The fight against illegal immigration seems like an uphill battle. It seems like every day another public official (or candidate) take a position contrary to ours and another government program is created to make life easier for criminal aliens.
It almost makes you want to give up and just learn Spanish.
Take heart, we are winning this war. The best example I have are three news articles: One from March 6, 2005, the next from September 25, 2005 (both from the same reporter) and then one from February 12, 2006.
The first has a byline that says: Almost 2,000 people line up at a mobile Mexican Consulate in Salem
The most recent one has the headline: Protesters target session for Mexican immigrants
Waiting for documentation
Estevan Garcia Neri, 62, and four nephews were there for matricular consular cards, necessary to cash payroll checks and obtain driver's licenses.
The men arrived at the school at 2 a.m. and were surprised to find that there already was a line at the door -- a door that wouldn't be opening for eight more hours.
"We're walking hand-in-hand with the consulate," said Ana Gomez, a DMV transportation services representative. "We're here because I know that's what they're here for."
At the neighboring table, Stan Wojtyla, a compliance specialist with the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries, said his role was education and enforcement of labor laws.
He said the wage claims, which are printed in English and Spanish, have increased in the home-construction industry in recent years.
The first article is a combination of "human interest stories" and an explanation of the "wonderful" help that criminal aliens are getting from the consulate and the state of Oregon
Just a few months later:
Peaceful protests don't stop immigrant program
Protesters peacefully carried signs and sang ballads about the blight of illegal immigration Saturday during an event put on by the Mexican government.
The president of OFIR, Jim Ludwick, said the group's goal was to make Oregonians aware of the state's accommodation of illegal immigrants.
"We're not protesting the Mexican consul general, but the state agencies, especially the Oregon Department of Employment," he said. "Why are they here?"
"They are selling drugs to our kids and raping our kids," said Daniel Miglavs of Sherwood. "Our public officials, our state employees, are in there right now aiding and abetting them."
He defended his statement by waving a stack of papers that showed the high rate of incarceration for Hispanics in Oregon.
The story now changed, it is a bit more about the anger that this abomination caused among us protestors.
I would also note:
Mexico's Consul General for Oregon, Fernando Sánchez Ugarte, said this is the fourth time that the outreach program has drawn protesters.
Sánchez said there is no plan to eliminate or scale back the program, quite the contrary.
"Next year, we'll be increasing the number of events," he said. "There's a lot of demand."
See this post
This year:
Protesters target session for Mexican immigrants
Anti-immigration activists rallied Saturday in Eugene to oppose providing state social services to noncitizens and to criticize the Mexican consulate for issuing identification cards to immigrants.
The protest coincided with the presence of Mexican government representatives who were at the High School Equivalency Program building on the University of Oregon campus to assist people seeking a matricula consular - Mexico's identification card. The card is used to open bank accounts and to obtain a driver's license.
"I don't think it's right for people to come here and step in front of line," said Daniel Miglavs of Sherwood, a spokesman for Oregonians for Immigration Reform. The group, based in McMinnville, formed six years ago to call attention to the economic, social and environmental costs of uncontrolled immigration.
Lopez said protesters were intimidating applicants by filming them as they entered and left the building.
The article is 100% about our protest of this event. (albeit with a compassionate spin for the other side) No longer can the consulate have a carousel and get a fluff piece from the press. We are there to make sure that the true nature of this is represented. We are there to make sure that "applicants" are uncomfortable. We are there so that Consul General Fernando can eat his words about expanding the program this year.
Read that first article again and realize that we have come a long way in this state. For those of you who have participated and offered support, thank you. For those of you who are interested in helping us make a difference in the future: Contact Oregonians for Immigration Reform.
8 comments:
I am doing an informal, non-scientific poll;
Would you folks be more likely to Rally at the "Immigrant Rights March" on the 4th of March, @ Pioneer Square?
OR
Rally at the Mexican Consulate for meddling in U.S.'s affairs?
I don't expect the average news follower to notice the subtle changes in the reportings and their spin, but I do expect that it will quietly build the support we Ant-Illegal Alien folks are already beginning to feel and enjoy.
Any response from Frohnmier(sp?) at U of O regarding e-mails after last carousel? I got no response from him or alumni assoc..
Rick, I'm willing to do both but I really think that the consulate is where the problem is coming from and there is ample evidence of state involvement.
