SAN DIEGO -- Juan
Hernandez once had a job that many Mexican-Americans would love
to have.
From December 2001
to September 2003, the native Texan and professor of U.S.-Mexico
studies served as the equivalent of Mexico's ambassador to Mexican
immigrants living in the United States. As the director of President
Vicente Fox's Office for Mexicans Abroad, he served as a go-between
and reintroduced Mexico to its runaway children in the north while
doing the same for the runaways.
Hernandez had an
office at Los Pinos (the Mexican White House), but he'd fly home
to the United States once a week to meet with immigrant communities
from Alaska to Arizona to Alabama. He'd listen to their concerns
and reassure them that Mexico, the country of their birth, had
not forgotten them.
I saw him in action
when I was working in Dallas, where he used to teach at the University
of Texas at Dallas. Hernandez was in town to address a business
luncheon. It was one of those functions where Mexican waiters
pick up the dishes, and they're mostly invisible. In cities such
as Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas -- or any other place with a self-declared
``state of emergency'' over the self-inflicted wound of illegal
immigration -- the idea of being waited on by the same people
we say we want to get rid of is so common that you miss the irony.
Hernandez didn't.
From the podium, he called out to one of the waiters in flawless
Spanish and told him that he was there representing the Fox administration
and that his countrymen in Mexico had not forgotten him. The man,
visibly touched by the gesture, smiled and nodded.
I loved it. Not because
I was witnessing some secret communique in a plot to retake the
Southwest but because, given that Mexican immigrants sent home
about $16 billion last year, Mexico owes them reassurances --
and respect.
Before he took that
job, Hernandez made an introduction of a different sort. Simply
put, he introduced one rancher to another.
While teaching in
Dallas, Hernandez happened to meet both Texas Gov. George W. Bush
and Fox, then the governor of the Mexican state of Guanajuato.
He thought the two men would hit it off, and indeed they did.
When the governors
became presidents, they set out to craft an immigration accord
to match Mexican workers with U.S. employers. Bush proposed a
plan to grant a kind of temporary amnesty to millions of illegal
immigrants in the United States. And that, in turn, helped spark
the current debate in Congress over immigration reform.
The way Hernandez
sees it, Congress now has a chance to create a more honest and
realistic approach to the immigration issue, one that benefits
both of the countries to which he lays claim: the United States
and Mexico.
That's right. In
defining his allegiance, as Mexican-Americans are forever asked
to do by nativists, Hernandez refuses to choose between the United
States and Mexico. For that, a racist and anti-Mexican Web site
once labeled him ``an American traitor.'' Sort of a Benedito Arnold.
Hernandez doesn't
care. For him, this issue isn't political but personal. His mother
was born in the United States and his father was born in Mexico.
``I've always had
one foot in the United States and one foot in Mexico,'' he told
me by phone from his office at a university in Fort Worth.
This dual allegiance
sets the tone for his new book, ``The New American Pioneers: Why
Are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?'' In it, Hernandez recalls
his experiences, and profiles hardworking and taxpaying Mexican
immigrants in communities in the United States -- the sort of
people who, according to the author, not only mean no harm but
are also in a position to do this country a lot of good.
Hernandez makes a
fair point. Immigrants, legal and otherwise, don't bring much
to this country except a mighty work ethic, a sense of optimism,
and the belief that tomorrow will be brighter than today. Elsewhere,
I hear doom and gloom as the native-born cry in their $3 cups
of coffee about how their government is ``selling them out'' to
globalization and how America's best days are behind it.
What a waste of good
citizenship. Natives need to take lessons from immigrants. Maybe
then they can reconnect with the spirit of America: that change
isn't about fear. It's about renewal, which always brings strength,
vitality and hope.
That's the message
that Juan Hernandez wants to share with his countrymen -- well,
the ones on this side of the border.
©
2006, The San Diego Union-Tribune
