Posted on 06/21/2012 8:47:15 PM PDT by montag813
Yet another first for the City of Escondido, California.
In 2010, the city was the first in California (along with Costa Mesa) to pass a resolution to "Stand With Arizona" - in an overwhelming slap-down to La Raza activists who wanted to denounce and boycott Arizona for its passage of S.B. 1070. SWA's founder John Hill was on hand for the raucous vote.
Escondido was also the first city in America to forge a special partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2010, under which ICE agents help Escondido police officers determine whether suspects of crimes are in the country illegally or are wanted for deportation. The program has resulted in several thousand illegal aliens to be deported - much to the rage of open-borders activists.
Escondido was also the first city to conduct special vehicle "checkpoints" to discover unlicensed illegal aliens - which the state legislature is trying to ban - and the first in San Diego County to enact E-Verify in 2011.
And now Escondido does it again, becoming the first city to volunteer for a Federal "immigration audit" - allowing federal immigration officials to audit its hiring records to make sure all city employees are eligible to work in the United States.
The program is called IMAGE, which stands for ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employer, Escondido will have ICE check whether veteran employees turned in fake documents or stole someone else's identity when they were hired by the citys, and it goes well beyond E-Verify, which deals only with new hires. The new agreement allows ICE to scrutinize the employment documents of everyone on the city's payroll, including elected officials.
Mayor Sam Abed, who has said he was born in Lebanon but became a U.S. citizen in 1990, also praised the program, saying the city needed to do everything possible to help local residents struggling to find work.
"Lots of people just lost their unemployment benefits," said Abed, adding that Escondido has a higher jobless rate than neighboring cities. "We want every business in the private sector to do this."But not everyone is happy about Escondido joining the IMAGE program. The ACLU said it "encourages employers to discriminate against foreign-looking job applicants, especially Latinos who are citizens or legal immigrants."
And of course, Olga Diaz was not pleased. Diaz, the only Latino on the council, the only council member to vote against joining the E-Verify, and the member who led the failed attempt to boycott Arizona in 2010, said she was disappointed her colleagues were continuing to pursue policies to "divide the community". Diaz claims that the policies are all racist, because whites are afraid of becoming a minority...
"Since it's the first time that the whites have been exceeded by another group, they feel threatened and the elected officials have devoted themselves to promoting fear. The inability to reason with the councilors was one of the reasons I entered politics," said Diaz.However, Diaz is at a loss to explain why, despite her touting how Hispanics outnumber non-Hispanics in Escondido 49-41% , the city has twice as many Republicans as Democrats. Either the local Latinos are bucking a national trend, or there are a heck of a lot of them who are not eligible to vote - and gee, I wonder why that might be the case.
Way to go, Escondido! We salute you for continuing to laugh at the race-baiters, take on the well-funded open borders fanatics and fight for the rule of law.
Right next to Oceanside, home of Camp Pendleton - largest USMC base. Well worth the trip and just beautiful!
I’m very proud of my dad’s hometown for taking a stand. :)
Perhaps Ms. Diaz is concerned on a more personal level. The IMAGE process will check into ALL employees and elected officers. Anybody have information on her status?
Escondido, YAY!
The Peoples Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts is said to be the most notorious Marxist city in the country. Back in the '40s and '50s it was a proud Catholic community - there was a boycott of any store that dared display an 'Xmas' sign in its window. A full sized Nativity Scene stood in front of City Hall, and street banners wishing a Merry Christmas.
That was then and this is now. The darkside of Pottersville haunts the people and streets of Cambridge now.
We need a comeback of the Jimmy Stewart Christian spirit to make right how we view ourselves.
Thanks for the ‘ping’.
Gee. When my granparents moved there in 1960 from Los Angeles, there were hardly any.
I remember beautiful mornings in Escondido, with soft fog and mild temperatures even in August. I would walk through the avocado orchards from my grandfather's house to my uncle's house, and ask my father why we couldn't live there, instead of in the hot Arizona desert.
He said we couldn't afford it, and I thought someday maybe if I worked hard enough, I could afford to live in such a wonderful place.
Yet it is now majority Mexican, mostly criminals who sneer at American law and the American nation?
How is such a thing possible?
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