Mexican President Vicente Fox put his foot in his mouth up to the knee last week. Speaking to a business group, he criticized U.S. immigration policy, saying Mexican workers are willing to go to the U.S. and perform jobs “that not even blacks want to do.” There was the usual uproar and, after initially standing by his remarks, presidential backpedaling. Mr. Fox’s inadvertent blurting of his actual thoughts is an insight into the mindset of North America’s ruling class.

Mr. Fox’s assumption is that African Americans get the worst legal jobs in the U.S. and jobs worse than those – off the books, sub-minimum wage and no protections – are the province of the people he was allegedly elected to serve.

Without condoning racist statements, it has to be admitted the U.S. has done little to contradict Mr. Fox’s prejudice. A family court case in point is playing out near Nashville. In the 1990s, Felipa Berrera brought her family from the Mexican state of Guerrero to Tennessee. Ms. Berrera is Mixtec and speaks neither English nor Spanish, but only her native language, Mixteca. Needless to say, Ms. Berrera and her family are poor. They live in a trailer, there is often little to eat. Sometimes, Ms. Berrera would keep her daughter Linda, now 11, home from school to care for her younger siblings.

In March 2004, one of Linda’s teacher’s petitioned local courts for emergency custody of the girl, claiming she was being neglected. Wilson County Judge Barry Tatum granted the petition and Linda was taken away from her mother and placed with a white couple, Emily and Warren Patterson. Felipa Berrera tried to immediately reclaim her child, but was not given a court date for two months and did not receive the assistance of a court-appointed attorney until August.

Seven months after her child was taken from her, Ms. Berrera got her day in court. Young Linda told the judge that when she was with her mother, there was often little to eat. She said a member of her older brother’s family hit her in the leg with a stick and that her mother had pinched her ear. Ms. Berrera denied her daughter had been ill-used and requested that the court order family counseling.

Judge Tatum refused the request and instead gave Ms. Berrera six months to learn to speak English to his satisfaction. Should she fail, he warned, he would terminate her parental rights forever. Judge Tatum has issued similar English-training orders in other family court cases. Asked what English proficiency has to do with good parenting, Judge Tatum said, “It’s common sense.”

The case attracted the attention of civil rights groups and Judge Tatum’s directives are being appealed to higher courts. Meanwhile, Ms. Berrera has not seen her daughter outside a courtroom for 14 months. No longer in a trailer, Linda now lives in the Pattersons’ ranch house with a basketball hoop in the driveway and a swimming pool out back. The Pattersons, who have retained their own attorney, say they want to adopt Linda. They have sent the girl to 4-H camp and have had her baptized at their church.

As Vicente Fox noted, there are jobs in the U.S. no American – of any color – wants to perform. Because Mr. Fox and his predecessors have turned Mexico over to multinational corporations and narcotics traffickers, there are many destitute Mexicans like Ms. Berrera willing to travel a thousand miles north and endure deplorable conditions for miserable wages.

Mexicans, and other Central American economic refugees, have become what blacks once were: America’s slave class. True, they are not bought and sold at auction, but wage slavery in the 21st century increasingly resembles chattel slavery of the 18th and 19th centuries. Due to their status as illegal immigrants, most Latinos have little standing in U.S. courts and few rights state or federal agencies are willing to protect. Instead, they are ready victims to predation by employers, landlords, thieves and vigilantes.

No white child of an English-speaking parent could have been removed from her or his home as easily as school officials and the middle-class Pattersons snatched Linda. Although poor Americans consistently get the short end of the stick in the U.S. legal system, no white person’s right to due process would be as flagrantly violated as Ms. Berrera’s was.

Between the media exposure and the legal assistance Ms. Berrera is now receiving, there’s a good chance justice will be served in her case. That will not return to her the year of her daughter’s childhood she has missed. It will do little for Linda, who has been bribed, coaxed and confused by people whose nearsightedness blinds them to the child’s best interest. It does nothing for all the people trapped in similar situations that we will never hear about.

© Mark Floegel, 2005