The Melting Pot Boils Over in Ohio

A landmark story:

It started with the spray-painted, misspelled "Rapest" on the house of a Hispanic man accused of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old white girl. Then the house went up in flames in a suspected arson.

Confrontations, name-calling and threats against Hispanics followed. Men roamed the streets wearing pillowcases with eye holes, and Ku Klux Klansmen in hoods and robes showed up to pass out pamphlets. There were rumors of assaults and beatings.

Now this small Ohio river city's booming Hispanic population is cowed, the streets in their neighborhoods nearly deserted.

Outside the office of the Living Water Ministry, which two months ago drew hundreds of people to its first Cinco de Mayo festival, there is still a smell of charred wood from the June 21 fire that gutted the house next door and caused damage to the outside of the ministry's office.

"Before, the street would be covered with people, people out all over the place," said Sasha Amen, community outreach coordinator for Living Water. "There's a lot of fear now. People are shutting themselves in their homes."

Hamilton has been a hotbed for Hispanic growth in a state that has lagged behind much of the nation in Hispanic population. The number of Hispanics here jumped fivefold in the 1990s, to 1,566, and is now estimated at 4,000 or more in a city of some 61,000.

For the most part, the immigrants had settled in without much controversy in Hamilton, whose mayor in the 1990s was of Cuban descent. But life here was transformed on June 19, when a 9-year-old Caucasian girl was raped, allegedly by a Hispanic man who has apparently fled the city.

"Yes, there is fear," said Ramona Ramirez, who owns a corner deli-supermarket where she says business is off and her bread delivery man is now afraid to come. "They are attacking all the Hispanics, and it is only one person. We don't know what will happen."

This is a terrible story.

It is a grave injustice to treat all Hispanics as culpable for the acts of one criminal, and the intimidation and threats need to stop.

That said, a couple of other things need to be done as well to defuse this simmering situation before it reaches the boiling point, in Ohio and elsewhere.

First, immigration laws need to be strictly enforced. Fear of enforcing these laws is part of the reason why illegal immigrants find it so easy to commit crimes in the United States and flee when the heat is on.

Second, Hispanic communities need to help police find and punish criminals within their reach. This is what the melting pot means---we identify more with America than we do with our country of national origin, and more with our fellow Americans than with our former countrymen.

Third, the State Department and the President need to take Vincente Fox to the woodshed for fanning Mexican nationalism among the expatriates living in the United States. He is actively undermining their assimilation into our culture, which simply magnifies the significant problems of a community taking on a significant percentage of immigrants with similar backgrounds.

Fourth, we have got to toughen the laws concerning sex offenders in this country, both to serve as a better deterrent, and to ensure that repeat offenders aren't free to rape (and many times, murder) our kids. There is simply no reason why the rape of a prepubescent should not result in imprisonment for life. If put to a vote, you can bet Americans support this sort of tough sentencing. It's high time our elected officials grew some guts.

Fifth, the Ku Klux Klan has got to go. Might I recommend we start with the Imperial Wizard of the U.S. Senate, Democrat Robert Byrd?