Silverthorne
Luis Saenz tuned his TV to the World Cup soccer match between Mexico and Argentina. Saenz was taking a break between his own fútbol games. The 25-year-old insulation installer played for Zacatecas-Mexico in La Mezcla Soccer Tournament. La Mezcla is Spanish for “The Mix.”
Mixing countries and cultures is what the Summit County Family & Intercultural Resource Center and the High Country Soccer Association had in mind when they held a sporting event last weekend. It was part of The Colorado Trust’s Immigration Integration Project, a $6.4 million effort to bring residents together, no matter how they got here.
“With people on the street, you see it sometimes,” Saenz said of America’s angry immigration debate. “But not at work. You work for the same team. You earn your job. You work as hard as you can.”
In Denver, hate-mongers and politicians demonize illegal immigrants. They say the state must vote on an initiative to take away undocumented workers’ nearly nonexistent nonfederally mandated state benefits. They applaud arrests and the deportation of those without proper papers but block their path to citizenship.
In the mountains, folks seem as worried about getting along as immigrant status. Saenz and his friend, 22-year-old Fernando Medina, don’t see the undocumented as felons, the way the U.S. House of Representatives does.
“They’re not criminals,” Saenz said.
They are family and friends, added Medina. “Some are illegal. What would you do if they took them? You’d be upset.”
That’s why when they talk about integrating immigrants and refugees in places like Summit County, where Census data show that the immigrant population grew 722 percent from 1990 to 2000, they focus on people, not green cards.
“Kids from other cultures integrate better than they did 10 years ago,” said High Country Soccer’s Julio Mora.
Eight years ago, when he started coaching soccer at a local high school, Justin Turri had no Latino players. Today, his squad is mixed. “At first, the Hispanic players sat in one part of the team bus and the white players in another,” Turri said. “Now, they’re all over the place.”
You wonder if the current vilification of illegal immigrants will change that.
“I don’t know what to say,” explained 19-year-old Kevin Pelen, who came to Colorado from Guatemala City. “There are some cool people and some racists.”
Pelen starred for Turri’s high school team. Last weekend, he joined his former coach and several other Anglos on a team called USA-Summit. But two weeks ago in a summer-league game, a player on another team told Pelen, “Hey, you wetback, go back to Mexico.”
Pelen’s high school and USA-Summit teammate Chicho Casillas has heard the same thing recently.
Seeing illegal immigrants as dangerous public-service parasites is still a foreign concept to white Coloradans such as Turri and Bernie Keil.
“Any parent will tell you, they come here for a better life,” Turri said.
Keil’s son goes to a dual-language, English-Spanish school. Showing respect for American and Spanish cultures simultaneously doesn’t bother him.
“I coach a soccer team in Dillon that is 75 percent Hispanic,” Keil said. “Most of these Spanish kids speak English. There’s no problem with the kids getting along.”
The problem is adults exploiting fear.
Among 53 steps in the Summit County immigrant-integration plan, you will not find one that says: “Check immigration papers; turn in undocumented; push for deportation.”
Sure, we must curb illegal immigration. We must produce foolproof IDs. We must severely prosecute employers who don’t check legal status. We must make workers legal and make them pay taxes or send them home. We must change.
But finally, we all play on the same team. It is a team whose nature drives each of its players to seek a better life.
Sometimes, you have to get down to the grass roots of a soccer field to remember that.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
