By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Lalo Mata is tired of the rhetoric used to malign his family.
His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico 50 years ago, and Mata has grown up in Bowling Green. He is a first generation “townie.”
“This town is built on immigrants,” said Mata, president of La Conexion, as he stood outside U.S. Rep. Bob Latta’s office on Monday.
Representatives of La Conexion and the Northwest Ohio Immigrant Rights Network hand delivered a letter to Rep. Bob Latta’s office on Monday – protesting the congressman’s use of discriminatory language addressing current immigrants and asylum seekers.
[READ LETTER: La Conexion chastises Latta for his rhetoric on immigration & asylum & calls on him to make a course correction]
Latta, who met with gas industry officials earlier on Monday, was not in his Bowling Green office to meet with La Conexion members.
La Conexion officials have made repeated requests to meet with Latta over the past three years – but have never been placed on the congressman’s schedule.
So again on Monday, they met with an aide in the Bowling Green office.
“We know he’s here in Bowling Green,” said Beatriz Maya, founder of La Conexion. “He’s never willing to meet with us.”
A letter by Latta and other Republican members of Congress, published in newspapers earlier this month, used rhetoric that is inaccurate, criminalizes immigrants and incites the general public against those who are immigrants or are perceived to be immigrants, according to La Conexion.
The language used by Latta and others in their statement parallels asylum seekers and migrants with drug traffickers, cartels, and even the pandemic, “with the clear purpose of inspiring public fear and feeding tension,” La Conexion stated.
Members of La Conexion asked that Latta work on solutions rather than harmful slogans.
“We are used to his constant use of language demonizing the immigrant community,” Maya said. “It creates animosity and tension against our community. We saw that in the Waffle House attack,” where two teenagers of color were called racist slurs and assaulted two years ago in Bowling Green.
“Language has an impact. We want him to stop using that language,” Maya said.
The group condemned the continued use of the word “illegals” by Latta and others when referring to migrants and asylum seekers.
“I feel it was dehumanizing,” said Torrie Ruiz, who represents La Conexion’s youth group. “Historically, we know dehumanization leads to human rights violations and hate.”
The argument used by Latta that immigrants must come over through proper legal channels is unjustifiable, Ruiz said. His own office has recognized that the system is severely backlogged, outdated, underfunded, and understaffed. There are not “proper legal channels” available, she said.
Many of the signs held by people rallying outside Latta’s office spoke to the need for more labor in the region.
“District 5 needs workers,” Maya said. “Let’s work on solutions rather than scapegoating immigrants for what they don’t do.”
Maya said La Conexion has offered expertise from its membership on the labor issue.
“We have so many capable people to use as resources,” she said. “It’s unfortunate he doesn’t pay any attention to us.”
La Conexion presented a letter to Latta’s office stating the following:
“You and our members of Congress even now still have an opportunity to open up paths to citizenship for over 11 million in this country. Options for paths to citizenship have been introduced to Congress for essential workers, farm workers, and others who have been the bedrock of our most crucial services during this pandemic.
“As our representative in Congress, you have power to create stability in our communities, solve our worker shortage crisis, and recognize those immigrants who are essential to our most basic needs in this country.”
The letter called for immigration processes that do the following:
- Recognize the incredible value immigrants have brought and continue to contribute to our country’s life by making the act of coming here and settling navigable, hospitable and fair.
- Recognize and humanely address the almost 12 million undocumented people here in this country, upon whose labor our food systems and healthcare systems, among other indispensable industries, are sustained and grant them reasonable paths to citizenship.
- Create stability for communities via providing access to legal status for millions, allowing them the same open and equitable ability to contribute to our workforces and communal life.
The letter also suggested specific objectives of:
- Creating a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship for those immigrants, Dreamers, asylees, and refugees who are already members and contributors to the community.
- Paying proper attention to local economies, addressing worker shortages and demographic needs.
- Decriminalizing migration and ensuring all immigrants equal rights, due process and protections under the law.
- Respecting the value of families, diversity and basic human dignity. Children separated from their families should be immediately reunified.
- Eliminating the entanglement between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement.
- Increasing immigrant access to public services and opportunities for smoother integration, including access to driver’s licenses, language learning, educational opportunities, transportation and other key elements of successful integration.
