Martyr Or Just Another Illegal: L.A. Times Commenters React to Elvira Arellano’s Deportation
20 August 2007, 5:14 PM. By Guanabee Staff
Even though Elvira “Sweet Tee” Arellano’s saga ended with deportation in Los Angeles yesterday, we won’t relish the opportunity to say we told you so. (It was obvious what would happen to the undocumented immigration ‘activist’ when she left a Chicago church last week after a year of claiming sanctuary there.) Instead, we’d like to share some highlights from the L.A. Times comment board on the news item you’re likely to hear about ad nauseam for at least the next 24 hours.
A reader named nok figures brevity is the soul of hate:
One down….20 million to go.
As if people without papers are targets. (They aren’t?) A reader going by ap doesn’t think so, and shows she bought into the savvy marketing employed by Arellano:
No, it is not fair [that she was deported]. I think once you crossed the border, you are in. What did Jesus say? “Love your neighbor”.
No doubt he also said using his words was a great way to push one’s agenda. As always, we save the best for last–a reaction from Luis Alfonso Franco that proposes sweeping change like dozens of righteous Mexicans before him:
Its very simple, give back the Southwest to Mexico and we will call it even. You don’t like Mexicans (US born or not), move to Canada. As for throwing out Americans born to undocumented Mexicans, try that in LA and see how that goes for you.
Just be grateful we didn’t mention the ones that go after Arellano’s U.S. citizen of a son who remains in the States. Talk about ruthless.
Readers Weigh In: What do you think of the case of Elvira Arellano? [L.A. Times]
Image [Charles Rex Arbogast / AP]
Earlier, So Can We Have That T-Shirt When She Gets Deported?
Christ Hard-Pressed For An Answer
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I think it’s sickening that she would try and use her son as some kind of political shield. She broke the law. Plain and simple. You don’t like the particular law she broke? Fine. Get the law changed. Whether California is 90% Hispanic or 10% Hispanic does not change the fact that someone caught in violation of the law has or shouldn’t receive some kind of exemption because they wage a PR campaign. Where some see an activist, I see an opportunist.
I guess there will have to be another of the 20 million illegals to fight for equal rights legal or not. She may have been no Rosa Parks, but people in this country, legal or not deserve to have unalienable rights. Dont we all have a right to be with our child?
fuck the law.
It says it all that media and gringos only care about the Southern Border. No one who is not Latino even mentions the fact that the terrorists who attacked the U.S. came accross the NORTHERN border, or came here legally with tourist or student visas. What does this tell you, Manny? It tells you terrorism is an excuse for abusing Latinos. It provides the loopy rationale that allows gringos to discriminate against us without having to admit they are doing so.
Anyway, Manuel, if you are a self-hating Tejano who buys into the weak, gringo crap outlined above, you have deep seated issues my little missive isn’t even going to dent.
Arriba los Latinos!
One more thing! The only real Americans are the Indians. EVERYONE else broke the law, or benefitted from the breaking of the law by their parents. And those parents not just broke the law, they killed a lot (95%?) of Indians.
We have a chance to do what is fair or to at least demand fairness.
Arribal los Latinos!
Read your history, El Cid, the “Native Americans” crossed the Bering straight 12,000 years ago, so they’re immigrants too, and there weren’t any “laws” preventing them or the europeans from coming here in the 1500s and subsequently. Disease killed 99% of the indians after first contact. We now have law regulating immigration, but some folks choose not to follow them, so the occaisionally get deported. It’s a tiny number that get caught, yet still people gripe about fairness. Ridiculous.
Mung, that’s the stupidest reasoning I’ve heard yet!
There were no laws preventing the Mongolians from crossing the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago? Oh, por favor!
Europeans killed a lot of Indians and took their land in contravention of the general custom of the land that it be open and available to everyone, in the case of North America, thus breaking the law. In the case of Central America, actual cities and civilization existed, and were laid waste by the Europeans, in contravention of the natives’ own laws. Read YOUR history.
Now the thieves have made unfair laws to exclude descendants of the original inhabitants of the Americas and somehow that makes them above reproach when they use their “laws” to tear families apart.
Arriba los Latinos!