Who's Behind the Immigration Rallies?

The Open Borders Lobby’s pied pipers convince half-a-million illegal aliens and students to skip school and play in traffic.

BIG CORPORATIONS AND THE FAR-LEFT HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON: both like to employ cheap illegal immigrants to do their heavy lifting.

The leftist media have tried to portray this weekend’s massive protests against House measures to curtail illegal immigration as the uprising of “The Other America”: forgotten, humble, hidden Hispanic members of the working poor simply demanding their “rights.” As events spanned from California to Detroit, Phoenix to Washington, D.C., the media kept up its anti-enforcement drumbeat. Although some have credited Latino DJs for the 500,000-strong illegal immigrant turnout in Los Angeles alone – and some credit is deserved – the real legwork was done by a more eclectic group of organizations: leftist labor unions, George Soros-funded agitators, Open Borders lobbyists, Roman Catholic clergy, and teachers unions.

Los Angeles predictably had the largest turnout – and the most disruptive. Half-a-million people crowded the streets demanding the “right” to flaunt this nation’s immigration laws, and underage students ran onto a California freeway, risking their lives and shutting down interstate traffic.

Andres Jiminez, director of the University of California's California Policy Research Center, told the media, “It's not only Latinos who are marching in the streets, its unions too: firefighters, farm workers and Hispanic students who had thought of U.S. law as protecting them and are now starting to see it as a threat to their future.”

He was right about this much: Latino organizations did not act alone. The media has failed to report that organized labor directed the illegals and minors. The L.A. Times revealed the rally’s “security” was handled by a union identified only as “Local 1877.” That would be local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the far-Left union founded by New Left radical Andrew Stern, which called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in June 2004 and worked in concert with Ted Kennedy to roll back anti-terrorist Homeland Security measures. According to the L.A. Times, the SEIU’s goons kindly helped “herd marchers along the route.” That was not the extent of SEIU’s help, though. The union also “coordinated the more than 100 buses that dropped off marchers from throughout California, Las Vegas and a few Southwestern cities.”

In other words, the massive rally against Homeland Security – since that is what gaining control of America’s borders would promote – was staged by a leftist labor union and staffed primarily with illegal immigrants.

SEIU did not work alone in this. It was aided by other radical or left-wing political pressure groups, including:

· Southern California Human Rights Network (SCHRN), whose members are apparently affiliated with the International Socialist Organization. SCHRN drafted a resolution in Orange County declaring, “We believe that no human is illegal and oppose the criminalization, dehumanization, and exploitation of migrants, immigrants and or economic and political refugees, by means of media, legislation, ideology, rhetoric, etc. [This] includes augmenting border patrol units, commissioning other law enforcement agencies to work in conjunction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and [includes] such policies as the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and other policies that exploit the indigenous, peasantry, and environments of countries abroad.” In other words, capitalism and any form of immigration laws are exploitative.

· Pomona Day Labor Center, which helps employers hire “day laborers.” One must presume this organization knows its employees are illegals.

· Central American Resource Center, which advocates for illegals and lobbies for the government to make a “‘presumption’ of hardship” for and grant “permanent residency” to Central American illegals.

· Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), founded in 1986 to “get as many people as possible through the amnesty program established” by Ronald Reagan.

The cause is being helped in another way by the Los Angeles Unified School District – where more than 25,000 walked out of classes: through taxpayer-subsidized lobbying courses. According to the district, students “would remain in their home rooms through the day for discussions on the immigration issue, how to influence lawmakers and the consequences of walkouts, said Rowena Lagrosa, executive officer for educational service.” (Emphasis added.)

Michelle Malkin obtained a copy of a letter Lagrosa wrote Monday to the students of the school district stating LAUSD would chauffer students to high school after they protested on the freeway. The letter states after the rally, the district “will provide buses to return students to schools when appropriate.” Moreover, “we will do everything we can to ensure that those students who do leave the campus are supervised as they leave the campus.”

Naturally, the leftist groups, illegals, and teachers unions could count on the media to cover for them. Mickey Kaus pointed out in Slate that the L.A. Times wrapped the protestors in the American flag, erasing all references to the Mexican standard, although the Mexican flag was hoisted at least as often in the crowd as Old Glory.

