IMMIGRATION

Fidel "Butch" Montoya
Special to Caminos - Latino Quarterly - Chieftain - Pueblo, Colorado

New focus sought on immigration debate
Four Corners conference proposed to bring a rational voice to divisive issue.

While many pundits and political consultants predicted that immigration reform issues would be the hot wedge issue of the 2008 presidential campaign, the issue has all but disappeared from the national narrative on human justice.

Many felt the presidential campaign consultants would use the issue to create a climate of hate, division and fear.

For one thing, presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain, along with fellow U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, were co-authors of the comprehensive immigrant reform bill that Congress refused to act upon earlier this year. McCain backed away from the issue in fear of losing the conservative vote and no one has carried on the fight, and so it has become a back burner issue.

State legislatures across the country have tried to pass new “reform bills” but many of these bills are merely temporary fixes that will only reap more racism. These quick fixes will not create the solutions needed, except perhaps to create more chaos, confusion and fear about raids, deportations and fractured families.

Knowing that interest has waned nationally on undocumented immigration, Dr. Tom Acker, professor of Spanish at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, has come up with a novel plan along with other academic colleagues.

What they are proposing is a Four Corners conference that would be to revisit the issue of immigration and devise a new, strategic plan to present to the new president.

The conference would be the first of its kind in the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Acker hopes we would learn from one another experiences and draw from those perspectives to come up with a new approach.

I spoke with Acker and asked him why yet another conference on immigration.

“This perennial issue is emotionally charged and fraught with misunderstandings, half truths and fear mongering,” Acker said. “It is the role of an institution of higher learning to provide a space where this issue can be examined from multiple facets in a dispassionate, professional and academic manner.”

It would almost be like doing an autopsy, examining the issue from the experiences of the many individuals involved in the volatile issue. Participants would prepare a comprehensive report with a national agenda to restart the debate again, but only this time with a strategic plan of action.

Acker even has come up with a name for the conference that is devoid of the emotionalism and hate the issue entails.

He calls it the “Conference on Immigration: Its Social, Political, Economic, Pedagogical and Cultural Repercussions.”

He says they hope to have this conference sometime in April or May at Mesa State.

What Acker proposes and what has created the great interest, particularly along the Front Range, is what Acker says is a way to bring the doers and thinkers together.

It brings all of us to the table, to think together. What a novel idea!

“This conference will provide an opportunity for interaction between theory and praxis, the thinkers and the doers,” Acker said. “We hope that this event will create a synergy that, by inviting important keynote speakers whose expertise will generate interest, will attract serious regional participants in the conference as well.”

Imagine the undocumented immigration issue under the direction of theory and praxis, and with a goal to present the recommendations to the new president, and pledge to work with the new president to get it done right this time.

Fidel "Butch" Montoya is director of H.S. Power & Light, a Latino faith-based initiative, and former manager of safety for the city and county of Denver.