Should Latinos Support Curbs on Immigrants? : Border: A question left by the riots is whether new arrivals threaten second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans.

A week after the Los Angeles riots, Jesse Jackson addressed a Senate subcommittee considering an urban-aid package. Overnight polls showed that the object of America’s moral outrage had, in 48 hours of mayhem, shifted from the verdict in the Rodney G. King beating trial in Simi Valley to arsonists and looters in South Los Angeles. Jackson strained to absolve African-Americans of total responsibility for the lawlessness. He pointed fingers at another ethnic group: “Fifty-one percent of arrested looters were Latino.”

In trying to explain to a group of white faces the difference between non-white “minorities,” Jackson created a dangerous fiction. The majority of Latinos arrested for looting were recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Few were second- or third-generation Mexican-Americans with roots here. East Los Angeles, moreover, suffered almost no looting. We in the Latino community have a clear picture of our ethnic differences. We also have a problem.

Traditionally, Mexican-Americans have distrusted attempts by conservatives to restrict immigration, particularly along the U.S. southern border. In the 1970s and ‘80s, they loyally voted for candidates, mostly Democratic, who praised America’s legacy as a land of immigrants. Tearfully, we remember our own grandfathers’ brave journey--crossing not the Atlantic but the Rio Grande--into an unknown world they believed would be fairer than the one left behind.

Still, Chicanos are also a strangely nativist breed. It may be that no one is more concerned about excessive immigration than the sons of immigrants. My Spanish-speaking grandfather stopped voting after Jimmy Carter “let in the Cuban refugees.” This is especially so in times such as these, when the nation’s economic pie is shrinking to the size of a Pop-Tart. Although new arrivals from Latin America are fulfilling the immigrants’ historical role of doing the sort of work that no one else will do, there is an understandable anxiety in some segments of the more established, and more conservative Mexican-American community that in a floundering economy there are simply not enough jobs to go around. Also, since newly arrived immigrants are more willing to work for lower wages, their employment prospects are better.

Beyond competition for jobs, immigrants pose another threat to second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans--a cultural one. As my generation struggles to reinvent ancient Mexican culture in American terms, we will be confronted and confused by the cultural integrity of the arriving immigrants. Looking at their children across school playgrounds, we will foolishly question our own authenticity because we do not speak Spanish or eat tortillas at every meal.

A recent Roper poll for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found a majority believed that immigration should be limited. Not startling news. What’s surprising--and significant--is the poll showed that, among Mexican-Americans, there is increasing opposition to excessive immigration.

The riots probably amplified the anxieties that now lead to calls for immigration reform. Yes, Central American immigrants and Chicanos might both be termed “Latino.” But the ethnic link between the two groups is thin--no more pronounced than the one joining dark-skinned African-Americans with dark-skinned Haitians denied entry into the United States.

Ironically, we as Mexican-Americans have painted ourselves into this corner of self-definition by casting the net of our self-imposed ethnic label too wide. Cuban-Americans are “Latinos.” As are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. And also recent immigrants from Mexico, Central America and South America. At election time, we exploit the political adage that there is strength in numbers and convince politicians who visit our neighborhoods that we represent not few, but many. Forty percent of Los Angeles is Latino. Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio, predicts the ‘90s will be “The Decade of the Latino .” David Hayes-Bautista, UCLA professor of Chicano Studies, argues for a kind of hemispheric consciousness linking Latinos of various countries. In college, we lobbied for Latino faculty, assuming that a Cuban-American professor from Miami could somehow enrich the experience of Chicano undergraduates from East L.A.

In actuality, Latinos (oops, there I go again) are linked by a common ancestry to Spain, by a religion from which many are defecting, by a language of different dialects that is spoken by fewer and fewer members of my generation, and by skin color. And by no more.

After the riots, imagine embarrassed and frustrated third-generation Chicanos saying of recent immigrants, “ They stole, not us .” Then, imagine immigrants responding that it is Chicanos who make them look bad as cholos , welfare mothers and gang-bangers.

During a brief stint as elementary-school teacher, I saw intraethnic difference between immigrant and native-born Latinos manifest itself in the form of higher achievement and greater respect for authority from immigrant children than from native-borns instilled with the American spirit of educational mediocrity. I saw Chicanos lob verbal hand-grenades that would worry leaders who assume Latino unity. Wetback! I saw immigrants respond that at least they “knew who they were.” Pocho!

All of which leads to a contentious discussion with my cousin about whether recent arrivals from El Salvador or Nicaragua are simply the latest chapter in an immigrant saga that includes our shared grandfather. He claims they are, and that I should “back off.” I respond that grandpa would not have stolen what was not his, not even if it was just food to eat. He responds that we do not know that, and, if faced with the impossibility of feeding his wife and five children, our grandfather--this proud man of Mexico--might have done exactly that. Finally, he adds that he cannot “believe” that I spout rhetoric so well-suited to the Republican Party, quoting FAIR yet.

Much of this is difficult to say out loud. Perhaps, it’s because I do appreciate my grandfather’s journey and I realize that FAIR, given the opportunity, would likely have prevented it.

Yet, I cannot escape the possibility--not often admitted in mixed company--that while 50% of the population of California will, by the year 2000, be Latino , the group of people designated by that term will by then be so diverse it will likely be unable to forge either a common social agenda or yield any real political clout. Before the end of this decade, established Mexican-Americans--City Councilman Mike Hernandez, Supervisor Gloria Molina and state Sen. Art Torres--who now find themselves representing constituencies that, though largely Latino, are no longer exclusively Chicano , might look out for a political challenge from an aspiring non-Mexican leader. And the term “Latino Community” will soon be obsolete.

Where do we put those Chicano fathers who forced their mischievous children to return stolen articles to a Sears store in East Los Angeles? The article in U.S. News & World Report on the riots skipped that piece of drama, opting instead for a picture of a desperate Salvadoran, loaded with food and detergent, standing in a grocery store. The caption tries to say enough: Latino looter.