Posted on 07/03/2007 4:01:40 AM PDT by theothercheek
In a classic application of bottom-up management denizens of small towns let their elected representatives in Washington D.C. know exactly how they expected them to handle the compromised immigration compromise bill that neither secured our borders, nor was any more enforceable than previous legislation it was meant to "fix."
Earlier waves of immigrants – legal and illegal – flocked to CA, , FL, IL, NJ, NY and TX ("gateway" states) but have been dispersing across a wider swath of the U.S. since 2000. The foreign-born, non-English speaking populations of DE, GA, IN, NE, NV and SC have exploded, say demographers, with the "newcomers" (as President Bush is wont to call them) preferentially settling in (some say, overrunning) small towns and sleepy suburbs. And people who live in these places saying, "enough!"
Here’s what Stephanie Usrey, 39, a stay-at-home mother who lives in Gainesville, GA, tells The Washington Post about the "aha" moment she had at a local Wal-Mart about five years ago:
"That was the first time I looked around and said, 'Man, I didn't realize how many Mexicans there were here.' And they don't seem to feel any discomfort when they're, like, six inches from your face and talking to each other in their language, either. I just felt very encroached upon. . . . It was like an instant feeling of 'I'm in the minority, and if we don't get control over this, pretty soon all of America will be outnumbered.'"
Spurred into activism by talk-radio Usrey and tens of thousands others like her in small towns all across the U.S. "bombarded their senators with phone calls and e-mails decrying the bill as an unacceptable amnesty for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants," says the WaPo. And they didn’t let up till they got results:
Nowhere were the bill's opponents more influential than here in Georgia, whose two Republican senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, originally helped craft the legislation. Two days after its unveiling in May, Chambliss was booed at his state's Republican convention. Isakson's office received more than 21,000 calls from opponents of the bill, compared with 6,000 from supporters.
[B]oth Georgia senators voted to kill the bill they once supported.
Another example of bottom-up management: With the federal government unable or unwilling to enforce existing immigration laws, small town governments, like Hazelton, PA, and Framers Branch, TX, took matters into their own hands by enacting local ordinances against businesses that hire illegal labor. And some local enforcement officials have decided to, well, enforce immigration law.
Panama City, FL, Sheriff Frank McKeithen, for one, has been targeting construction sites, and has arrested more than 500 illegal aliens and reported them to immigration officials since November. The Miami Herald reports:
The sheriff's department has developed a remarkably effective - and controversial - way of catching illegal immigrants: Deputies in patrol cars pull up to a construction site in force, and watch and see who runs.
Those who take off are chased down and arrested on charges such as trespassing, for cutting through someone else's property, or loitering, for hiding out in someone's yard, or reckless driving, for speeding off in a car.
U.S. immigration authorities are then given the names of those believed to be in this country illegally.
Immigrant advocates say the technique is repugnant, and the ACLU says its constitutionality is questionable. …
The sheriff said the raids are justified under a long-standing Florida law prohibiting employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
Such local initiatives are not going unnoticed by state legislatures, which are now going even further in attempting to curb illegal immigration, according to The WaPo:
By the time most legislatures adjourned in May, at least 1,100 immigration bills had been submitted by lawmakers, more than double last year's record total, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This year's total is expected to grow as the issue continues to dominate debate in statehouses still in session.
These laws limit illegal immigrants' ability to obtain jobs, find housing, get driver's licenses and receive many government services. They also empower state law enforcement agencies to inquire into an immigrant's legal status and hold for deportation those deemed to be here illegally. The idea is to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they will leave the state -- if not the country. …
At least 18 states have enacted laws concerning illegal immigrants. Most of the legislation is seen as punitive, and it reflects legislators' anger at the federal government's inability to seal the southern border and at provisions in the Senate bill that would allow the 12 million illegal immigrants already here a path to citizenship. …
[M]any states are increasingly frustrated at having to provide expensive services for illegal immigrants.
In a repudiation of the "sanctuary city" trend, local police in OK now train with federal authorities to learn how to find and capture illegal immigrants, and AZ is considering allowing officers to ask people they arrest whether they are U.S. citizens and to seize them if they don’t have valid documents to prove it.
OK also bars illegal immigrants from receiving public assistance, VA approved a proposal to withhold state and local funding from any non-profit group that uses the money to provide services to illegal immigrants and MA rejected a proposal that would have allowed illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition.
The Masters Of The Universe and the business community might not like it, but when marshaled, the will of the people is a force to be reckoned with.
Three cheers for “Small Town America”.
That is just crazy! Its against the law for police to ask someone if they committed a crime!
These are my sentiments exactly. This is happening all over Georgia.
It has happened in Mississippi... which has the highest per capita illegal population in the Nation. They are everywhere, responsible for a huge increase in crimes... and responsible for 5 murders locally in the last week or so. They are parasites on our Society... and they do not like America... but they like our money fine.
LLS
Hip,hip, hooray!
Hip,hip, hooray!
Hip,hip, hooray!
And my little berg in Millington, TN...just 20 miles from Memphis.