Gone from the media coverage, too, was mention that these protests had all the hallmarks of leftist riots of bygone days. Although depicted as nonviolent and mainstream, FrontPage Magazine columnist Tammy Bruce noted Hispanic protestors burned American flags at the L.A. rallies. Michelle Malkin has preserved some of the protestors’ other extremist messages. L.A. protestors ran onto freeways and threw rocks and bottles. LAPD Chief William Bratton – who put his men on tactical alert – said the protestors diverted police resources from fighting crime in the City of Angels. Fights broke out at protests in Watsonville, CA, and police arrested 21 minors and three adults for riotous behavior, including assaulting a police officer, in Escondido, CA.

D.C.: “Clergy” Against the Law

On Monday, the “mainstream media” reported some 300 clergy met near the Capitol for a prayer service to support illegal immigrants. The rally flyer claims these concerns sacerdotal ministers objected to legislation that would “Deny basic civil rights to immigrants.” No outlet reported this meeting was organized by the far-Left Center for Community Change, a member of the United for Peace and Justice coalition, headed by atheist and Marxist Leslie Cagan. On the CCC Board of Directors are:

The event was another attempt for the Left to wrap its message in clerical garb, this time executed successfully.

Phoenix

Also on Monday, several hundred underage students in Phoenix staged a walkout that culminated with protests at the state Capitol. Underreported was the role played in the rallies by MEChA, a radical Hispanic organization demanding the U.S. government give the Southwestern portion of the United States “back” to Mexican-Americans for the establishment of a new state called Aztlan. MEChA promotes its agenda alongside the National Council of La Raza, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), and the American Friends Service Committee.

A sense of MEChA-like entitlement pervaded the entire rally, as an illegal alien told the media:

I'm not a criminal. I'm a good person and I deserve a quality education. That's why I'm here. To show that I'm willing to work toward that goal and that I've earned that right.

She did not elaborate on how she “earned” the “right” to illegally cross the border and access taxpayer-subsidized services restricted to U.S. citizens.

Georgia

Last Friday, tens of thousand of Georgians, including not a few illegals, staged a “sick-in” to protest a bill that passed the state house the day before. CNN reported, “That bill, which has yet to gain Senate approval, would deny state services to adults living in the U.S. illegally and impose a five percent surcharge on wire transfers from illegal immigrants.” Not only do immigrants have the “right” to live in Georgia illegally and collect government services, they also have the “right” to use Western Union without paying an extra five cents on the dollar. That’s some willingness to contribute to one’s home country. These are supposedly the minority members willing to work tirelessly to help their host country at jobs no one wants.

FrontPage Magazine columnist Allan Wall – whose National Guard brigade recently returned from serving our country in Iraq – has pointed out the Georgia protest’s organizer, Teodoro Maus, acted as Mexico’s consul general in Atlanta for 12 years. During that time, this Mexican government official protested Georgia’s declaration of English as the state’s official language, opposed a talk show host who supported border enforcement, and petitioned the Peach State to issue drivers licenses to illegals. Maus’ involvement raises the question whether Friday’s unofficial labor strike had the sanction of the Mexican government.

Dallas-Ft. Worth

Yesterday, area school districts estimated 4,000 students walked out in Dallas-Ft. Worth alone, staging a violent and disruptive rally to sanctify their illicit status.

Media accounts specify: “At Kiest Park, about 1,500 students from Dallas and Grand Prairie schools demonstrated. Dallas police outfitted in riot gear moved in on the crowd after some of the students started throwing rocks and bottles at a woman who staged a one-person counterprotest.” (Emphasis ours.)

Protestor Francisco Rojas, speaking in Spanish, told The Dallas Morning News, “It's like an animal that's waking from many years of sleep. We are very strong, and right now is our opportunity.”

These minor students then processed into a city council meeting, waving Mexican and El Salvadoran flags. To her credit, Councilwoman Elba Garcia courageously commandeered a police PA system to tell the truants to go back to school (where Dallas school officials said this week’s walkouts will be an unexcused absence).The warning came too late for one girl, whose hand was severed as a result of an accident that took place at the walkout.

Undeterred by the violence and harm done to their children’s education, leaders in the Open Borders Lobby set out plotting their next move. “At a dinner meeting of the Latino group LULAC, leaders announced a major rally on April 9. ‘We are going to be having, hopefully it will be the largest civil rights demonstration in the history of Dallas, Texas – 100,000-plus,’ said LULAC representative Domingo Garcia.”

No word on how many lone women will be battered the next time Mexican citizens exercise American First Amendment rights.

