What some citizens of Utah have done recently to create a climate of hostility and fear for undocumented workers is despicable. The New York Times and Huffington Post are reporting today that some yet-to-be-identified group has compiled a list of 1,300 Utah residents thought to be illegal immigrants, and circulated the list to state authorities and the media.
The list contains detailed information about each name, including in some cases addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, and in the case of pregnant women, the due date of their child. A letter accompanying the list says that the citizen vigilante group that compiled it “observes these individuals in our neighborhoods, driving on our streets, working in our stores, attending our schools and entering our public welfare buildings.”
In other words, the compilers of this list clearly intend to give undocumented workers in Utah the impression that their every move is being closely watched by belligerent eyes, and that these workers are unwelcome in Utah.
In other words, the compilers of this list clearly intend to give undocumented workers in Utah the impression that their every move is being closely watched by belligerent eyes, and that these workers are unwelcome in Utah.
And the list is having the effect its compilers desire. Centers to assist immigrants in Utah are reporting that they are now inundated with frantic calls from frightened residents, who do not know what to do. Some are talking about moving back to Mexico or Central America.
This is the kind of behavior that went on in Germany as Hitler rose to power—behavior designed to signal that a stigmatized minority is unwelcome, and there will be consequences if that minority group does not disappear. A group calling itself Concerned Citizens of America is taking credit for having compiled the list (though this claim has not yet been verified), and stresses in its accompanying letter that it does not endorse violence.
But this disclaimer is absolutely disingenuous, as the reaction the list has elicited demonstrates. Compiling a detailed list of members of a targeted minority group, with information identifying their residences and even the due date of pregnant women, is in and of itself an act of violence. It is a terroristic action intended to make people feel afraid, to demonstrate that they are unwelcome, to remind them that they and their actions are being closely scrutinized by hostile neighbors.
Symbolic demonstrations of violent power over a minority group such as this list open the door to actual physical violence. The reaction of those placing frantic calls to immigrant-assistance centers is entirely understandable, in such a social climate.
As I read this story, I wonder if those who compiled this list have given any thought at all to the consequences for their state and its infrastructure and economy, if citizens and undocumented workers from Mexico and Central and Latin America are driven out of the state. Steve and I go to Salt Lake City most years to spend time at the LDS Family History Library there.
And after our visits to Salt Lake City, we invariably say to each other, “That city wouldn’t run without its Latino population.” In almost every restaurant we visit and in every hotel at which we stay, the service staff is entirely Latino. The LDS church is now rebuilding a former shopping area near its temple, a major renovation project. Every worker we see doing the hard labor of laying a foundation for the buildings and constructing them, dawn to dark, is Latino.
Salt Lake City would cease functioning if its Latino population—legal or illegal—suddenly vanished.
It strikes me as cruelly ironic that, in a state whose cultural and political life is dominated by a religious group that gathered here because its members were driven from other areas by the hostility and prejudice of people elsewhere, a group of citizens would seek to inflict on others what was done to their ancestors. Family after family throughout Utah has stories of the sufferings their ancestors endured to settle this state, as they walked across prairies and deserts seeking a promised land.
As Joanna Brooks notes at Religious Dispatches, commenting on this anti-immigrant list,
If any religious group should understand Jesus’s statement, “I was a stranger, and you took me in,” Mormons ought to understand that statement. It is not at all to the credit of a state dominated by the LDS church and its religious views, that this kind of hostile anti-immigrant initiative—which is sure to be replicated now in other areas—is being mounted in Utah.
But this disclaimer is absolutely disingenuous, as the reaction the list has elicited demonstrates. Compiling a detailed list of members of a targeted minority group, with information identifying their residences and even the due date of pregnant women, is in and of itself an act of violence. It is a terroristic action intended to make people feel afraid, to demonstrate that they are unwelcome, to remind them that they and their actions are being closely scrutinized by hostile neighbors.
Symbolic demonstrations of violent power over a minority group such as this list open the door to actual physical violence. The reaction of those placing frantic calls to immigrant-assistance centers is entirely understandable, in such a social climate.
As I read this story, I wonder if those who compiled this list have given any thought at all to the consequences for their state and its infrastructure and economy, if citizens and undocumented workers from Mexico and Central and Latin America are driven out of the state. Steve and I go to Salt Lake City most years to spend time at the LDS Family History Library there.
And after our visits to Salt Lake City, we invariably say to each other, “That city wouldn’t run without its Latino population.” In almost every restaurant we visit and in every hotel at which we stay, the service staff is entirely Latino. The LDS church is now rebuilding a former shopping area near its temple, a major renovation project. Every worker we see doing the hard labor of laying a foundation for the buildings and constructing them, dawn to dark, is Latino.
Salt Lake City would cease functioning if its Latino population—legal or illegal—suddenly vanished.
It strikes me as cruelly ironic that, in a state whose cultural and political life is dominated by a religious group that gathered here because its members were driven from other areas by the hostility and prejudice of people elsewhere, a group of citizens would seek to inflict on others what was done to their ancestors. Family after family throughout Utah has stories of the sufferings their ancestors endured to settle this state, as they walked across prairies and deserts seeking a promised land.
As Joanna Brooks notes at Religious Dispatches, commenting on this anti-immigrant list,
In Utah, where conservative politics are dominated by the membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it's pretty safe to assume that a significant number of "Concerned Citizens of the United States" are Mormon.
If any religious group should understand Jesus’s statement, “I was a stranger, and you took me in,” Mormons ought to understand that statement. It is not at all to the credit of a state dominated by the LDS church and its religious views, that this kind of hostile anti-immigrant initiative—which is sure to be replicated now in other areas—is being mounted in Utah.
