A Melting Pot Heats Up

The demonstration outside the chambers of the Monterey Park City Council on Monday measures a serious problem for that city. There may be legitimate differences over individual issues. Some of the charges of racial discrimination may be unfounded or exaggerated. But there is substantial evidence of division within the community. And there is clear evidence of the inadequacy of leadership, both in the City Council and within the community, to heal that division, to conciliate the racial and ethnic groups that now stand in confrontation.

There is no question that the situation has not been helped by the council’s resolution of June 3 on immigration and making English the official language of the nation. Three of the five council members supported the resolution, and apparently remain convinced that it reflects a righteous, patriotic position. In fact, however, its elements transmit to many within the city a different message--a message that will be read by many of the Asians of the community, who now make up 40% of the population, and by many of the Latinos, making up 35% of the population, as an act of hostility .

First of all, the resolution was a gratuitous attack on the sanctuary movement when that was not an issue in Monterey Park. Communities and organizations that have offered sanctuary to refugees from the upheaval in Central America have indeed stirred controversy. But the sanctuary movement has also come to stand, for many Latinos, as an action of respect for them and for the efforts of Latinos themselves to find a solution to the terrible problems of those besieged nations.

Second, the resolution appeared to be a challenge to the new Asian immigrants who abound in the city--supporting “orderly” immigration, calling for legislation to make English the official national language, a cause that has come to mean, for many, a way of denigrating the newcomers not yet assimilated in the majority language of a nation that has always celebrated the diversity of the origins of its minorities.

Finally, the resolution has instructed the police to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in hunting down illegal immigrants while suggesting that the flood of undocumented aliens is out of control. This is a policy that most cities have rejected for two obvious reasons:Police have enough to do without becoming immigration agents. And the security of everyone is jeopardized if some residents, fearing exposureas illegal immigrants, do not cooperate with law-enforcement agents.

To say what the council has said in this way at this time is at best mischievous. It is hardly surprising to hear Mayor G. Monty Manibog say, “There’s nothing that has caused more polarization than this resolution.”

The rage of the demonstrators was also focused on the rejection of a senior-housing facility sponsored by Taiwanese immigrants. Four of the five council members upheld a request of neighbors that the project, in a largely single-family-home zone, be denied. There were obvious grounds for the council action that have nothing to do with the racial tension. But inevitably, in the present climate, there were charges of racism even onthis issue. That, too, measures the urgent need for reconciliation.

Paradoxically, scarcely a year ago Monterey Park was honored for what it had done, with imagination and commitment, to create community out of diversity. That kind of leadership now is all the more required.