New Head of Mexican American Legal Defense Fund : Antonia Hernandez Not Afraid to Say She Loves U.S.

Antonia Hernandez had already passed the California State Bar when she was asked in 1975 to show her proficiency in English in order to complete her naturalization as a United States citizen.

“I’ll never forget it,” said the 37-year-old Pasadena lawyer, arching her eyebrows. “This fellow asked me if I had any problem understanding his English, and I said no. Then he asked me to write down a sentence to show proficiency. And here I was, a lawyer. But I wrote it down.”

The sentence was: “I went to the store to buy a loaf of bread.”

Hernandez, who is the new president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said the incident was an indication of the weaknesses and strengths of the country that she is not afraid to say she loves.

“That was no proficiency test,” she said. “. . . (But) I love America. I love it more than most because I don’t take the rights and privileges of an American citizen for granted. I remembered there was a knot in my throat when I took the oath (of citizenship).”

Named to the Top Post

Born in Torreon, Mexico, Hernandez last week was named to the top post at the fund, the nation’s leading advocacy group for Latino rights, by its 40-member governing board. She succeeds Joaquin Avila, who left to enter private practice.

Hernandez, who was 8 when she came to the United States and settled with her family in the Maravilla barrio of East Los Angeles, has been active in civil rights work since she graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1974. She was a staff attorney for three years with the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice and joined the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles as a directing attorney in 1977.

She was the staff counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1979 and 1980 when the body was chaired by U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

She joined MALDEF in 1981 as associate counsel in the organization’s Washington office, directing many of the group’s efforts against proposed immigration reform legislation because of provisions it deemed detrimental to Latino interests. Last year, Hernandez became the No. 2 person within the San Francisco-based organization.

Hernandez, who lives in Pasadena with her husband, Michael Stern, also an attorney, and her two children, said a major challenge in her new job will be to try to convince many whites not to fear Latinos.

“The majority of today’s immigrants are Asians and Latinos,” she said. “Before it was Europeans, and there was a familiarity in that for many people. But we want the same things that other people do. We just happen to be brown Americans.”

In a recent interview in her Los Angeles office, Hernandez said that she is already marshaling the defense fund’s resources to once again oppose immigration legislation pending before Congress.

Congress Scrutinizing Issue

Because of the increasing numbers of illegal aliens entering the United States and complaints by organized labor, Congress has been scrutinizing the issue since 1981.

The current proposals by Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Peter Rodino (D-N.J.) are identical to others that have been defeated in Congress in the past, she said.

Provisions calling for penalties against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens are “restrictionist in nature and would lead to a built-in process of discrimination” against Latinos and other foreign-looking U.S. citizens, Hernandez said.

Should the provision become law, many employers will forgo hiring any Latinos--including native-born U.S. citizens--rather than risk penalties, she said.

Employer as Enforcer

“It’s making the employer the enforcer of the laws,” she said. “And no businessman wants government intruding into his business.”

Because Rodino, the powerful Eastern liberal who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has returned to the fray involving immigration reform after unsuccessful efforts in the early 1970s, some have suggested that it may be time for MALDEF to drop its opposition. Rodino’s bill includes generous amnesty proposals for those illegal aliens who entered the country before 1983.

“Some say to me, ‘Face it, Antonia, you’d better get on the train,’ ” she said. “But there are some trains I’d rather not get on.”