The Impact

These massive gatherings of illegals, who denounced their government unmolested by police or immigration officials, had an immediate impact – on legislation and on border security.

Reporter Sara Carter of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin says since these protests, border patrol agents have reported an explosion in illegal crossings from Mexicans (and others) keenly observing the Senate debate and emboldened by same. Some were under the impression amnesty had already been granted and hoped to be the first to take part in the second California Gold Rush. [1]

The rallies had a political impact, too. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO, stated on Monday:

The immigration rallies over this weekend and today show how disordered our immigration system has become. For years, the government has turned a blind eye to illegal aliens who break into this country. It isn’t any wonder that illegal aliens now act as if they are entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship.

As a sign of their political impact, Republicans immediately began discussing the potential threat their political careers face from an Hispanic backlash, should they have the temerity to pretend the United States is a sovereign nation with definable political boundaries.

Leftists and illegals began their massive protest – because they saw U.S. law “as a threat to their future” – the same day the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that would allow illegals to attain American citizenship without facing deportation by a 12-6 vote. John McCain joined forces with Ted Kennedy to promote this amnesty measure. “It is not amnesty,” said Ted Kennedy, who has a 41-year history of fibbing about immigration bills.

The Judiciary Committee yesterday approved Dick Durbin’s amendment granting amnesty to individuals and non-profits that provide non-emergency aid to illegal immigrants. The committee had previously approved Durbin’s amendment to drop illegal immigration to a misdemeanor offense.

These measures are at odds with the will of the American people. According to the Associated Press, 59 percent of Americans oppose laws allowing illegal immigrants to apply for guest worker status, and 62 percent oppose easing the path to U.S. citizenship for those who are here illegally.

Americans know illegal immigrants account for nearly one-third of all inmates in federal prisons and add millions of dollars to their tax load every year. Even Mother Jones magazine exposed the health dangers posed to border towns throughout America, as a result of uninsured illegals bankrupting local hospitals – six years ago.

Americans cannot comprehend why Congress feels a need to add a guest worker program to mollify these disruptive, violent, lawbreaking protestors, who are occasionally political radicals and overwhelmingly individuals who are in violation of U.S. immigration law. What makes Congressmen think those whose first action in this country was to break the law will suddenly obey their newest futile measure?

These illegals claimed they marched to demand their “rights.” Those would amount to the right to a speedy trial, followed by rapid deportation. Illegal aliens have no additional rights under our Constitutional system, nor should they be given any. A more inspired leadership, with a requisite number of border patrol agents and paddy wagons, would have made these massive rallies an instructive object lesson in the enforcement of immigration law. Instead, political cowardice has transformed them into international exhibits of American impotence and paralysis.

Let's not forget that ACCESS is just another front group like the ISlamic Institute that Grover Norquist runs. Grover Norquist, lifelong pal of Karl Rove and #1 advisor to the president on immgration and "Islamic affairs".

And he's been at it a LONG time.

http://www.cis.org/articles/Katz/katz1998.html

(Part III of Series)

Illegal-immigration bill weakened by unlikely alliance
By Marcus Stern
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
04-Nov-1997

WASHINGTON - After years of bitter losses, Sen. Alan K. Simpson thought the political tides finally favored his quest to create a way to keep illegal immigrants from getting jobs.

The issue had emerged as a hot-button during the 1996 campaign. This time, he would surely defeat the powerful and savvy pro-immigration lobby.

"As I look out on this sea of faces, there are some who have been cutting my bicycle tire for 17 years," the now-retired Wyoming Republican said last year as the Judiciary Committee prepared to debate his proposals. "They're sitting back there, hollow-eyed, twitching like dogs eating peach seeds and wondering if they can do it again. ... Well, I think that game is over."

Simpson was wrong.

Once again, he had sorely underestimated the tenacity and cleverness of special-interest groups determined to preserve the flow of undocumented workers into the United States.

Yes, Congress eventually passed a new immigration law. But it was so weak it would do little to hasten the creation of a system to help employers quickly and reliably verify that the people working for them are in fact eligible to hold jobs in the United States. Such a system is a key to curbing illegal immigration, according to many experts.

The "twitching dogs" who dragged down Simpson's initiative last year are Capitol heavyweights whose coalition on immigration falls into the unlikely bedfellows category. Among them: the National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Norquist advises), the National Rifle Association (Norquist on board of Dir), the Catholic church, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and even some labor unions.

