Word: martinez
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...MARTINEZ: Compared to other periods in our history, people aren't rioting in the streets. Even the bickering in Washington, a lot of it feels tactical--there's not much that separates the two parties on economic policy or even foreign policy. I think from the perspective of a lot of foreigners it's kind of like Visa vs. MasterCard. It's not that different. So I think a lot of this is overwrought...
...MARTINEZ: I think the debate now is a bit disjointed. In Washington it's always about one piece of proposed legislation vs. another, and yet here, at the ground level in a city like Los Angeles, it's definitely the subject our readers feel most strongly about. If we editorialize on immigration, then the flow of letters is like 10 times that for any other subject. I think it taps into a lot of folks' anxieties about the changing world and globalization--a lot of things that really aren't about immigration. But I think it's a debate that...
...MARTINEZ: I think the debate is already quite ugly in many corners, and I think that's what leads to the timidity in Washington. I mean, this is something that George Bush was talking about on 9/10, so to speak, and was one of his first priorities, and he keeps putting it on the back burner. And he had excuses initially, but his reticence to get back to it and really kind of force the issue really has to do with how ugly the debate could get, and has been...
...MARTINEZ: It feels very much like past waves of immigration, and yet the political discourse is a bit different. Samuel Huntington had his book that said that basically there was a fifth column of people trying to take back portions of Mexico that were lost. But the reality is different. There is assimilation. The 2000 Census showed that 71% of third-generation Mexican-American immigrants speak only English. And yet even mainstream media tend to make the mistake of equating Latino with Spanish speaking. One of our columnists, Gregory Rodriguez, likes to make the point that nobody would ever think...
...MARTINEZ: And I think the intensity of the immigration debate is ratcheted up by the cultural issue. Not to say that people are necessarily racist, but I think people have the notion that the mainstream, majority American, Anglo-European culture--whatever you want to call it--is eroding, and I think that makes a lot of people very anxious...