Car Crash Brought Up Within Immigration Debate

http://www.environmentalprograms.net/guidance/eco-econ/#prof
     On September first an article was published by USA Today entitled, "Fatal Crash Latest Flashpoint in Immigration Debate". The article discusses an illegal immigrant that is "charged with drunken driving in a crash that killed a nun and critically injured two others[, he] could face a felony murder charge in the case" (Gomez, 2010). The fact that the driver was an illegal immigrant led some groups of people to cite it "as an example of a failed policy that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the United States" (2010).
    The article quoted spokesman Bob Dane from the Federation for American Immigration Reform stating that, "this guy would have been identified as being an illegal alien several violations and incarcerations ago, and he would be back in his home country. He wouldn't be driving without a license and killing people" (2010), if America's immigration policy were reformed.
    When I read this I thought of the book, A Latino Threat by Leo Chavez and how Mexicans have come to be associated with the term illegal alien (2008, p.24). This statement is also a good example of how Latin American immigrants have been essentially "turned into statistical means" (Chavez, 2008, p.43). The statement made by Dane singles out immigration policy as the root cause of the fatalities caused by the crash- not the fact that the man was driving drunk. (Not to mention the fact that drunk driving is a prevalent problem across all nationalities, genders, and races)
    The Benedictine Sisters of Virginia were quoted later in the article expressing "that they were "dismayed and saddened that [the] tragedy [had] been politicized and become an apparent forum for the illegal-immigration agenda"" (Gomez, 2010). The president of American Immigration Lawyers Association, David Leopold also stated that "[the] issue in this case [was] not that an undocumented driver was driving drunk. The issue is drunk driving, period. There is not a problem in this country with any particular ethnic group. It is a national problem from state to state" (2010). I think that both of these statements indicate positive movement away from such generalizations of Latin American immigrants that Leo Chavez discusses which Dane exemplified.
     Overall, I think it is interesting and unfortunate that there are people such as Dane that continue to not only take isolated cases and generalize them across whole populations of people, but additionally continue to use the term illegal alien to define particular ethnic groups- namely Latin Americans. Although using such a term may seem minuscule in regards to its effect on society overall, its continuous use embeds the idea into people's minds where it is eventually internalized. When ideas like that of a person being an illegal alien to a particular country are internalized the virtual lives of the aliens overshadow their actual lives. This has clearly happened with regards to Mexican and other Latin American immigrants over the years.

 "Once constructed in this way, Mexican and other Latin American immigrants and even United States- born Latinos, are ready to be represented as "space invaders"- as Nirmal Puwar has put it- whose reproduction both social and biological, threatens to destroy the nations identity" (Chavez, 2008, p.40).