Hilton’s ‘immigrant’ attack on Becerra is despicable. But here’s where we agree
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- Becerra’s mother was born in Mexico. His father was born in Sacramento and was raised in Mexico before returning to the U.S. as a young man.
- Hilton has accused Becerra of lying when he has described himself as the son of immigrants.
SACRAMENTO — Over the last week, gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has created the exact kind of media kerfuffle he loves best by attacking his rival Xavier Becerra for Becerra’s description of his parents as “immigrants.”
Although Becerra’s mother, Maria, was born in Mexico, his father, Manuel, came into the world in Sacramento, in 1928. Soon after, Becerra’s grandparents moved their young family back to Mexico, where Manuel was raised until he returned to the U.S. as a young man to work.
As my colleague Gustavo Arellano said in a must-read column, this border back-and-forth has been more the norm than the exception for California’s Mexican American population for decades, if not centuries. Manuel Becerra’s luck at being born on U.S. soil may have given him an advantage, but it didn’t make him any less of an immigrant, Arellano explained, especially in an era when Sacramento’s Mexican population was below 2,500 and racism remained openly practiced and disturbingly accepted.
Hilton, however, has seized on Manuel Becerra’s U.S. citizenship to brand the younger Becerra a liar, allegedly falsely framing himself as the son of immigrants to gain identity-politics points in a state of immigrants. Whether one or both of Becerra’s parents qualifies as an immigrant might seem like minutiae to most voters, but Hilton’s accusation has thumped on the nerves on both the left and right — including my own, as the daughter of a South Asian immigrant.
What more proof do California voters need that Hilton is laughably out of touch with how we live? Many Mexican Americans consider family members raised in Mexico to be immigrants, even if they were born in the U.S.
Dog-whistle politics
Scratch the surface of Hilton’s attack and it becomes about something far more than Manuel Becerra’s citizenship — it’s a thinly veiled dog whistle about how a “good” immigrant behaves and how we should handle the “bad” ones. Here’s where all that gets messy for me: I agree with Hilton that being born in the U.S. is a big deal, and being a citizen is a point of pride. It does matter. I also agree with Arellano that Hilton’s attack is despicable.
Somewhere between those points are truths about immigration in America at this fraught and ugly moment, and just how different California is from the rest of the country when it comes to understanding the issue — and why that matters.
California’s Latinos, through numbers, history and hard work, have built political and social power on a scale that few, if any, other immigrant groups anywhere in the U.S. have managed. That unique position in the Golden State has allowed for what I call the magical realism of immigration myths to flourish, a wonderful gift to generations past and present that does not have the same widespread acceptance in other parts of this great country.
I firmly believe there is no such thing as a “true” immigration story.
Many, if not most, immigrants are leaving something painful behind — maybe it’s family, maybe it’s war or abuse. But carrying that burden forward with nothing more than hope to balance it, passing it on to future generations, explaining it to strangers, is too much. So immigration stories get softened over time, with trauma turning into adventure and hard facts blurred into entertaining myths.
That doesn’t make the tellers liars. It makes them human.
In the case of my father’s myth, he would have told you that his journey to America started with Humphrey Bogart. As a teen, he’d cut school to watch black-and-white movies such as “Casablanca” in a theater in Ahmedabad in northern India, so long ago that there was an intermission to change the film reels. Enamored of white tuxedos and cool blondes, he started applying to scholarships for college in America — eventually winning a full-ride at a Utah school for his skiing acumen, a sport for which he claimed great skill but in reality had never tried.
My aunts and uncles variously dispute or embrace this tale, which my father loved to tell. I don’t know how true it is, but I do know this: My father’s journey to the U.S. did not begin with Bogart. It began in the city of Karachi, which was in India until the British drew a line on the map and created Pakistan. War broke out, with Hindus killing Muslims and Muslims killing Hindus. My father, a kid, got lost in a crowd with his grandfather. He watched as a mob killed his grandpa, then escaped by himself walking hundreds of miles to safety. He was eventually reunited with his family in a refugee camp, but his India was gone forever.
In its place, he dreamed of Bogart’s America. And when he finally got here, he buried his past under the Utah snow, became such a good skier he was on ski patrol, and didn’t mention his grandpa for nearly 35 years.