Here in Michigan, some farming groups are running a spanish language “come to Michigan” campaign.
Whatever taxes they pay is counterbalanced against educating their kids in US schools (and taxpayers having to foot the bills to build more schools and hire more teachers as local schools suddenly become “overcrowded”), public assistance (food stamps at the least, welfare in some states), free medical care in ERs, etc. (that’s why those of us with health insurance have to pay $100 for an aspirin, Michael Moore!). And instead of propping up the local economy by spending money where they live, they send the money back home to Mexico. In addition to the foreign aid we give Mexico, this is a huge transfer of wealth from America to Mexico.
I live just outside Cumming, Georgia, which is very close to Gainesville, cited in the article. I avoid going to the Wal-mart for the very reason that it’s not only overrun by Hispanics, but they are employed there as well. If you ask an employee to help you find something, 99% of the time, they can’t understand you.
My local middle school teaches both French and Spanish as the foreign languages. My eighth-grade daughter recently took a ten day trip to France with the French club. The running joke was there wasn’t a trip to Spain for the spanish club because all they had to do was bus them to Cumming.
One of the last links in this post talks about the “selfishness” of the chambers of commerce throughout the US when it comes to illegal immigration (this also applies to farmers). They just want slave-wage labor, and what they are not paying in salary and benefits, we the taxpayers are paying. Also, it seems to me that our problem of 12-20 million illegals grew one unscrupulous employer and farmer at a time. People don’t realize that over time, individual actions collectively add up. Take Europe. Individual women made the choice to have one or no children for decades. During that time, Muslim immgrants started pouring into Europe and they were having 4, 5 and 6 children. By the end of the year, “Mohammad” will be the most common boy’s name in England. These major seismic societal shifts happen one person at a time.
One thing that just irks me is their sense of entitlement. They think America is a giant cookie jar and all the cookies are free. Not just in gov handouts, in everything else, too. Their kids will play with display toys and break them, and the parents won't stop them. Things like that. I can't explain it, its just a mentality I see in them. They have taken over so many things here. Like the public swimming pool, beaches, things like that. And yard sales! Man, they love them. The after Thanksgiving sale at WalMart used to be so much fun, but now the Mexicans get ahead of everybody else and buy up literally everything.Even the vending machines at work. When they are filled, the Mexicans will empty them out within a few hours. They are really having an affect on our small town. They buy up all the empty houses in a neighborhood, then proceed to turn it into a slum. They urinate in public and expose themselves to children, and generally make nuisances of themselves. Its just sad what is happening to our little city and America.
One more observation. They keep saying 12 million. I'd be willing to wager its closer to 30 million. Probably even more.
What they like is the cleanliness and organization which Americans’ tax revenue provides, along with all the freebies. At ‘home’ they lived in abject squalor. Even poverty here is not like poverty in Mexico, etc. There is a difference between poverty and squalor.
Perhaps now we need to put the same pressure used to kill this bill on theses jackals to ENFORCE the law!
These ivory tower types have no idea how frightened Americans are.
Illegals are coming into upscale residential areas-——strolling our streets like they owned them.
The illegals look at us with strange, hooded eyes, lusting after our cars, our property. Americans wonder if they are coming to rape or kill us.
Americans cannot ask what illegals are doing in our neighborhoods-—a NYC actress spoke up, and was strangled and hung in her shower. The murder was staged to look like a suicide by the 19-year old killer (an illegal). God knows how many other crimes he committed-—so practiced was he at staging his brutal murder of this young woman.
Americans want this to stop. We want our gov’t to do something about this. We want our government to act to protect us.
Illegals who broke the law sneaking into our country feel they have the right to takeover our streets and frighten, murder rob and rape law-abiding Americans?
This has to end.
They are bloodsucking opportunists. They will suck the life out of our country and turn it into another Mexico, then when they have destroyed it, they will move on to another pristine country. I wonder if Canada will be next.
---As reported in Grassfire's booklet, "The Truth About The Illegal Invasion," some 325,000 criminal illegal aliens will be incarcerated in state and federal prisons this fiscal year.
----Illegal aliens commit 12 murders every day in the U.S. and kill another 13 daily through drunk driving incidents. That's more than 9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens.
---On average eight children are sexually abused by illegal aliens every day -- that's over 2,920 annually.
-------And that's just a small portion of the illegal alien crime wave.......some 4.1 million crimes by illegal aliens.
---More people are murdered by illegal aliens in one year than have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since their inception.
---A GAO study found that illegal aliens commit, on average, 12.6 criminal offenses. This means incarcerated illegal aliens have committed over 4.1 million crimes
---- and that does not include illegal alien criminals who are not incarcerated.
----According to Congressional sources thousands of illegals are coming from terrorist and suspect nations and they are bent on killing Americans.
AND GET THIS:
Illegal Alien Thugs Set Fires Along Mexican Border
Criminal invaders are setting fire to forests and fields along the border to distract U.S. Border Patrol Agents to make their crossing easier, throwing Molotov cocktails at US agents’ vehicles, and setting fire to their observation posts........
These "vulnerable and exploited" invaders should be thrown out of our country, subito.
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