{"id":487986,"date":"2026-10-07T11:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T11:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/487986\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T11:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T11:40:10","slug":"what-steve-hilton-doesnt-get-about-xavier-becerras-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/487986\/","title":{"rendered":"What Steve Hilton doesn’t get about Xavier Becerra’s parents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My maternal grandmother, Marcela Miranda, was born in Arizona\u2019s copper country<\/a> in 1914 and lived in the United States until she was about 7. <\/p>\n

She was part of a generation whose parents were from the rancho of El Cargadero, Zacatecas, and started families in el Norte while waiting out the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s and the Cristero Revolt in the 1920s. Many returned to their home village when things calmed down.<\/p>\n

After growing up in Mexico, my grandmother moved to California with my grandfather and their children in the 1960s. Only the American government considered her a native-born U.S. citizen, while society dismissed her as a Mexican. We grandchildren always considered our Mama Chela a do\u00f1a \u2014 a grand Mexican dame who never wore pants and frequently covered her hair with a veil out of modesty. All she remembered from her early childhood in Arizona were snippets of the nursery rhymes \u201cDid You Ever See a Lassie?\u201d and \u201cThe Bear Went Over the Mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The El Cargadero diaspora, which mostly settled in Anaheim, saw our forebears\u2019 American birth as a stroke of provenance allowing them to legally enter the U.S. and give their progeny a head start that other Mexicans could only dream of. It\u2019s a story I\u2019ve repeatedly told over my decades-long journalism career, and no one has yet challenged my description of my grandmother as an immigrant.<\/p>\n

If they did, I\u2019d think they had too much time on their hands, or maybe that they were a wackjob contrarian.<\/p>\n

Cue Steve Hilton.<\/p>\n

The Republican candidate for California governor is trying to make a scandal out of his Democratic opponent, Xavier Becerra, portraying himself as the son of Mexican immigrants. Twice last week during their CNN debate<\/a>, Becerra said his parents came to California \u201cwith $12.\u201d In previous interviews during his decades in the political spotlight, Becerra has shared that his father, Manuel, was born in Sacramento in 1928 and moved to Mexico as a child during the Great Depression, eventually returning to the land of his birth.<\/p>\n

Hilton, who has been endorsed by President Trump<\/a>, has as much a chance of becoming the Golden State\u2019s next governor as Stephen Miller<\/a>. But he and his supporters have latched on to Becerra\u2019s statement like it was the borderlands version of stolen valor. Critics combed through Becerra\u2019s family genealogy like Indiana Jones searching for the Holy Grail, then posted their findings online \u2014 Becerra\u2019s dad grew up in Tijuana before coming back to California, then married in Guadalajara before returning in the 1950s to Sacramento, where Xavier was born \u2014 to claim that Becerra is one giant, pandering fraudster.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike Xavier Becerra, I am an immigrant,\u201d the British-born son of Hungarian refugees harrumphed on social media. He followed up by declaring that Becerra is \u201cLYING\u201d about his family\u2019s American experience \u201cin order to score identity points.\u201d<\/p>\n

What more proof do California voters need that Hilton is laughably out of touch with how we live? Many Mexican Americans, including my cousins and me, consider family members raised in Mexico to be immigrants, even if they were born in the U.S. Growing up down south forever shapes your language, work ethic, appreciation for how hard life can be and so much more. When they return to the U.S., such people often find themselves ostracized as paisa \u2014 country \u2014 and must learn the mores of American life, just like those born abroad. <\/p>\n

To argue that calling them immigrants is technically wrong is like getting angry at people who don\u2019t pronounce Los Feliz the Spanish way. For Becerra\u2019s critics to claim he\u2019s stretching his immigrant roots to appeal to Latino voters is an insult to Latinos. We know a cultural faker when we see one, and the Becerra family story isn\u2019t an anomaly; it\u2019s our lives. <\/p>\n

\"Steve <\/p>\n

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton addresses patrons at Victorio\u2019s Ristorante in North Hollywood in September.<\/p>\n

