From tago nang tago to self-deported

SAN FRANCISCO—We know about TnT, “tago nang tago” — always in hiding — the Filipino code for an undocumented immigrant.

Another term has become popular again recently: self-deportation.

Like TnT, it’s not really new. It came up in 1994, when the ugly campaign against undocumented immigrants was raging in California.

I had just started working as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. The U.S. was struggling to recover from a recession. Intolerant Americans were looking for scapegoats, and immigrants, Latinos in particular, were easy targets.

What really made cringe back then was this: some Filipinos even jumped on the anti-immigrant band wagon. I still remember two Filipino women chatting on a local San Francisco bus.

“Ay naku, it’s those Mexicans and those Chinese who are the problem,” they said.

As the debate raged, Pete Wilson, the Republican governor leading the campaign, told a New York Times columnist, “If it’s clear to you that you cannot be employed, and that you and your family are ineligible for services, you will self-deport.”

Well, self-deportation is back thanks to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney who has cited that concept as one of the solutions to the issue of illegal immigration.

But the return of “self-deportation” has taken an unexpected, and hilarious, turn.

Certainly, the idea of asking millions of undocumented immigrants to simply deport themselves as a way of putting an end to a long-standing political debate in the U.S. really sounds odd. But prominent Republican politicians have embraced it.

But, as it turned out, it was a joke. The whole concept was a brilliant political hoax.

To understand what happened, one must remember the hateful atmosphere that fuelled, and was later magnified by the anti-immigration campaign about 20 years ago.

Proposition 187 was aimed at denying basic health services and education to undocumented immigrants. It was a campaign based on cynicism and hypocrisy.

For the fact is California’s economy is highly dependent on the labor provided by undocumented immigrants. In fact, Wilson, the governor, was later exposed for having hired a housekeeper who was an undocumented immigrant.

In any case, two Mexican American humorists, Lalo Alcaraz and Esteban Zul, found humor amid the hatred.

Outraged by the anti-immigrant campaign, the duo put out a fake release purportedly supporting Prop 187 and calling for a campaign for “self-deportation.” They even called for the creations for self-deportation.

Alcarez then recast himself as a Latino Republican supporter of Wilson and a “militant self-deportationist.” His name: Daniel D. Portado. (Get it?) He appeared on Spanish language television to spread his “message.”

It all seemed so real.

But this week, Alcarez explained why he and his partner launched the remarkable scam.

In an interview with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Alcarez reclaimed how “like everybody else in California, we were sick of hearing about and living the anti-immigrant hysteria that was going on in California during the Proposition 187 era.”

“Everybody was losing their mind,” he continued. “In pizza places, clerks were asking dark-skinned Mexican people for IDs before they could buy a pizza. … The way to cope for satirists was to satirize the thing. … We pushed back using satire.”

It’s another time to push back, perhaps with even more humor and satire, as immigrants once again become a target in the U.S.

That’s the sad part. As Alcarez also said, “You laugh, but it’s still sad that were still stuck in this anti-immigrant hysteria.”

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