Illegal immigrants didn't move to San Diego to set fires.
BY RUBEN NAVARRETTE
Sunday, November 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
SAN DIEGO--It didn't take long for the public debate over the Southern California wildfires to spread to the incendiary issue of illegal immigration.
Early on in the crisis, local journalists received an anonymous and remarkably uniformed email definitively blaming the devastation on "illegal campfires set in the forest routes that illegal aliens use to invade our country" and "the 'soft on illegal aliens' policies of our President and the Senate." Other comments came from the San Diego Minutemen, who were upset with Bill O'Reilly for dismissing the notion that the fires were set by illegal immigrants on his radio show.
Talk about jumping to conclusions. Illegal immigrants in the canyons around San Diego are known to light controlled campfires to cook food, but not in the area of the county where these fires started. As of yet, there is no evidence that they started the wildfires.
In Orange County, it looks as if arson played a role. And in San Diego County, a rancher on whose land one of the larger fires may have started has said that the likely culprits were power lines and dry brush--and, of course, the Santa Ana winds.
Still, with or without evidence, some people are all too eager to blame illegal immigrants. How original. The undocumented are blamed for rising crime, traffic congestion, falling wages, failing schools, overflowing hospitals, crowded jails and other societal ills. And, now, natural disasters.
It's funny that Californians never get around to blaming themselves for luring illegal immigrants to their neighborhoods and towns with the promise of employment.
Speaking of employment, as the flames approached and plumes of smoke filled the air, human-rights activists tried to lure immigrant farm workers out of the fields for their own safety. But, in a story chronicled by ABC News's "20/20," at least one tomato farmer refused to order his workers to leave and wouldn't guarantee their jobs if they did. Instead, the farmer told the workers, it was their choice about whether to stay or go. And so the laborers covered their faces with bandanas and kept right on picking tomatoes.
Other immigrants never got the word to evacuate--at least not in a language they could understand. Some cities in San Diego County have a new automated "reverse 911" system where, in case of an emergency, the police call you instead of the other way around. With the help of these calls, more than 500,000 people were evacuated from the fire zone in the first 48 hours.
That includes my family. A call went to my home at about 7:00 a.m. Monday. Soon thereafter, my wife and I grabbed our two small children, diapers, formula and clothes and headed out. But reverse 911 calls are in English, so the Hispanics who only speak Spanish remained in the dark as they remained in harm's way.
Many of those who did leave gravitated to Qualcomm Stadium, the county-designated shelter that, at one point, was home to an estimated 10,000 people, including some illegal immigrants. We know this because a handful of them were, in separate incidents, arrested and deported. Those Border Patrol agents weren't at the Stadium to enforce immigration law but to help control the crowd.
In one incident, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, three Hispanic immigrant families who had evacuated their homes were given diapers, water and other supplies. A bystander saw the families with the goods, assumed they were stealing and told the police. While investigating the alleged theft, the police tried to ascertain whether each of the families were in the country legally. One of the families had documents and was allowed to go on its way. However, the other two families could not prove that they were in the country legally. They were turned over to the Border Patrol, which promptly deported them back to Mexico.
As word spread through the stadium, droves of illegal immigrants headed to the exits fearing that they might be next.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spent a lot of time in San Diego during the crisis. At one point, he made his way over to Qualcomm Stadium. He shook hands with evacuees and asked if they had everything they needed. Gov. Schwarzenegger got rave reviews from the media, and rightly so. It was a shining moment for our action-hero governor. But on the immigration angle, he was more like a silent-picture star. Although he has staked out a position in the middle of the road on the immigration issue, and has offered calming and sensible views in a state where you don't often hear that sort of thing, the governor steered clear of any mention of immigrants or how they were being affected by the disaster.
The fires are now largely under control. But the next time there is a fire or some other disaster in San Diego County, those residents who are in the country illegally are probably not going to heed orders to evacuate if it means risking deportation. Many will simply stay put and take their chances against the advancing flames.
The official tally thus far is that seven people perished as a direct result of last week's fires. That includes four charred, and yet unidentified, bodies that were uncovered--bodies that authorities believe to be those of illegal immigrants who didn't make it out. There could be more.
There is one way for San Diego County to put to rest this part of the story and avoid these kinds of headlines in the future. Employers could kick their addiction to illegal immigrant labor.
Dream on. This is San Diego--and California. And so, over the next few months, just who do you think is going to help rebuild all that burned down?
Mr. Navarrette is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.
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