Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

Ever since the cinema world’s favorite Mexican stereotype (played by Alfonso Bedoya in the 1948 Bogart classic movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre) made that line famous other movies (such as the 1974 movie, Blazing Saddles) and books have repeatedly immortalized it as one of America’s most famous film quotes. It also has symbolized the division between our two cultures that only heightens misunderstanding and results in another one of our popular clichés: the Mexican standoff.

Perhaps, on a much larger scale, we are experiencing a Mexican standoff as a country that is trying to fix its immigration system. On one side, we have about 11 million Hispanics who, by their undocumented presence in the U.S., have clearly proven to us that they “don’t need no stinking papers”—while, on the other side, we have scores of politicians getting ready to “throw the baby out with the bath water” as they continuously favor “legislation against legalization.”  

To the other forty million of us Latinos and Hispanics living here with documentation in living pursuit of the American dream, we see both sides of this issue, and for the sake of both sides, we pray that America wakes up to the great American dream that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of fifty years ago, when he said:

“I have a dream…It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ ”

Ben Ruiz

Vice-Chair, Diversity Co., American Advertising Federation of Louisville

Co-Founder of The Magnificent 7, Metro Mayor’s Office for Globalization

Co-Founder of GLI’s Hispanic Latino Business Council

Co-Founder of La Camara @ Wesley House

Advisory Council Member, U of L’s Latin American Latino Studies

Advisory Council Member, Hispanic Latino Coalition of Louisville

Board Member, Adelante Hispanic Achievers

Media Co. Chair, Simmons College of Kentucky