Oracle Online

My last article focused on the issues facing immigrants in the United States. Since it has been brought to my attention that immigrants pose an imminent threat to national security, I thought it necessary to present the full picture.

Not that I disagree with the argument, but, as was stated in Carly Schaps’ Oct. 12 letter to the editor, “news is when a person reports facts that he or she observes in a nonbiased way.” To offer a fair representation of the threats facing people within our country today, it is important to view all sides and also to realize that our country is not immune to committing acts of terrorism simply because our agenda is to rid the world of it.

In the last decade, we’ve seen a wave of violence occurring within small communities all over the United
States. Over 100 people have been killed or wounded as a result of these malicious attacks. Most have been committed by a person who, by social standards, would be categorized as white or Caucasian. All have occurred in small-town communities.

I personally have seen what Sept. 11 has done for people of color in the United States. Since the attacks, I have been pulled over four times, and only once was there actual cause to do so.

There hasn’t been a backlash against the “white” terrorists who carried out attacks against Americans because somehow they are not viewed as threats. However, when the attacks are committed by a person of color, suddenly the turban, dark skin, beards, and heavy accents become early warning signals.

Take the time to look at airport security checkpoints and watch who is being pulled over to the side to be checked just one more time. None match the description of Timothy McVeigh, Kip Kinkel, Michael Carneal, Luke Woodham, Dylan Klebold, or Eric Harris.

The United States homeland terrorist network is alive and well only because the public at large is too busy looking for weapons of mass “distraction” in other countries when the real battle is happening on the home front.

We lash out at immigrants for coming to our country because, as Schaps stated regarding my mother, “she was not invited here and the government did not say she could live here.” Sorry we didn’t get the invitation.

However, an American-backed government army pushed my mother’s home country of El Salvador into a 10-year civil war that left 70,000 dead and 30,000 more missing at the hands of U.S.- aided death squads. The invitation came in the form of bombs, bullets, and death threats, and this applies not only to my mother but also to all immigrants.

Thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, have died of starvation after more than a decade of a U.S. embargo, when we refused to provide any form of humanitarian aid because of a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. Sept. 11 produced 3,000 dead, and by no means is that a small number. One person dead at the hands of terrorism is too much, but for decades the United States has funded terrorist attacks throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and even on our own soil.

I have stated facts and evidence of the terrorism caused by Caucasian people within this country. Obviously, “suburban terrorism” will never be the topic of conversation on The O’Reilly Factor or of an hourlong special on CNN. But the hard work that my mother and thousands of immigrants put forth every day without benefits or bonuses while at the same time still paying taxes makes them more than worthy of being in the United States.

Schaps says her ancestors were worthy of entering this country. Who gave them authority to deem themselves worthy of this soil when it clearly was not discovered by Columbus and had been inhabited by indigenous people of the Americas well before the 1800s?

The threat is not in Afghanistan, Iraq, or North Korea. The threat is within our country and the terrorists are not Arab, Latino, Hmong, or Black. They are the John Walker Lindhs (a.k.a. the “American Taliban”) and others who grow up in our educational system and attend schools that hope to make them into “compassionate citizens of the world.”

Esteban Renderos
NCORE Network