Allen, the more media coverage the better.
Bear, none. We can only hope that some alumni will simply withhold that annual check they send and that the school makes the connection.
Rick,
Count me in for both, but I'm with Daniel on this one, if we had to choose one over the other... I think the problem lies with the consulate.
Where and when is the Rally at the Mexican Consulate for meddling in U.S.'s affairs?
I know this is long and it may not all fit, but its important...
NUMBERS USA ACTION ALERT:
Senate leaders plan next week to pass amnesty & more foreign workers -- your actions can stop them
DEAR FRIENDS OF SENSIBLE IMMIGRATION,
We're not surprised but ... Nearly everything has turned for the worse in Washington right now.
Amnesties, massive guestworker programs and increased permanent immigration are all on the Senate table right now.
Sen. Specter (R-PA) and Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) are preparing to force through the Senate Judiciary Committee next week a gigantic amnesty and increase in foreign workers. The plan is for this to pass the full Senate on March 27!
Please take action right now. Send a free fax message to your state's two U.S. Senators and tell them that you strongly oppose the Specter/Kennedy efforts.
Go to the link below to see the free fax message and then send it over the internet (for free):
www.numbersusa.com/dfax?series=actalt1
1. Nearly 1 million of you are getting this email. What if every one of you made one click of the cursor and sent a message to Congress -- TODAY?
If all of you receiving this email would take just one action today, the Senate would take a deep breath and do a little re-thinking about the disaster it is preparing to give us.
I am sending this email to nearly 1 million people who have indicated to us in one way or another that you oppose illegal immigration and that you want the federal government to stop using runaway immigration to congest our communities and our daily quality of life. We already have overall immigration of around 2 million a year, compared to the average of 250,000 a year that we had up until 1965. The fact that most Senate leaders at this moment are contemplating drastically increasing immigration even higher is insane.
Senators behave this way because they truly do not believe that their constituents will notice ...
... or that their constituents will cause Senators any trouble for making the immigration mess worse.
Please prove them wrong.
Click here to see the fax message and then send it over the internet:
www.numbersusa.com/dfax
As soon as you send that fax, you will see a corkboard on your screen. It will contain many other actions that you may choose to take to keep the pressure on all of our elected officials.
More than 135,000 Americans already have started using this corkboard to push Congress and the President to adopt sensible immigration policies.
in this email:
1. Nearly 1 million of you are getting this email -- what if all of you sent a message to Congress -- TODAY
2. Pres. Bush's true immigration plan -- flood all occupations with more foreign workers
3. Most Senators of both Parties are backing Bush's war on the American worker
4. NumbersUSA's national Press Release during the State of the Union address
5. State of Union and Democratic response, nonetheless, is a sign of improvement
.
actions in brief:
Refer all friends to the NumbersUSA.com website to get them involved.
www.NumbersUSA.com
Send a fax to your two Senators at:
www.numbersusa.com/dfax.
donate now:
This faxing system is 100% financed by the voluntary generosity of the 135,000-plus Americans who use it.
Please click here to make any sized donation to keep this grassroots phenomenon strong and effective.
2. Pres. Bush's true immigration plan -- flood all occupations with more foreign workers
Citizens who have worked with us over the last nine years know that we are always non-partisan. We have heroes in both Parties. And we go after people in both Parties who do the wrong thing.
That means we have to spend a lot of time reacting to Pres. Bush who arrived in office in 2001 pushing a giant blanket amnesty. Thanks in part to the amazing faxing and phoning by NumbersUSA users, the President slowly has backed away from all forms of citizenship amnesty, but he continues to push big foreign worker programs and mass temporary amnesties for illegal aliens that we believe will end up being permanent even if Mr. Bush intends for them to have an end.
The day after his State of the Union address last month, Pres. Bush began speaking around the country about the need to open up America's occupations to far more foreign workers.
From the sounds of the President's comments on the road, his guestworker amnesty program is one of the four or five most important things on his agenda.
For all of his talk in the fall about tightening the borders, he has proven the cynics right the last week by showing that he will give Americans secure borders only if Congress gives him massive new flows of foreign labor.
Pres. Bush talks repeatedly about lower-skilled jobs that Americans WON'T do and about higher-skilled jobs that Americans CAN'T do. To hear him talk, Americans are either too lazy or too incapable to any longer do the work to keep this nation going.
