loret de Mola who was promoting reconquista way back in 1982.
Elvira moaned that
"After the 9/11 (the terrorist attacks of the 11th of September) the government of the United States was looking for terrorists… it didn’t find Bin Laden but it found Elvira Arellano….The U.S. says I am a threat to the government, but I work to give a better future to my son…we aren’t terrorists nor criminals, we just seek a better future for our families…"
But, Elvira also announced that she has now decided to have Saul come to live with her in Mexico:
"I told him that he has to come back with me, but [Saul] wants to keep fighting so I can return to the U.S….yes, I’m going to bring him here, I have accepted it. I told him he is an American citizen and he had the right to enter and exit his country as many times as he wishes."
Well, I hope Saul really does come to Mexico and live with his mother. I hope they live happily ever after.
And I'd like to think that Elvira’s deportation is a sign that our leaders are actually going to enforce the law — whether they realize Elvira’s agenda or not.
American citizen Allan Wall resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.