It was cold and blowing snow. The front of my surburban office looked a lot like one of the winter scenes from Doctor Zhivago. Somehow, though, I think it seemed far less romantic to the crew that was clearing a path to my front door.
They were working like maniacs.
And they were speaking rapidly in a variety of Mexican-Spanish that was hard for me to cut through. As best as I can figure, the conversation went something like this: "Oye, Paco! Don't shovel like that or you'll hurt your back like Lopez did last week." "But this stuff is worse than wet clay. When will the machine get here?"
"Buenas dias," I said, figuring on practicing a little Spanish. And the discussion ended with a thud. It was as if I had violated their privacy by speaking to them in a language they reserved for themselves.
Minnesotans are all informed by their own family histories — and even legends — of immigration. Each family, it seems, has a store of tales and memories to tell. My family includes a homesick, green-eyed Slovenian who would go out into the north woods to yodel at the wolves; a French-Canadian great-grandfather who left home at the age of 12 to go operate giant steam shovels on the Range; and a brilliant educator grandmother who prohibited the speaking of German anywhere but in the barn because of her own humiliation at being held back a year in school because she didn't speak English in the first grade. (And here's the legend: They say that people would come from miles around in Todd County just to see the cows in that German-speaking Knaak barn march in step to and from the pasture. Hmmm.)
This is one of the things we share in common in this part of the country: This strong identification with an immigrant past with who we now are in Minnesota as Minnesotans.
This is what has made immigration such a very tough political issue for Republicans here. Democrats, and organized labor in particular, have never been fond of the cheap labor that immigration has represented. But lately, the hardest edge on the debate has come from Sunbelt Republicans and nativists. And the hard-edged argument doesn't play well in a place where people don't associate immigration with trash. Tim Pawlenty found this out when he tried to pick up the issue of using car licenses and local law enforcement to weed out local "illegals." If anything, Republicans were more offended than Democrats.
It'll get more interesting as Tim gets closer to the center of the national Republican political establishment and the whole party moves here next summer for its convention. There's a real chance that, unless the immigration debate is resolved in Washington before then, a harsh Republican position on borders and immigration could have a serious boomerang affect on elections in the upper-Midwest, and in Minnesota, in particular.
This is one of those issues that George W. Bush actually does get on his own. As Governor of Texas, he successfully created a winning Republican coalition that included most of the Hispanic vote of that state.
Pawlenty, and Minnesota Republicans, need to be hoping and working for a good federal solution during this session of Congress with sympathetic Democrats. They also need to be very careful, at the least, not to adopt the harshness that is so much a part of the hardliner discussion on the national level.
Who knows? If we're lucky, maybe in 40 years, Senator Gonzales (R. Minn) will be telling tales of HIS Minnesota ancestors who hand shovelled through 14-foot snow drifts in the Twin Cities to work his kids through school....
They were working like maniacs.
And they were speaking rapidly in a variety of Mexican-Spanish that was hard for me to cut through. As best as I can figure, the conversation went something like this: "Oye, Paco! Don't shovel like that or you'll hurt your back like Lopez did last week." "But this stuff is worse than wet clay. When will the machine get here?"
"Buenas dias," I said, figuring on practicing a little Spanish. And the discussion ended with a thud. It was as if I had violated their privacy by speaking to them in a language they reserved for themselves.
Minnesotans are all informed by their own family histories — and even legends — of immigration. Each family, it seems, has a store of tales and memories to tell. My family includes a homesick, green-eyed Slovenian who would go out into the north woods to yodel at the wolves; a French-Canadian great-grandfather who left home at the age of 12 to go operate giant steam shovels on the Range; and a brilliant educator grandmother who prohibited the speaking of German anywhere but in the barn because of her own humiliation at being held back a year in school because she didn't speak English in the first grade. (And here's the legend: They say that people would come from miles around in Todd County just to see the cows in that German-speaking Knaak barn march in step to and from the pasture. Hmmm.)
This is one of the things we share in common in this part of the country: This strong identification with an immigrant past with who we now are in Minnesota as Minnesotans.
This is what has made immigration such a very tough political issue for Republicans here. Democrats, and organized labor in particular, have never been fond of the cheap labor that immigration has represented. But lately, the hardest edge on the debate has come from Sunbelt Republicans and nativists. And the hard-edged argument doesn't play well in a place where people don't associate immigration with trash. Tim Pawlenty found this out when he tried to pick up the issue of using car licenses and local law enforcement to weed out local "illegals." If anything, Republicans were more offended than Democrats.
It'll get more interesting as Tim gets closer to the center of the national Republican political establishment and the whole party moves here next summer for its convention. There's a real chance that, unless the immigration debate is resolved in Washington before then, a harsh Republican position on borders and immigration could have a serious boomerang affect on elections in the upper-Midwest, and in Minnesota, in particular.
This is one of those issues that George W. Bush actually does get on his own. As Governor of Texas, he successfully created a winning Republican coalition that included most of the Hispanic vote of that state.
Pawlenty, and Minnesota Republicans, need to be hoping and working for a good federal solution during this session of Congress with sympathetic Democrats. They also need to be very careful, at the least, not to adopt the harshness that is so much a part of the hardliner discussion on the national level.
Who knows? If we're lucky, maybe in 40 years, Senator Gonzales (R. Minn) will be telling tales of HIS Minnesota ancestors who hand shovelled through 14-foot snow drifts in the Twin Cities to work his kids through school....