Special-interest clout

The clout displayed last year when the immigration lobby defeated Simpson's plan is a textbook demonstration of how special interests have long dominated immigration policy in Washington.

Simpson wasn't asking for anything remotely like a national ID card or national database of workers. He merely wanted the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to authorize pilot projects to test methods for verifying employment eligibility.

One pilot would have required participating employers to check their new employees' Social Security numbers. Because it would apply to all of their new workers, discrimination against "foreign-looking" job applicants would have been minimized.

But the anti-verification coalition painted the proposal as a sinister plot. It portrayed it as a retina-scan ID card, police-state power, the second coming of the Holocaust and even the fulfillment of a dark prophecy in the Bible's Book of Revelation that people would be stamped with the "mark of the beast."

At one meeting of the Judiciary Committee, an irritated and clearly frustrated Simpson indignantly waved a make-believe tattoo that looked like a grocery store bar code. He called it a ploy to kill his verification proposal. He was right.

Grover Norquist, a social conservative and anti-tax Republican lobbyist, reveled unapologetically in the tactics he used to undermine the verification initiative and to mock Simpson personally.

The peel-off bar-code tattoos were supposed to remind people of the way Nazis tattooed Jews during World War II.

"It was great," recalled Norquist, who is close to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "We had our guys walking around with tattoos on their arms. It drove Simpson nuts because the implication was he's a Nazi."

The truth, however, is that both the House and the Senate bills specifically barred the implementation of any kind of national ID card. Politicians view such a card as a political kiss of death; nobody expects Congress to seriously consider one.

Toward the end of the debate, Simpson decried the pranks and slurs.

"We have dealt with tattoos and Adolf Hitler," he said. "It is the most offensive thing that I have ever heard. It's disgusting and I'm sick of it."

'Mark of the beast'

Although voters tend to see Republicans as tougher than Democrats on illegal immigration, the weakening of the verification provisions was largely the handiwork of conservative Republicans and their behind-the-scenes strategists like Norquist.

Their success underscores how tough it is for Congress to do the one thing experts have said for decades is central to curbing illegal immigration: Establish a reliable, non-discriminatory employment verification system.

Norquist has strong ties to the business community. Mainstream firms like Microsoft paid him to lobby against other provisions of the bill, such as tighter restrictions on the immigration of computer programmers.

But his forte is mobilizing support among social or moral conservatives, including gun owners, the religious right, home-schooling adherents and others he described as "anti-welfare and anti-police state."

"A government powerful enough to find an illegal immigrant is also powerful enough to find your bank accounts," he said.

Conveniently, he ignores the fact that the government long has been able to find bank accounts with ease while it still can't reliably identify undocumented workers.

"Nobody really minds people sneaking across the border and working at 7-Eleven," he added.

At one point during the debate, congressional offices received calls from fundamentalist ministers around the country asking about rumors that the verification provision would fulfill a prophecy in the Book of Revelation. Was it true, they asked congressional staffers, that people would be stamped with the "mark of the beast" under the new law?

"Six-six-six," Norquist explained matter-of-factly during an interview. "That's always been one of the arguments against the ID card. There's something in Revelations about numbering people. The 'beast' could be a big computer."

The National Rifle Association was told the bill would lead to a federal computer registry that the government could use to hunt down its members and seize their guns.

"Gun owners quite correctly understand that it would take Bill Clinton all of two weeks to add the question, 'Got any guns? Could we have a list of them? Where do you keep them?' " said Norquist.

Verification opponents also circulated mock national identification cards bearing Simpson's likeness. On the back of the cards was a retina scan diagram suggesting that the legislation called for everyone to carry such a card.

"That was a good one," Norquist chuckled.

Anti-verification coalition

Conservatives didn't fight verification alone last year. They were part of a coalition of strange bedfellows involved in civil rights, ethnic and religious advocacy, anti-government politics and free-market ideology. They were also bolstered by powerful business groups.

The coalition was a juggernaut that fought virtually any verification initiative. Because Republicans control Congress, conservative lobbyists were especially influential. The fact that some limited, voluntary verification projects stayed in the bill at all outraged some conservatives.

"I view it as the camel's nose under the tent for a national ID card," said Stephen Moore, an economist with the Cato Institute who lobbied against the bill. "The theme we played to Republicans was that if you're trying to roll back big government, you shouldn't be instituting this new police-state power."

Social conservatives like Norquist and libertarians like Moore don't see illegal immigration as a major problem.(snip)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.