Cooling off the hot button on immigration

On Saturday, I wrote about the debate among elderly members of an African American bridge club over whether they should attend a bridge tournament next week in Phoenix.

Some thought the club should boycott, because Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants smacks of familiar discrimination. Others applauded Arizona’s effort and think California ought to take a lesson. And some just wanted to take a vacation without somebody making a federal case of it.

The column sparked a lively — and mostly civil — public debate on The Times’ website. And I received dozens of e-mails from readers offering everything from a six-page lesson on the history of the Spanish conquest of the Southwest to a venal rant against ILLEGALS that was laced with expletives and exclamation points.

Most, however, were thoughtful, often personal, reflections that could not be easily categorized by politics, ethnic origin or class.

Their universal message? The status quo isn’t good enough anymore.

“Politicians take note,” wrote Barbara Merrick. “Something has to be done, and though the law in Arizona may not be quite right, it’s a beginning.”

The stories and comments I read made it clear why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa kept reminding Latino protesters headed for the May Day rallies this month to bring their American flags along.

It’s not about where you come from, but whether you really want to belong.

Glenda Urmacher read Saturday’s column while her husband was off at the synagogue. She’s a daughter of immigrants. Her mother’s family arrived here speaking Spanish, worked in garment factories during the Depression and went to school nights and weekends to learn English.

She has no patience with newcomers whose allegiance is to the nations they left. “We need orderly borders,” she said. “Citizens that want to immigrate here to build an American life, based on American values.”

Nor does Bernadette Marie Sneed, whose grandparents came to East Los Angeles from the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Chihuahua.

“Not once did they ever, ever raise the Mexican flag over the flag of the United States,” she wrote. “Not once did they complain when faced with racism or discrimination, but went on solidly, working, making friends & by example, destroying prejudice.”

The Latinos I heard from, in fact, were largely supportive of the intent, if not the tactics, of the Arizona measure.

“I’m not conflicted. I support Arizona,” wrote Chris, a “dark-skinned Mexican” who speaks Spanish and lives in South Los Angeles. “Why is it that if you’re successful in crossing the border illegally then that means that we have the obligation to grant you amnesty?

“This is about law breakers not civil rights or discrimination,” he wrote.”Practically the whole world wants a better life. Should we let them all in?”

That question sparks soul-searching — and some measure of guilt — among immigrants such as Joseph Retta, who came here legally from Ethiopia 30 years ago. He’s the father of two teenagers who can’t find summer jobs in Palmdale “because everywhere they go, the jobs have been taken by recently arrived immigrants.”

He has always counseled patience to countrymen aiming to join him here. Now, he said, “people from the old country have written to me asking for my opinion — in that, since they can get a visa to travel to Mexico, how about finding a guide to sneak through the border?

“To that my advise has been to please not even try it, and to do whatever is necessary to come here legally no matter how long it might take.

“But when I see that some people are here coming illegally across the border and that they might eventually be allowed to become legal permanent residents, I sometimes feel a sense of having betrayed some of the young people in the old country,” he said.

“I’m not sure if my advise was proper, in light of the immigration debate going in the U.S.”

Your advice was proper, Mr. Retta, even if our country’s response to porous borders isn’t.

Arizona voters may feel backed into a corner by federal officials unwilling to deal with the issue. But their law is too blunt an implement to resolve a debate with such broad dimensions.

It’s time we have a dialogue that neither demonizes desperate newcomers nor relies on unfounded fears that somebody’s elderly abuela will be locked up by La Migra because she left her purse at home.

Better to listen to voices like Jaime R. Aguila. His parents were illegal immigrants, and he grew up working alongside his grandparents in Fresno fields.

Now he teaches history at Arizona State University and is the father of two children who speak English and Spanish and “are fortunate to have educated parents, are proud Americans, and are aware of their privilege,” he said.

Last summer, on a family vacation in Washington, D.C., he gave his 10-year-old son “one long history lesson, highlighted by the Lincoln Memorial and the plaque indicating where Dr. [ Martin Luther] King’s memorial will be added in the future.”

This year brought a different lesson: “I had to have a very disturbing and sad discussion with my son,” he said, “about what to do if a police officer, teacher, etc. asks him about his or his family’s legal status.”

sandy.banks@latimes.com