‘Marry me, America’

Sunday, May 14, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

Juan Hernandez was born in Fort Worth, Texas; his father was from Mexico and his mother, from the United States. He became the first U.S. citizen ever to serve in the Mexican government when President Vicente Fox created an office for him and charged him with working with Mexicans abroad. Hernandez left the office in 2002 and since then has been an active commentator on immigration and other concerns common to both countries.

He has just published a book, "The New American Pioneers: Why are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?" and spoke Wednesday evening to the Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations. In the hours leading up to his talk, he was a guest on conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly's television show and spoke with the Sun.

Q. What do you think about the images and words being used in the media to talk about the issue of immigration?

On the one (hand) it seems this nation is going through a struggle in trying to decide what kind of nation she wants to be. After, of course, Sept. 11, but also after discovering (in the Census 2000) that there were 42 million Hispanics, the largest minority, and after discovering that there are 12 million undocumented (immigrants) ... All of this is problematic for many ...

I don't think it's the majority but there are truly many who say, "Why do I have to press 2 to get English" or even press 1 to get English? And the vocabulary shows that.

Even people who are trying to do the right thing, whatever that is, who are trying to do what's politically correct or trying to find out how they should describe immigrants, or illegals or undocumented or whatever it is ... they're having problems with vocabulary.

Now I think most of my life I've been trying decipher who I am, where do I fit in?

Which is what were getting to questions of identity.

Which is what were getting to questions of identity.

And now I have four children and I've inflicted them with the same schizophrenia or whatever and they're all four bicultural, they're all four bilingual, they're all four trying to figure out, "Dad, am I Mexican, am I Mexican-American, am I Hispanic, am I Latino, am I illegal?" (laughs) ...

So here we are trying to name these individuals based on whether they are helping our nation, are hurting our nation, the reason why they came, etc. I think it's going to be very interesting to see what kind of vocabulary we end up with.

How do you think the use of this language and certain images infl uences what happens in Congress?

I think we've had certain great surprises. ... The surprises of having 42 million (Hispanics) when no one expected it. ... States like North Carolina ... the governor woke up one day and said - and I had a couple of meetings with him - and he said, "You know, I had no idea, when I was asking for this job, that my job was supposed to serve x amount of Hispanics ... What do I do? What are their needs? I have no idea. They've always been in the shadow."

And then you get these marches that no one expected to be so huge. The Hispanics themselves didn't expect it. It was so spontaneous, there were no leaders ...

So it surprised us Hispanics that so many of us went out. It surprised us how peaceful we could be, how positive we could be. Yes, there were some Mexican flags. ... But overall, it was very much, "America, will you marry me?" I saw a sign like that. ... And, "America let me pay taxes." It caught the United States by surprise and caught legislators by surprise.

I hear many of them now (are) - what would be the word ... backtracking?

You probably get asked about immigrants taking our jobs away what do you say about that?

If the (Senate) Judiciary Committee thought that the United States needs about 400,000 workers every year from south of the border - and there was some debate about whether that includes people from other countries or not - if that is correct and these people in the Judiciary Committee are looking at the same studies that I'm looking at, then the economics themselves would take care of the so-called problem. We need 400,000, we create 400,000 visas, and then we won't have a bunch of people coming without documents. They would love to come here with documents.

We need to create a program that's good for the United States, not necessarily because it's good for Mexico, though I think it would be good for North America.

One thing we hear a lot from our readers is that were sort of shouldering Mexicos problem that if Mexico had its act together they wouldnt be coming here. What do you say to that?

That is a loaded question. On the one hand, if Mexico were able to provide jobs for Mexicans, there would be many less who would come up here under dire need ... that may be true. But on the other hand ... we also need them to keep our economy up. We need young people in this country. We're only growing at 1 percent. We're not overpopulated; countries who are growing at less than 1 percent are having problems - Russia, Spain, Japan. ... If we start thinking a little bit more in terms of North America and not as one nation but as a bloc of three nations in North America and go beyond NAFTA and create a fund that can be accessed by Mexican small businesses and they can buy more U.S. products, that would be win-win for everybody.

Where do you and the critics of immigration overhaul bills differ?

Some of them, they don't want to acknowledge that this nation has changed. They don't want to have to deal with 42 million Hispanics that are united on a cause. They don't want to deal with a group that loves the U.S. but doesn't want to divorce itself from Mexico, Guatemala or El Salvador.

I was on with Dan Rather a few years ago ... and he asked me, "What country are you loyal to?" And I said, "I'm loyal to my mother and my father - and thank goodness the Constitution of the U.S. doesn't force me to have to divorce myself from Mexico to love this nation and vote here, etc." ... But that's difficult for some people. What do you mean, dual loyalty, dual nationality, bilingualism, biculturalism?

Youve spent a fair amount of time on the border. People there say, You in the rest of the country dont understand this you cant secure the border.

You're right. When I worked for Vicente Fox I spent a lot of time there, and for miles and miles, hundreds of miles ... there truly is just a wire, a barbed wire. That's all there is.

And the idea then is, well, lets build a fence.

Right. And, people will build tunnels, and people will climb over the walls, and people are going to come. But if you create a program that lets them come in with documents, then ... they won't have to do that. And we can spend billions of dollars on truly finding bad guys - our enemies. And we do have enemies in the U.S. There are people that want to destroy this nation. I don't think we need to be paranoid about it and freeze up, because then they've won, but the best way to secure the borders of the U.S. is to work with Mexico. I'm working on a piece right now I'm thinking of calling, let's form a neighborhood watch. And I think an administration like that of Vicente Fox would welcome that.

I wanted to return to the question of assimilation again.

The vocabulary of assimilation again depends on what it means. Many of these groups that came from Italy, Ireland ... they didn't "assimilate" as quickly as people say they did. And they didn't jump into English only ... now, Mexico's right next door and we have a border that's thousands of miles and it's not on the other side of the ocean and that does cause us to want to go home often ... and we're able to go home. ... If people want Mexicans to assimilate in the sense of totally forgetting about being Mexican and only becoming U.S., they're right, that's not going to happen for a long time, maybe never.

I'm going to continue to take my kids to Mexico, I'm going to continue telling them you need to speak English and Spanish, you need to continue thinking of religious values in the way I was taught and the importance of family, etc. ... And I think those are the kinds of things this country values anyway.