Have you seen the Tom Tancredo ad about how Central American gangs are taking over the United States and he's the only one brave enough to stop them?

Here's the jewel in the son-of-Italian immigrants anti-immigrant crown :

The word "immigration" may have an official definition in dictionaries, yet as a meme it continues to be written and expanded to proportions that are truly mythical.

Tell me if the rabble of Tancredo's rouse is not reminiscent of JR Tolkien's army of Orcs?

Come to think of it, I can understand why the Elvish-looking Tancredo is worried.

Yet, let's look at this closely shall we. As a building block in the narrative of the "immigration" meme, what Tancredo and his team have concocted in that ad is rather impressive.

Back in the day I had to do a lot of research work on world myths while working on my PhD on Latin American Studies and one little detail I was shocked to learn was the meaning of the word Iberia in Gaelic tradition. If there was ever a human group based on "immigration" or migration patterns as opposed to imperialist takeover and domination of other cultures, that group would have to be the Celts, Gallegos, Gauls.

The Gaelic people collected along the way myths, customs, vocabulary and DNA from every place they settled before moving into Ireland and the British Isles until they could not move any further West.

One of those places they hit during their migration was the Iberian peninsula where they gave us the Gallego culture and which, once settled up north became the "underworld" of the Gaelic. Yes, Ibéria and with it España became the Hades, the underworld of the Celts.

Yet this pre-Christian underworld was not a hell of fire, torture and pain. It was a heroic dark land, populated by warrior queens like Aife and where real heroes like Cuculain proved their worth to become demi-gods.

The South became hell thanks to the Roman cross. Pre-Catholic Empire, pagan groups who were adopting Christianity had a whole set of myths they werr mapping over the new religion.

The myth of Bacchic Orpheus was an example of the mythical miscegenation happening all across Europe. Orpheus' decent into Hades in search of Eurydice became Jesus' heroic decent to earth in search of Grace and Redemption while his sacrifice and re-birth was mapped over the Baccus' yearly feast.

Orpheus was the first mythical poet, memory keeper and story teller. Along with Oddysseus, the story of Orpehus is replicated in Cuculain, El Cid, Arthur --stories of men who became legends for having gone to hell and back.

Yet as centuries passed and the nation-state emerged along with a new set of capital-driven Imperialist dreams, The South was never more a mythical land were regular men once went to in order to become true heroes. The myth of the South as manufactured by the new Imperialism dressed it as an evil of dark, dirty and blood thirsty brutes that could only be subdued and controlled through their conversion to Europe (in the guise of christian indoctrination) as the true and only Civilization.

The South became the hordes of Orcs taking over Middle Earth to stink up with their foul darkness the pristine whiteness of the Heavenly Civilized North.

Tancredo's ad follows into that tradition to the tee (the tatooed gang guys look like the Tolkien/Peter Jackson's tatooed Orcs). In this ad the son-of-italians becomes the redeemer, the saviour and the Christ that will protect the civilized Americans from the dirty filth of these Middle-americanos.

What is so bold though is how in one fell swoop he erases the history of how these "gangs" came to be. These Orc-like americanos have been essentialized; meaning, they are evil because they are Central American and for that reason we have to keep them out. Yet didn't the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations these Orc-like produce the middle americanos knocking at his door?

Where is the reference to the millions paid in US tax-payers money to countries like El Salvador and Guatemala for the creation of the Contras during the years of Central America's "Secret Dirty War"?

Why isn't he talking about how the United States funded for most of the 20th century every single tyrant who ruled in Latin America and that people like Anastacio Somoza became expendable once their corruption machines got so big they spiraled out of their control?

And let's not even get started on how NAFTA has had a devastating effect on the peasant and small-business owner class in Latin America to the extent that it has pushed people up north in search of more than living wages.

Where are the historical facts?

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This is why I love ads like the garbage put out by Tancredo. It completely puts into perspective what the immigration meme is all about.

The "immigration debate" is not about patterns of human migration.

Immigration is not even about being "latino".

The immigration-meme is about the failed US chicken-shit international policies that are coming home to roost.

People like Tancredo have every reason to be scared. It's the monster he helped create and unleash elsewhere that's now come home knocking on his door.

Latinoamericanistas like me can only see the positive of having immigration as a wedge issue. The election industry wants to either stoke it or diffuse it because they are all in the business of winning elections. So Republicans stoke it while Democrats run around trying to diffuse it.

I have a particular bone to pick with amnesiac liberal Democrats. They want to diffuse the topic and run around saying "it's not an issue", not because they are defending immigrants but because it will loose them elections.

Yet we have to remember that Democrats did vote to fund the Dirty War in Central America. Democrats under Bill Clinton passed some of the toughest anti-immigrant laws (and not coincidentally the toughest welfare reform laws also) that harmed especially women and children. Democrats did vote to pass NAFTA. And just recently, Democrats did vote to militarize the borders and create a ridiculous wall.

As someone who is going to vote for a Democrat, "Immigration-the-meme" gives me the tools I need for weeding out the Democrats who are against racist foreign and domestic policies from the ones who just want to maintain the status quo.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton : What are immigration advocates going to do if the woman, who has shown herself to be willing to throw immigrant women and children under the bus, wins the nomination? Are they willing to vote for a woman who may end up working to find a "middle ground" with a sleeze bag in the Senate like Tancredo?

As a Democrat voter, that's one of the hard questions to answer.

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Hat tip to Duke of Migra Matters and Matt Ortega.