Remarks from CAIR-Chicago’s 8th Annual Banquet, A Future Without Bigotry

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez

REMARKS

CAIR-Chicago’s 8th Annual Banquet, A Future Without Bigotry

March 3, 2012

Thank you.

Thank you Gerald for your generous introduction and to Ahmed Rehab and the entire Chicago-CAIR family and you, their supporters.  I appreciate the recognition and this very welcoming hometown audience and this chance to talk about our continued partnership for human rights, civil rights, and treating people with basic dignity and decency.

I especially welcome this opportunity to discuss some of what I do in Washington because, while I am known around the country for my work on immigration, civil rights, and issues related to Puerto Rico and I am frequently interviewed on the Sunday TV chat shows and cable and Spanish TV, it can be a little hard to break through on my home turf.

They say a prophet is never recognized in his own land and while I do not claim to be a prophet or anything close to a prophet, the saying rings true when you look at the local Chicago media and their coverage of Congress.

For example, I get very few calls from Chicago Tribune reporters.  Occasionally they ask all of the Members from Illinois who we are rooting for in the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup and they also ask for my reaction to something Rahm Emanuel said or did.

And then I am asked to comment on whatever story they are working on that has the slightest whiff of any kind of Chicago political scandal, whether it is real or imagined, substantive or not, or whether I have even the remotest, tangential relationship to some issue in some way. 

And no matter what you say, you get tainted.  When I see the headline, "Three-car pile up blocks Van Wyck Expressway," I often expect to see the subhead "Gutierrez drove that highway last month but denies involvement in crash."

But that's okay.  Leaders across history, including President Obama, have found the local press less interested and more hostile than the national or international press.

But it makes me all the more happy to have a chance to talk with you and accept this award and discuss where we are headed on the theme of tonight's program: "A Future Without Bigotry."

A couple of points I want to highlight:

I have had the privilege to serve as a senior Member of the Financial Services Committee, currently serving as the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Housing, Insurance and Community Opportunity, which is chaired by Judy Biggert. 

On that subcommittee, we are trying to make improvements to public housing and to hold the whole housing and mortgage industry accountable for what they did to our economy and  contribute to the financial crisis.  More importantly, we want to see what we can do working with the financial services industry to give relief to homeowners, people in jeopardy of losing their homes, and small business owners who are driving our economy -- or should be.

A lot of my time is spent defending policies we were able to pass in the last Congress against attempts to roll back reform by the majority in the current Congress.  This is particularly true when it comes to keeping homeowners in their homes and making sure mortgage lenders are playing by a basic set of rules.

Why am I highlighting this at a banquet for CAIR?  Because you all own homes, live in homes, pay mortgages, or are among those who have lost your homes or owe more money on them than they are worth. 

You own businesses that make our neighborhoods and communities thrive.  You are raising the next generation of Americans, just like everyone else -- a more diverse and colorful generation of Americans than this nation has ever seen, to be sure -- but the future of our nation and of the Chicago region rests on your stability and success. 

My work on financial services is part of our building a future without bigotry because it is about inclusion and fairness and stability in our communities and a shared prosperity.  When it comes down to it, owning a home and raising your children and contributing to your community are the most American things in the world. 

In the end, what we do to create a strong and vibrant economic future may do more to create a future without bigotry than a lot of other things I work on, even if it is not explicitly about religious or cultural tolerance, civil liberties, immigration, or such matters.

To be sure, there is a lot of work being done on the more explicit aspects of the agenda to eradicate bigotry.  And one place I encounter it most directly is the Intelligence Committee. 

I will not go into detail about the Intelligence Committee because a lot of it is secret and classified.  Can you imagine the clip on Fox News?  "Democratic Congressman briefs Islamic group on classified intelligence matters"…They would do a breaking news special report and it would drive the news for three days.

But what I can tell you is that in my position on the House Intelligence Committee, and particularly on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence, I have worked to counter the false narrative that "Muslim" and "Terrorist" are synonyms in the English language.

Whether from talking heads or candidates for President, we often hear that somehow we need to be afraid of our Muslim friends and neighbors.  We have had a number of open, public hearings where the Republicans are trying to drive this point.

However, I use my position to point out that our Muslim friends and neighbors are CEOs, they are first responders, they are soldiers, they contribute to our nation and they deserve our respect, not our suspicion.  If we are truly going to be successful in keeping us safe from terrorism and the conditions that breed terrorism, we must focus our scarce resources on true and credible risks and not waste time with empty words that are meant to inflame more than enlighten.

Like a lot of you, I read about the New York Police Department sending undercover cops in to -- quote -- "infiltrate" -- the Muslim Student Association at colleges in the New York area.  They even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip with students from the City College of New York, just to keep an eye on them.

It makes no sense and it is not sensible law enforcement.  We are all safer when we are all working together and when information flows freely back and forth between committed allies, not suspicious adversaries. 

So many of our policies drive a wedge between communities and law enforcement because we see things through this criminal justice, counter-terrorism, "us versus them" frame of reference.  We will not be safer as a society until our local police and national law enforcement see every community as a partner and worth protecting.

I get calls from immigrants from all over the country asking for help, especially when they or their loved ones are facing deportation.  For the last several years, these calls have increasingly centered on how local law enforcement is targeting the Latino community for deportation by the strictest possible enforcement of local laws.

One young man, whose case I am working on, is being deported because he has nine traffic violations on his record. 

"Wow," you might say.  "Nine violations, Luis?  That sounds like a reckless driver.  Don't we want them deported if they are also undocumented?"

As it turns out, in his community in South Carolina, not far from the oceanside resorts of Hilton Head, the local police park their cruisers outside the trailer park or apartment building where lots of Latinos live and wait to hit them with a ticket.  Failure to put on a turn signal then turns into a charge of driving without a license, which, of course, you cannot get if you are undocumented.  Then thatturns into what looks like a quote -- "repeat offender." 

No matter the details, the local police have increased their numbers and another guy is turned over to immigration.

The young man of whom I speak, Gabino Sanchez, has lived here for more than 10 years and came as a teenager and has two U.S. citizen children who have never lived in any other country. 

So far, even under new guidelines about targeting deportation at serious criminals and closing the cases of hard working immigrants in families with U.S. citizens, we have not gotten the Department of Homeland Security to drop his case or reconsider the time and resources they are using to deport a father and taxpayer who is helping to build our country.

In a couple of weeks, I plan to attend his next hearing, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and see what I can do to bring some attention and some reason to how Gabino and his family are treated.

But it is the same old story.  Profiling, whether it is done by a South Carolina sheriff, the New York Police, the Chicago Police or the FBI is not effective law enforcement.  It does the opposite of make us safer.  It iss the opposite of using taxpayer dollars efficiently. 

Do you think Gabino's next door neighbor is going to think twice before calling the police if he or she witnesses an actual crime?

And while some may think it makes for good politics, voters are moving beyond the fear-driven politics and politicians pointing the finger at one group or the other to score political points.  Slowly, we are making progress and organizations like CAIR help keep us focused in the right direction. 

This Election Year, when we return President Obama for a second term to the White House, largely on the strength of Latino voters, minority voters, young voters and women voters, we will write a new chapter.  And we need to keep the pressure on so that we are making progress and that campaign commitments are not forgotten.

I thank you very much for the award and for recognizing my work and the work we are doing together to create a future without bigotry.

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