Schwarzenegger stands up for Latinos

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been taking a beating for recent comments intended to force Californians to stop blaming illegal immigrants for the state's budget crisis.

Schwarzenegger is not backing down. In fact, he's ratcheting up the rhetoric. In the process, he's comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

During a meeting with The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board, Schwarzenegger compared the tendency of Californians to treat Latino immigrants as scapegoats for the state's economic crisis to how Jews were blamed by the Nazis for Germany's economic difficulties following World War I.

The governor continues to attack the claim that California is in economic distress because the state provides services to illegal immigrants. He points out that the real drain is the money that goes out in salaries, benefits and pensions for state workers. Besides, Schwarzenegger adds, illegal immigrants contribute to California's bottom line by servicing hard-to-staff industries such as agriculture.

That's true. But many Californians refuse to face facts. I asked Schwarzenegger what he thought of the unfavorable reaction to his comments.

"I understand the way people think," Schwarzenegger said. "And I don't blame them for the limited amount of information they have. But I think it's very important that we always correct (misinformation) and talk about how the reality works."

Given that Schwarzenegger has tried to instill honesty and common sense in the immigration debate while many Democrats in the legislature run for cover, I pressed him to explain what it is that makes it hard for people to see the contributions of illegal immigrants.

"Since the history of this world," Schwarzenegger said, "people were very protective of their countries, very protective of their neighborhoods, very protective of their property and everything - that's why they built walls and fences around their property."

Sadly, he said, another part of human nature is for people to sometimes view one another with suspicion or dislike.

"And what we have to do is, we always have to fight that because it's in all of us - prejudice," he said. "So what we have to do, since we have a certain level of intelligence, is to look at this and ask, 'Where does this lead when we go and blame certain people?"'

Schwarzenegger seized on a dramatic historical example to illustrate his point about scapegoats.

"I come from Germany," he said. "So I'm a little bit more sensitive about it because it's led to atrocities and all kinds of crimes that were committed just because there were people who fell for it and they pointed at the Jews, that this is the problem with the economy going down and all those kinds of things. And there were people blamed who were hardworking like everyone else, Germans like everyone else, but they were blamed, and the next thing you know, they were all being executed."

(He was born in Austria, which was annexed by Germany before World War II.)

Obviously, Schwarzenegger's comments should not be taken literally. He wasn't comparing the experience of Latino immigrants today to everything that happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. All he was saying was that there are dangers to blaming a bad economy and society's ills on one group.

Americans got a reminder this month when white supremacist James W. von Brunn walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Authorities alleged he killed a guard before being wounded by security personnel.

Latinos know about hate. According to FBI statistics, they represent the largest percentage of hate-crime victims sought out because of ethnicity.

In this climate, someone needs to speak up for immigrants, even the illegal kind. Don't look now, but, in California, someone just did.

© 2009, The San Diego Union-Tribune