(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a weird gotcha,\u201d said Cal State Fullerton Chicano studies professor Alexandro Jos\u00e9 Gradilla, whose wife\u2019s grandmother was born in California and raised in Mexico, then bounced between the two countries for the rest of her life. \u201cWhat\u2019s the dis? Where\u2019s the dunk? It\u2019s so normative, especially of that generation. We cannot have the 2026 definition of immigration, the border and policy apply to a completely different landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becerra\u2019s critics subscribe to \u201cthis very American bias that an immigrant only moves once to the U.S., the land of opportunity, of hope \u2014 all that mythology,\u201d Gradilla continued. During the Ellis Island era, he noted, European immigrants returned to their home countries with their U.S.-born children, and then those children faced many of the same hardships as first-time arrivals when they came back to the U.S. as adults.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018We don\u2019t call those people expats or returnees \u2014 \u2018immigrant\u2019 is the only intelligible label we understand,\u201d the profe concluded. \u201cUntil we come up with a better label, Becerra\u2019s dad is an immigrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are many legitimate reasons to bash Becerra, from his refusal to participate in more debates to his paltry number of public rallies to a platform that sounds like more of what created California\u2019s current woes. His family history isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

Hilton\u2019s fixation on Becerra\u2019s immigrant bona fides shows how desperate he is to gain some traction, any traction, with Latino voters. He at least has picked up on Latinos\u2019 regard for immigrant success stories. But after bragging about being the candidate of legal immigrants<\/a>, for Hilton to hold being born here against someone who went back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico is a weak salsa pendejada.<\/p>\n

Hilton would have been better off with his conservative base if he had labeled Becerra the son of an anchor baby.<\/p>\n

At a press conference with elected officials to oppose Proposition 39, which would mandate voter identification<\/a>, my colleague Nicole Nixon asked Becerra about Hilton\u2019s attacks on his dad. Becerra finally unlocked the inner cholo<\/a> so many of us have been waiting to see, instead of the Chicano Ned Flanders he\u2019s been projecting for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is what happens when people who don\u2019t understand immigration start to pontificate,\u201d he responded, summarizing his family story once again and pointing out the discrimination his father faced as someone of Mexican heritage, birthright citizenship be damned.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve Hilton may not know that [Mexican American history] because he\u2019s not from the U.S.,\u201d Becerra said. \u201cSteve Hilton may not know that because even though he\u2019s an immigrant, he hasn\u2019t taken the time to research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow, the brown Democratic candidate calling the white Republican candidate a dumb immigrant \u2014 California politics sure have changed!<\/p>\n

But Becerra\u2019s smackdown had a point. Conservatives deeply misunderstand what it is to be Mexican American. We\u2019ve never fit into the American assimilation story and so have created our own narrative, one that people like Hilton refuse to accept at their own peril.<\/p>\n

Hilton needs to take a Chicano studies class, where discussions about the fluidity of Mexican identity inevitably come up. <\/p>\n

And, wouldn\u2019t you know it, Gradilla planned to bring up that very subject with his students this week \u2014 he didn\u2019t even know about Hilton\u2019s attacks against Becerra until I told him.<\/p>\n

The profe has had to update his lectures about the forced removal of upward of a million Mexican Americans<\/a> south of the border during the Great Depression. He relates that history to the present, when many undocumented Latinos are returning to the countries of their birth<\/a> with their U.S.-born children, either because they\u2019ve been deported or to avoid being arrested and locked up under Trump\u2019s hellfire immigration enforcement regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Hilton, anyone of Mexican heritage in this country needs to be grateful, you need to be loyal, and you need to be here,\u201d Gradilla said. \u201cWho would ever want to leave the U.S.? Well, some people have to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My maternal grandmother, Marcela Miranda, was born in Arizona\u2019s copper country in 1914 and lived in the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,3409,190565,111831,1431,8642,3982,190566,2457,190564,7087,592,7756,17382,3707],"class_list":["post-487986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-child","tag-copper-country","tag-el-cargadero","tag-family","tag-hilton","tag-immigrant","tag-maternal-grandmother","tag-mexico","tag-native-born-u-s-citizen","tag-parent","tag-people","tag-son","tag-steve-hilton","tag-xavier-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}