WASHINGTON (By Jon Garrido, Hispanic News and the Blue Dogs of the Democratic Party and edited national editorials) September 5, 2007 — A federal judge dealt a decisive blow against a dangerous trend of freelance immigration policies by local governments. Judge James M. Munley of the central Pennsylvania district, struck down ordinances in the town of Hazleton that sought to harshly punish undocumented migrants for trying to live and work there, and employers and landlords for providing them with homes and jobs.

Immigration reform is not going away until it becomes the law of the land. This issue will in all probability not be addressed until after the 2008 elections in 2009.

While this may sound far in the future, it does provide a timeframe for doing what we must do to to assure immigration reform does become law as we need for it to be, not the punitive legislative bill that was crafted by Jon Kyl, John Cornyn, Tom Coburn, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and Jeff Sessions with punitive measures that once immigration reform was enacted, all migrants including their children would have been deported for as little an infraction as spiting on the sidewalk.

We must begin by launching an all out campaign to expose anti-Hispanic bigots in the media, entertainment and politics.

The recent immigration debate in the Senate, which ended with the defeat of a bill that would have given a path to citizenship to many of the 12 million undocumented workers, has given way to the biggest explosion of anti-Hispanic sentiment we have ever seen in America.

Bendixen and Associates did a nationwide poll identifying 76 percent of U.S. Hispanics agree with the statement that ''anti-immigrant sentiment is growing in the United States,'' and 62 percent say this phenomenon has directly affected them or their families.

Every brown face in America is suspect

If you think conservative Republican talk radio, cable television and other Americans focus only on migrants, you must be living in a cave for every brown face in America is suspect.

Few Hispanics believe statements by rabid anti-immigration radio and television hosts who say they only oppose ''illegal immigration.'' When asked what fuels the current anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, 64 percent of Hispanics in the poll mentioned one factor: ''racism against immigrants from Latin America.''

Every day statements are made on radio and television that go far beyond the boundaries of fair debate over the need to fix the U.S. immigration system, and that twists the facts in ways that make it difficult to believe in the good faith of those who make them.

Carlos Oppenheimer writes, ''It's not just what fear mongers such as CNN's Lou Dobbs or radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage allow to be said in their shows, which systematically blame Hispanics for many of America's ills. Prominent academics such as Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington are getting away with sweeping statements such as America's Hispanic immigration deluge . . . constitutes a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States.''

Oppenheimer further writes, ''While the 44 million Hispanics are the biggest minority in America, you don't see the kind of nationwide protests, legal actions or calls for boycotts on a scale that you would probably see if these statement were directed against African Americans or Jewish Americans. When you visit the website of the NAACP, one of the first things you see is an NAACP 'Stop' Campaign headline, which is a call to action against racism in the media. The NAACP and other African American groups regularly launch name-and-shame campaigns, and most recently forced the firing of radio host Don Imus over an April comment calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team 'nappy-headed hos.'"

"On the National Council of La Raza's website, you don't find a similar emphasis on fighting bigotry. The group's main theme is 'Ya es hora!,' a voter registration drive conducted alongside the Spanish-language Univisión network and other Latino organizations aimed at adding two million new Hispanic votes for the 2008 election."

La Raza President Janet Murguia conceded in an interview with Oppenheimer, ''Hispanics need to do more to fight back against bigotry in the media.''

Yet, Janet Murguia is a frequent guest on Lou Dobbs' Broken Borders. Each time she visits Dobbs, she contributes to the television program's ratings and Dobbs viewers chuckle as to how inept an Hispanic leader can be for being ambushed time after time and continuously smiling as Dobbs bashes Hispanics. The better choice for Murguia would be to boycott the show and not provide a platform for Dobbs each day attacking migrants for being responsible for the demise of the United States.

Citizenship

Hispanics cast 5.6 million votes in the 2006 midterms elections which represented only 13 percent of the total Hispanic population compared to the 27 percent of all blacks who cast votes and 39 percent of all whites who voted — a disappointing turnout attributed to a population too young to vote or ineligible because of citizenship status.

Locally, the Phoenix Somos America Coalition in the months of June and July registered 2,500 Hispanics to vote. This is certainly admirable but far short comparing numbers to other voters.

I was born and raised in Superior, Arizona, a small mining community in the desert an hour's drive east of Phoenix. South of Superior is the town of Florence forming a triangle with Apache Junction to the west of Superior and northwest of Florence. This area is the next boom area in Arizona with a million building permits already issued to build Sun City master planned retirement communities for persons moving to Arizona primarily from the mid-West states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa. These 2 million potential voters, assuming two voters per house, will be retired white voters voting at 39% compared to 13% for Hispanics. To compound the voting discrepancy, the Iowa electorate as the first state to vote in the national nominating process vote at a much higher rate than the national 39% white average rate.

The voting discrepancy increases exponentially factoring in other development areas in the Phoenix metropolitan area. On the west side of Phoenix, a multitude of housing subdivisions are being planned in the greatly expanded annexations of the Town of Buckeye and more than a dozen huge developments are sprouting up on both sides of the 30-mile-long Sun Valley Parkway, west of the White Tank Mountains. Again, nearly all one million residents will be white retired voters.

One can only conclude registering Hispanics in the short term falls short of making a measurable impact in voting patterns in Arizona.

So if we can not win by voting — yet, the only conclusion has to be we need to do something else in addition to registering voters. Working on getting out the vote will help but this is not enough. We need to go on the offense. We need to launch a local campaign to identify, name and shame those who systematically bash Hispanics. Then we need to launch a nationwide campaign.

If anti-Hispanic sentiment is allowed to keep growing, we will soon have an underclass of 12 million immigrants that will feel not only frustrated by not having a legal path to citizenship but increasingly insulted by mainstream media.

I am a fourth generation American Hispanic with family roots in Arizona dating back to the late 1800s. I have traveled to 19 counties. While culture and beauty can be found around the globe, the genius of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and of utmost importance, the 14 amendment, provide for equal protection of all persons residing in the United States. This is what places America at the pinnacle of world nations — past and future. No other country has a blindfolded Lady Justice that mandates justice is blind. This is why I choose to be an American.

Each day I receive 200-300 hate emails bashing me as an Hispanic migrant with the usual message — go back to Mexico. Each time I write an article or editorial on immigration reform, the number of hate emails increase dramatically. Last year during the marches, there were even threatening phone calls I reported to the FBI.

The only consolation

The only consolation is a population projection from the Unites States Census Bureau: In the year 2097, 50% of the entire United States population will be Hispanic, 30% will be black, 13% will be Asian, 5% will be white, and 2% will be ''other.'' The browning of America is inevitable. No one can stop it.