This confirms what I’ve always heard – that American citizens of Hispanic descent very much resent illegal aliens and have no desire to be associated with them. There is a big difference between legal immigrants and criminal border crossers. From CNSNews.

‘You Don’t Speak for Me,’ Legal Hispanic Immigrants Shout
By Alison Espach
CNSNews.com Correspondent
July 20, 2006

(CNSNews.com) – A group of American Hispanics — legal residents of the U.S. — are blasting efforts to convert illegal immigrants into “guest workers,” arguing that their own pursuit of the American dream is being impeded by the influx of illegal aliens.

“We are American citizens, we’re voters. We elect our officials in office right now. Our voices need to be heard, not those of illegal aliens and their well-funded advocates,” said Mariann Davies, vice-chairman of the group You Don’t Speak For Me (YDSFM). Davies is the daughter of legal immigrants from Ecuador.

Davies told Cybercast News Service that YDSFM has attracted about a thousand members since it was launched earlier this year and represents the majority of Americans and American Hispanics against illegal alien rights.

YDSFM was formed by Col. Al Rodriguez in response to this year’s media coverage of Latino and Hispanic “pro-immigration” rallies — a phrase that Rodriguez said his group resents. YDSFM was angry that the rallies were portrayed as representing the position of all Latinos and Hispanics in the U.S.

In a statement on the YDSFM website, Davies indicated that she first noticed the problems in immigration control when she worked as a college volunteer during the implementation of the Immigration and Control Act of 1986. That law provided legal status to 3.1 million people who had come to the United States illegally.

“I witnessed chaotic and inconsistent paperwork for people with no documentation. It was a mess, and we now know that much of the information provided by illegal immigrants was fraudulent,” Davies said.

“We also know that terrorists were also granted amnesty under the 1986 program, something that should shock and anger all Americans. We also know that all 19 hijackers from September 11 took advantage of our legal system, staying here on expired or fraudulent visas to wage their war of terror,” she added.

Davies said she is outraged by more recent problems linked to the illegal immigration problem, such as the “84 hospitals that have closed emergency rooms in California” because of excessive illegal alien use and “the massive amount of public dollars that have been spent educating illegal alien students and children of illegal aliens.”

According to a Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) report, the “utilization rate of hospitals and clinics by illegal aliens (29 percent) is more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. population (11 percent).

“How about social services programs that are meant for our own most vulnerable citizens?” Davies asked. “How about school districts that are overrun and having to have bilingual education and thousands and thousands of non-English speaking students who are taking resources away from the rest of the students?”

Davies said many school districts are forced to eliminate programs in arts and music “because they have so many non-English speaking illegal alien children that they have to spend the money on special services and teachers and social workers for them.”

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.

Fellow CAII blogger Morning Coffee points out this great billboard campaign.

From ABC13.com:

The billboard’s message is simple — ’stop the invasion.’ It’s the controversy surrounding it that is much more complicated.

Inside one Houston factory Mexican music plays in the background. The majority of the workers are Mexican American. Many of them have taken offense to a new billboard just outside their building. It’s one that has caught the attention of those on both sides of the immigration debate. The 14 by 48 foot sign at I-10 and Heights Boulevard reads “Stop the invasion, secure our borders.”

For more on the billboard campaign in Houston and other cities go to grassfire.org

Not only is the billboards message clear but so is the “controversy” surrounding the message crystal clear. Our nation is at war with an enemy that doesn’t use a conventional means of wageing war. Securing our borders is a National Security issue it has absolutely nothing to do with race.

The groups US Border Watch and Grassfire.org paid for the billboard to be put up. Organizers say it’s an effort to inform people the country’s borders have become war zones.

“In the single month of June alone, 254 officers along the Laredo sector of Texas were assaulted,” said Curtis Collier with Border Watch. “That info has to get out. Our sign, links to the website will help get that info to the general public.”

From The Washington Times

For years we have seen individuals enter the country illegally,” said Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., sheriff of Zapata County. “However, recently we feel that many of these persons are no longer entering the country to look for legitimate employment. We are now seeing that many of these persons are members of ruthless and violent gangs.”
Sheriff Gonzalez’s testimony before the House International Relations subcommittee was part of a series of “field hearings” held across the country to gauge voter opinion on reforming the nation’s immigration laws. Yesterday’s hearing was held in Laredo, in Zapata County.
“Some areas can accurately be described as a war zone,” panel Chairman Ed Royce, California Republican, told The Washington Times after touring the border near Laredo.
Sheriff Gonzalez told members of the subcommittee that the number of illegal aliens from places other than Mexico — including countries on terrorist watch lists — caught crossing the border has more than quintupled in the past four years. Increasingly, he said, they try blending in to look like Mexicans crossing the border in search of honest work.