NumbersUSA believes that, for the most part, the American workforce is available to do nearly all the jobs of the country.
But to the extent that there may be jobs with such low pay, benefits and working conditions that Americans WON'T do them, importing more foreign labor into them will just ensure that the jobs remain below American standards.
And to the extent that we may not have quite enough American kids going into certain high-tech and other high-skill fields, filling the occupations with foreign workers just further drives kids away from those fields.
But the President said this in his State of the Union address (and it has been quoted favorably in newspapers across the land):
"We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy - even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction - toward a stagnant and second-rate economy."
Well, that was pretty maddening, most importantly because it isn't true. There is no indication that the average American would be worse off economically if the 50-million-plus foreign workers and their families weren't here.
And it is certain that most Americans' overall quality of life would be far better without all the congestion in traffic, schools, housing and open spaces caused by having tens of millions additional people in the country.
Please understand, though, that I am not saying that the individual legal immigrants who are here are personally to blame for the congestion that their overall presence has caused -- or that I wish they would leave. But policymakers need to consider just how much more congested they want to make our lives as Americans.
The President's comments showed that he doesn't tend to think about individual Americans' quality of life but instead focuses primarily on gross economic growth as a measure of his Administration's success.
The focus of the President is on THE ECONOMY but not on the American people the economy is supposed to serve. He could import 10 million more foreign workers and leave millions of Americans living on dramatically reduced wages or government subsidies and THE ECONOMY would indeed be larger. But would the federal government have fulfilled its obligation to THE PEOPLE?
3. Most Senators of both Parties are backing Bush's war on the American worker
The Bush Administration philosophy of disregarding the needs of American workers while rushing to import from the pool of hundreds of millions of eager foreign job applicants is shared AND LED by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Specter (R-PA) and is followed by what appears to be the majority of Senators in both of their parties.
Not by coincidence, this is the philosophy promoted day and night here in Washington by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and small armies of other corporation lobbyists who have said they will not accept anything less than a massive increase in foreign workers out of this Congress this year.
You and your faxes, phone calls and raising our issues at public events are the only power that can compete against the corporate lobbyists' money flowing to the Senators.
The Senate is filled with multi-millionaires who long ago ceased to know what it is like to be an average American -- and by others who spend so much time with multi-millionaires raising money for their campaigns that they seldom spend time with ordinary folks. Most Senators have no idea what immigration is doing to their constituents and don't give their constituents a chance to tell them.
But as bleak as the unequal political battle looks, we have strong evidence that your constituency pressure can turn enough Senators that we will be able to stop the plan to force American workers in all occupations to compete with the rest of the world for their jobs.
4. NumbersUSA's national Press Release during the State of the Union address
While the President was speaking, we sent this statement to reporters nationwide.
Please feel free to copy and share this release with any reporters, talk show hosts or politicians whom you think might benefit.
Contact: Caroline Espinosa, caroline@numbersusa.com
Americans Need Jobs, Not Foreign Competition
NumbersUSA Reminds President
That Foreign Labor Undercuts
Economy and Public Confidence
WASHINGTON, DC -- NumbersUSA urges President Bush to recognize that large scale importing of foreign workers will depress wages and deny job opportunities for the most vulnerable Americans, destabilizing the overall economy. Polling has shown that Americans are most concerned about the economy and jobs, and the majority believes the economy is currently on the wrong track.
"As President Bush addresses the nation tonight, I hope he will remember the 14 million Americans who cannot find full-time jobs in the current economy." said Roy Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA. "It would be the height of callousness to advocate a massive foreign worker program to an economy already marked by stagnant wages in many sectors and by falling labor participation rates among several American demographic groups."
Both unskilled and skilled Americans would be hurt by the President's past immigration proposals to match willing workers from other countries with willing employers here in the United States. Severe outsourcing, uncontrolled illegal immigration and government-mandated immigration four times higher than the traditional average have worsened underemployment and wage stagnation among Americans on both ends of the employment spectrum.
"Recent news is filled with stories of the elimination of high-pay, high-benefits jobs and of the increase of lower-pay and lower-benefits jobs. The last thing that Americans and their economy need is a new flood of foreign workers that will accelerate all the worst tendencies in our present economy," said Beck.
