GETTING TO KNOW RITA FERNANDEZ

One in five San Diego County residents is an immigrant. The community is so large that San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, established an immigrant affairs position at City Hall in 2019 to improve how city government interacts with immigrants. Before he appointed Rita Fernandez, she had been working on immigration policy for lawmakers including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, and Rep. Juan Vargas, D-san Diego.

A Chula Vista native and graduate of the University of San Diego, she joined the Name Drop San Diego podcast to talk about her work and her own family story. Read excerpts here or listen to the full episode in your favorite listening app.

On her own heritage: My parents are immigrants from Mexico. But I always like to remind myself that I’m actually the descendant of six generations of immigrants. My greatgrandmother was born in Mexico City, but she was actually the daughter of Chinese immigrants that were living in Mexico, who immigrated in the late 19th century.

And she married my great grandfather, who was a Spanish immigrant who at the age of 12, left Spain on his own with not a cent to his name, and just went to Mexico all by himself and really built a life. During the

Mexican revolution, he fled the conflict, then went to the United States and he was here for about five years, but then he always eventually wanted to go back to Mexico, so he went back.

He and my great-grandmother got married and had my grandfather, who was born and raised in Mexico. He married my grandmother who was the granddaughter of a French immigrant. He was actually a French soldier that was sent during the conflict there that was the French intervention . ... After the battle, he wanted to stay in Mexico . ... So going back to my grandparents, they married, had my dad and my uncle who were born and raised in Mexico City.

My dad married my mom. Her great-grandfather and great-great grandfather were a Spanish family living in Seville that immigrated to Mexico. And then of course in the 1980s, my family they all immigrated to the U.S. and I was born and raised here.

I really like to talk about that story when I can, and to share that because it’s my personal experience and my own personal history, but I think it also really emphasizes the point that migration is not really just an abstract concept that we’ll talk about in a policy sphere. It really is the story of us, of humanity.

How the immigrant affairs office benefits the city:

There has been a lot of discrimination in the past and many of the attacks that were used against those newcomers are now sort of being used again where they’re seen as a drain on the economy, that they don’t pay taxes, that they’re taking away jobs for native-born Americans. All of these things are really not based on data and not based on reality. …

It’s important to emphasize that for the city, there’s a number of positive reasons why it’s good to welcome immigrants. So aside from the economic benefits, which are many, our immigrant communities make a number of contributions through taxes. They’re entrepreneurs, they create jobs. …

I think it’s very important to be able to highlight that the contributions of immigrants are not just economic but cultural and social. It’s really who we are.