[Si] TV

With Latinos accounting for more than 14 percent of the U.S. population, there’s no denying the infusion of Latin culture into American history. Yet, now that Homeland Security has increased militarization along the Mexican border as one of the adamant displays of diminished tolerance for immigrants, many would-be citizens with much to contribute will be left at bay. What if these laws were applied years ago? Here are a few people American culture would be without:

Name: Carlos Mencia
POB: San Pedro Sula, Honduras
Raised: East L.A., California

You never would have met the man who put a Cal State degree in electronic engineering on the backburner, just one credit away from completion, to devote his life to making people laugh. America’s mood would be way more serious if Mencia hadn’t sold 56,000 copies of his Warner Bros. debut, Take a Joke America. And 1.4 million viewers would have never gotten into the Mind of Mencia, watching his risky Comedy Central TV series. He was the perfect comic to fill the gaping void left by Dave Chappelle. Who else would embrace the word “beaner”? No Juan.

Name: Dania Ramirez
POB: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Raised: Harlem, New York

You never would have seen 27-year-old actress, Ramirez, take leaps and bounds up the Tinseltown ladder. Nor witnessed her amazing transformations from portraying one of the sexiest lesbians ever in Spike Lee’s She Hate Me to being the apple bottom of Fat Albert’s eye. Or witness a classic mutant beat down between her and Halle Berry in X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Mini-screen cult classics The Sopranos and Heroes would also miss her sazon. Not to mention making AJ (Robert Iler) look like a stud when he’s really a dud. 

Name: Daniel Alarcón
POB: Lima, Peru
Raised: Birmingham, Alabama

You never would have allowed Daniel Alarcón to open your mind to the complexities of war-torn countries, such as Peru, in his 2007 contribution to the literary world Lost City Radio. You would have missed out on his chronicles of Lima life in his ’06 debut War by Candlelight: Stories (P.S.). The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine would be void of Alarcón’s beautifully descriptive fiction and non-fiction depictions. Columbia University would have one less graduate, and Granta, a prestigious publication known for debuting the crème de la crème of writers, would never have been able to name Alarcón one of the Best Young American Novelists.

Name: Manny Ramirez
POB: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Raised: Washington Heights, New York

No one would have guessed that a dominicano slugger would help break El Bambino’s 86-year-old curse (sorry Wade Boggs). Beating the St. Louis Cardinals 3-0 to win the 2004 World Series, the game’s MVP, Manny Ramirez will forever hold a place in heart of Bostonians. You wouldn’t have witnessed him go from a newbie leftfielder, doubted by his league and put on the trading block, to become “the heart of the Sox,” all in the face of adversity. And ironically, if Ramirez had been denied the chance three years ago to become an American citizen, there would be no patriotic fundraiser called "Strikeouts For Troops,” that assists wounded American soldiers and their families.

Name: Amy Serrano
POB: Havana, Cuba
Raised: Miami, Florida

You never would have gotten Serrano’s directorial take on humanity’s worldwide struggles: from her PBS broadcast A Woman’s Place: Voices of Contemporary Hispanic-American Women to her Emmy-nominated piece Cafe con Leche: Voices of Exile’s Children. Her standout documentaries, like The Sugar Babies, which addresses the plight of the children of agricultural workers in the sugar industry of the Dominican Republic, wouldn’t be around to enlighten the masses; Miami, Florida would have no one to honor on “Amy Serrano Day,” and the U.S. would have one less cinematographer/activist/lecturer/multilingual poet.