Where did all the rhetoric go?

Illegal immigrants have been a hot topic in Costa Mesa for more than

a decade. Since I have been at the Pilot, I have heard more than my

fair share of blame placed on the undocumented by a handful of

residents.

Yet none of those zealots, who are so quick to point the finger at

illegal immigrants for every pothole, negative crime statistic and

poor test score, were thumping their INS handbooks this week.

This week, Simona Garibay lost her son Jose Garibay, a Marine, to

the war in Iraq. Her sad story was featured on our front pages not

one, but two days in a row, and dozens of Newport-Mesa residents

showed their condolences and respect for her with visits to the

family home, bouquets of flowers and cards -- many of which she could

not read.

Simona Garibay entered this country clandestinely from Jalisco,

Mexico some 20 years ago to provide a better life for her family. She

has seven grown children, lives in a modest Westside home with at

least two other families and does not speak English.

She is undocumented, and Jose was a resident, but not a citizen.

Unlike other features the paper has done on extraordinary people

who happen to lack certain paperwork, we did not receive any letters

to the editor lambasting us for our blatant encouragement of illegal

immigration.

In September 2001, after a Sunday feature on the Job Center, we

received an angry letter from Costa Mesa resident Sheree Manly for

our coverage of the venue that “draws people to our community -- and

we have enough illegal immigrants that live in our community.

“They’re overloading our schools and not really contributing the

amount of taxes that they need to be contributing for all the

services that they get,” Manly wrote.

I checked the mailbox again today and there was no such

communication from our vocal reader about Jose Garibay, who paid the

ultimate price for the freedom of this country. I wonder if that

makes up for the lack of taxes?

Even Councilman Chris Steel, who was elected in 2000 partly on the

platform of eliminating “the magnets” that draw these “criminals” to

the community, has been silent about Simona Garibay.

And why not? Maybe it’s because even they know you can’t compare

measly real estate percentages with the loss of human life,

especially when the sacrifice Jose Garibay made for this country

makes the rest of us “citizens” look like anarchists.

“The Costa Mesa City Council is the problem, because its voting

record has attracted undocumented noncitizens though our charities

and the Job Center into our rentals and schools, lowering the quality

of our schools and affecting our property values and our crime rate.

This is one of the issues I was elected on, and I am obligated to

follow up,” Steel said in January 2001.

Well, he didn’t follow up with me Thursday or Friday after I

called to ask if Jose Garibay qualified as of those who “lower the

quality” of this city. I wonder why?

Councilman Allan Mansoor, who is the son of two legal immigrant

parents from Sweden and Egypt, has long championed assimilation for

the foreign born. Too many problems -- with communication and culture

-- are created by people who do not learn the language and choose to

function in a separate community.

When asked Thursday what he thought about Simona Garibay’s having

come into this country illegally and then never learning the

language, Mansoor said, “there is an appropriate place and time to

talk about everything, and now is not that time.”

I pushed him a little more, but the law man didn’t budge. He left

me with this:

“Many people could make points either way, but I feel that now is

not the proper time to discuss that. The fact is, he paid the

ultimate price for our country and deserves our respect.”

Fair enough. Left with a lack of recent quotes from Mansoor, I’ll

reuse one from March of last year.

“When you have such huge numbers of illegal immigrants, you don’t

have people assimilating,” Mansoor said in March 2002. “They don’t

learn the language or about our county or want to become American.

When you have people coming here illegally, they lose out on all that

this country has to offer, and that hurts them as much as the rest of

us.”

I would wager that Simona Garibay’s hurt right now has nothing to

do with whether she speaks English. The only thing she has lost out

on is the chance to watch her son grow older.

Vocal resident Martin Millard, who is known for his contentious

views on race, also declined to comment about the irony of a

foreign-born man giving his life for a country he was not even a

citizen of. Ex-Marine Millard, who is the author of an electronic

newsletter and of many freelance articles, said he would write his

own thoughts about it.

Again, stuck with nothing new to go on, I had to fall back on old

quotes, including one from Millard’s essay, “Survival of the Most

Fecund -- In Praise of the Cockroach,” copyrighted in 2000, in which

her refers to “little brown people” or “brown invaders” who realize

having children is important, while white people produce fewer

children.

Well, in the case of Garibay, that “invader” not only came into

this country, but adopted its principles, volunteered to fight for

its freedom and died representing it. Now, brown-skinned Simona

Garibay has only six children. Does that skew the demographics

better?

Westside resident Janice Davidson, who is a longtime political

ally of Steel, Mansoor and Millard’s, said her views on the issue

have changed since joining the city’s Human Relations Committee.

“[The Garibays] are the best. They are the best of those who come

through,” Davidson said. “We are getting crowded, though, but once

they are in, they are ours, and we need to take care of them,”

Davidson said.

Davidson sent her heartfelt condolences to the mother, regardless

of her legal status.

“I wish I could say in Spanish to forgive all of us in the

community who have not spoken well of your son, because he is a true

hero,” she said.

Enough said.

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

and covers culture and the arts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4275

or by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.