Enforcement of our immigration laws is absolutely necessary to ensure Americans' economic and physical security and a successful struggle for living-wage jobs. Without full-scale efforts in mandatory workplace verification, implementation of the entry-exit system, and increased cooperation between state, local, and federal law enforcement officials, the rise in foreign workers will continue to undermine the economy and undermine the public's confidence in the Bush Administration's handling of it.
"Last year, the President vowed to protect our borders, and we saw progress on that promise when he supported the House of Representatives in December as it passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. I am hopeful that his commitment to enforcement and border security will be evident when the President's budget comes out next week," said Beck. "This year - a pivotal election year - Americans will be watching to see if the President sees his promise through to fruition in addition to following the will of the American people who are concerned about the very real threat American workers face from foreign labor. The President should follow the lead of House Republicans and stand up to the Chamber of Commerce and its push to use immigrant labor to depress Americans' wages."
5. State of Union and Democratic response, nonetheless, are signs of improvement
Despite Pres. Bush's behavior since the State of the Union and despite the problem with his mention of immigration in the speech, constituency pressure has to claim credit for his comments not being a lot worse.
Overall, I feel that Pres. Bush's comments about immigration and Virginia Gov. Kaine's Democratic Response were signs of great victories for grassroots citizen action against open borders.
I say that, not because they said particularly good things, but because they both were careful to avoid saying most of the really bad things that the leadership of both Parties really prefer (as evidenced by comments from top leaders of both Parties in recent weeks).
Yet, the Republican Bush and Democrat Kaine steered far clear of stating such radicalism.
When the President got to specifics about what immigration policy should look like, this is what he said:
"Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values, and serves the interests of our economy. Our Nation needs orderly and secure borders. To meet this goal, we must have stronger immigration enforcement and border protection. And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty, allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally, and reduces smuggling and crime at the border."
Notice how Bush didn't say that immigration should serve "national interests" as we always say. Rather, he says immigration should serve the "interests of our economy."
Nonetheless, compare these statements with five years ago when he was calling for a citizenship amnesty for illegal aliens.
Bush and his staff have been beaten back by so much pressure from people like you that they are intimidated when the whole nation is watching from making the same requests that once felt safe. They waited until they were on the road in somewhat out-of-the-way places to reveal what they really want on immigration.
Those of you who have sent hundreds of thousands of faxes through NumbersUSA to the White House -- and repeatedly make phone calls to the switchboards there -- over the last five years deserve a lot of credit for the public backing down we are seeing.
As for the Democratic response, Kaine had said on radio earlier in the day that he would talk about several things, including immigration.
We immediately sent a request to many of you who have taken our political interest survey and identified yourselves as Democrats. We asked you to call Kaine's office and warn him against painting the Democrats as opposing American workers, and to emphasize the importance of proving the ability to enforce immigration laws before even talking about big guestworker programs.
We got reports back from you indicating that the Virginia governor's phones were ringing all afternoon.
Here is what Kaine said that night in remarks that were reported to have been finished late in the day:
"The failure of the federal government to implement and enforce a rational immigration policy has resulted in a confusing patchwork of state and local efforts. Of course, we should welcome those who seek to lawfully join and contribute to our American family. And we must. But the same time, we must ensure that our homeland defense efforts begin with consistent federal action to protect our borders."
Amazing. Especially when you consider that Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi is such a radical open-borders advocate that her Immigration-Reduction Grade Card is an F-minus -- BASED ON A 0% AVERAGE! That's right, since 1989, the percentage of times that she has acted to fight illegal immigration or resist increasing overall immigration is ZERO!
Despite that -- and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean's constant advocacy for open borders -- Gov. Kaine made no calls for "legalization" or guestworker programs. The emphasis was on security and enforcement.
This is further indication that some national Democratic leaders are beginning to understand that it is not to their political advantage to be seen as the party of amnesty and open borders (even if many of the top leaders really aspire to those goals).
We have our work cut out for us. But we have hope, too. Most of the hope for the nation right now depends on people like you making a first move.
Please do a very simple thing. Click on this link, read the fax message and then click one more time to send it over the internet to the fax machines of your two Senators.
www.numbersusa.com/dfax?series=actalt1
THANKS FOR NOT STANDING BY WHILE THE SENATE TRIES TO DESTROY OUR MIDDLE-CLASS SOCIETY,
-- ROY BECK
President, NumbersUSA
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/02/334226.shtml
wow!
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