Like nearly every child of an immigrant, I love both the truth and the myth of my dad because combined they are the story of my family and of America. But my father was Indian and eventually settled in Ohio, much different than California. There was no larger Indian community back then (though it’s grown significantly, including dozens of family members who followed my father), and little tolerance for anything but assimilation. That was fine by my father. He wanted nothing more than to be American — though he would remain a green card holder for decades, until fear under the first Trump administration pushed him to get citizenship.
Hilton’s audience
Just as for Becerra’s dad, being an immigrant was a state of mind for mine, an experience, not an official status. Had my dad been in California, maybe he would have kept more of his Indian identity. Had Becerra’s dad been in Ohio, maybe he would have kept less of his past.
Neither viewpoint made either man more or less American — but the different myths these two men told about who they were define the difference between California and the rest of the country.
Hilton’s attack on Becerra’s dad was never meant for a California audience, where the Latino experience of fluidity in geography and identity holds center stage. It was always meant for places such as Ohio, and Fox News, where the expectation of assimilation still reigns supreme (just ask the Haitians of Springfield) and where Hilton’s media audience — and his future — resides after he loses in November, which he almost certainly will. Hilton, after all, was the host of his own conservative television show for years.
What seems like an out-of-touch attack by Hilton on brown immigrants in California is actually thoughtful pandering to his people — the right-wing Americans who prefer “good,” deferential, grateful immigrants (like Hilton himself) over the confident California Latinos who take pride in every part of their identity.
Sorry, California Latinos, but this MAGA moment in immigration has nothing to do with criminal records or even legal status. It’s all about attitude, and MAGA hates that you have so much of it. Hilton’s attack hits the target with his right-wing crowd because, to them, not centering his father’s U.S. citizenship is a rejection of the United States, a treachery they not-so-secretly fear all immigrants share.
And here’s the twist — MAGA is right; immigrants are complicated.
My dad may have been one of the “good” immigrants, embracing all things American and quiet about his past. But he always held deep pride in his family and his origins, and he passed that on — as do so many of the other “good” immigrants.
It’s possible, common even, to fully embrace being American while also valuing the myths and truths of immigration. It’s possible to to love this country while also keeping another one in your heart, loudly or quietly. There is no one immigrant experience, no one way to be a real American. Hilton, an immigrant and the son of immigrants, surely knows this.
But where immigrants see complexity, MAGA followers see only perfidy, disloyalty, and that makes them afraid and angry — and ripe for the exploitation of those emotions by someone who can sugarcoat it, twist it, just enough to seem reasonable.
And Hilton is excellent at seeming reasonable.
What else you should be reading:
The must-read: California wine glut sends premium bottles to Costco, Aldi and Kroger at bargain prices
The California angle: Denise Brown recalls her sister Nicole’s abuse by O.J. Simpson: ‘We were there’
The L.A. Times Special: The LAPD busted a secret network of brothels — but hasn’t arrested the owner
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The column argues that Steve Hilton’s attack on Xavier Becerra’s description of his parents as immigrants is more than a dispute over biography: it signals an expectation that immigrants should assimilate quietly and show gratitude, while treating visible pride in a Latino identity as suspect.
- At the same time, the piece agrees with Hilton on one point: being born in the United States and holding citizenship matter. But it contends that legal status alone cannot capture the lived experience of families whose lives span borders. Becerra has said his father was born in Sacramento, raised in Mexico, and later returned to California, and argues that this history and the discrimination his father faced inform his description of him as an immigrant.[1]
- The article also suggests that family migration stories often blend painful history with softer, more hopeful versions passed down over time. That does not necessarily make those stories dishonest; rather, both the myths and the facts can shape a family’s sense of belonging.
- Finally, the column presents California’s Latino experience as distinct from places with stronger expectations of assimilation. It argues that people can embrace being American while also holding on to another country, culture, or family history—and that no single story defines a “real” immigrant or American.
Different views on the topic
- Hilton and other critics argue that Becerra’s wording is misleading because his father was born in Sacramento and was a U.S. citizen by birth. Hilton contrasts that history with his own experience as an immigrant and says Becerra is falsely claiming an immigrant background for political advantage.[1][3]
- Becerra disputes that characterization. He says his father’s childhood in Mexico, return to the United States, and experiences as a Mexican American are part of the family’s migration story; his campaign has also argued that moving between the United States and Mexico was common for families like his.[1]
- More broadly, Hilton has said he wants to protect legal immigrant communities and prioritize removing dangerous criminals, while Becerra has criticized Hilton’s approach as welcoming some immigrants while targeting others.[2][4]
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