A Bit of a Rant on Ignorance and Fear

The documentary 9500 Liberty records the events surrounding the passing of an immigration law in Virginia’s Prince William County that required police to check the immigration status of anyone they had “probable cause” to suspect had entered the country illegally (which could be determined by skin color and language, leading to unavoidable racial profiling of non-whites). The supposed rationale for passing the bill was outlined by blogger Greg Letiecq and was advocated primarily by people who had vaguely-formed beliefs that the influx of Hispanic immigrants meant that their communities were threatened by increases in crime, drunk driving, a bad job market, and – worst of all – the Spanish language.

            I must admit that I spent a lot of my time watching this film feeling my blood boil for so many reasons I can’t list them all here. Bigotry, racism, intolerance, ulterior motives (like getting reelected), and anger all played into the introduction and passing of the law. In my mind these components can be reduced to two things: ignorance and fear. Although the two work independently, the combination of the two is powerful and cyclical: the more you are unaware of the complexities of a situation, the more likely you are to make generalizations and stereotypes, which in turn makes it much easier to take a concern or worry and apply it to a broader context that leads into full-blown fear.

            My perspective as an outsider (and also as a white, higher-educated, liberal, young person) means that I saw much of the arguments for the immigration law in a more critical context. Much of the testimonies struck me as not just uninformed or ruled by emotion, but completely ludicrous - case in point, the woman who claimed that “illegals” were responsible for 9/11, or Letiecq’s comments on how the law was the will of God, or insistence that slavery was a needed aspect of US society because it needed something to overcome. Not all arguments were so clearly twisted, though: assertions that immigrants take jobs, drain money, commit crimes, and so on all seem as if they could be proved. That they aren’t proved but that people continue to believe these assertions speaks to the way fear operates.

            What perhaps boggles me the most (besides the fact that such a law was passed at all) is that things are so vague for so many people involved. The “Help Save Manassas” group isn’t particularly clear on what they are saving Manassas from – they seem to think that immigrants who entered the US illegally are the greatest cause of decay in… what, exactly? Protecting the community from crime is one thing, but protecting it from Spanish is strange. What exactly is it that people fear about Spanish? That they won’t be able to communicate? That they are forced to admit that the world does not operate exclusively in English and that they might need to learn to speak another language themselves? That because their notion of American identity is tied up with language, that this identity is being undermined? There are so many questions I have about how fear operates on such comparatively less important questions such as these. I hope that the (eventual) removal of “probable cause” from the law has begun to force people to realize that there are larger and far more relevant issues surrounding immigration. I hope, too, that it won’t take the division of a community and ostracization of a people to realize this in the future.