Curtailing crime is another aspect of securing our borders that those who advance an open border agenda conveniently overlook. During a recent 3 week border security blitz in 5 Texas border couhnties, Val Verde County reported a 76 percent drop in major crimes compared to last year, and one barometer – losses to burglaries – dropped from $91,000 to $1,200 during the intensive law enforcement effort.

Securing our Borders has absolutely nothing to do with Race… It has everything to do with Security.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.**

Our Sheriff is angry. I don’t blame him. I’m angry too. Why can’t I.C.E. deport the illegals, whether they’re criminals or not? It doesn’t make sense.

Maricopa County Jail inmates convicted or cleared of human-smuggling charges and presumed to be undocumented were allowed to walk out of jail without being removed from the country because of a spat over jurisdiction between the Sheriff’s Office and federal immigration agents.

Since the first arrests made under Arizona’s human-smuggling law in March, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has filed 268 cases, 31 against suspected coyotes and the rest against suspected conspirators assumed to be undocumented immigrants.

So far, 63 have pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, 15 have been dismissed, two acquitted and one convicted by a jury.

But 17 have walked right out of the jail and into the community – including six who pleaded guilty to human-smuggling felonies – because the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency decided it wouldn’t transport out of the country people prosecuted under the controversial coyote law.

Instead, they slipped unnoticed through the red tape of a giant jail system and onto the streets.

Since July 11, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has transported 14 more of the coyote-law defendants in four trips to the Yuma area to rendezvous with U.S. Border Patrol agents willing to take the prisoners and put them through the federal process for removal.

“Why would they refuse to pick up the felons?” Sheriff Joe Arpaio asked.

Because, according to an ICE spokesman, only federal agents with ICE, the Border Patrol and other U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials are legally empowered to determine who is a citizen and who is in the country legally, which they do through specific interviews and checks.

“An officer must base the determination of status upon either an interview of the subject or through fingerprint comparison with existing records,” ICE Special Agent in Charge Roberto Medina said in a July 6 letter to Arpaio. “Furthermore, only federal officers . . . can place detainers pursuant to the (Immigration and Nationality Act).”

State and county law enforcement can’t make such determinations about “alienage.”

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was distressed.

“ICE’s refusal to pick up and deport acknowledged illegal immigrants arrested by local law enforcement shows that the federal policy of ‘catch and release’ is still the order of the day,” he said. “The federal government’s continued unwillingness to perform its basic duty of securing our border makes Arizona’s human-smuggling law all the more important.”

According to the Sheriff’s Office, there are an average of 900 to 1,000 prisoners in the jail at any one time with immigration detainers, or holds, indicating that ICE is to be contacted before they can be released.

ICE picks up prisoners every weekday. According to ICE spokesman Russell Ahr, for example, the agency picked up 165 immigration detainees between June 11 and July 12. According to the Sheriff’s Office, the agency picked up 23 on Monday alone. But they refused to take the person in the group who had been prosecuted under the coyote law.

Ahr claimed ICE decisions are based on priorities: prior criminal history, immigration status, nationality and the nature of the crime they’re accused of.

“The purpose of a detainer is not to have an illegal alien removed; the purpose is to have a criminal alien removed,” he said.

When suspects are booked into Maricopa County jails, they are questioned on their immigration status. And if the interviewing officers doubt the suspect’s immigration status, they send a teletyped message to ICE, which responds with its decision of whether to place a detainer on that suspect after running the information through its databanks.

Arpaio claimed that 35 of the suspects charged with human-smuggling violations had immigration holds that were later removed.

The reasoning for dropping the holds, according to Medina’s letter, was that even though the suspects were being held on suspicion of human smuggling, which presupposes they are here illegally, ICE officials determined their interviews had not been conducted by qualified ICE personnel.

“In which case it should be incumbent on them to do an interview,” said MCSO Chief Michael Olson, who is in charge of the jails.

Instead, as the charges were dropped, or as the convicts were sentenced to probation, they were released by deputies because there were no holds against them.

The lapse was discovered June 11 when a judge acquitted two men of conspiracy to commit smuggling and MCSO personnel called to have them transported from the jail.

When ICE refused, Arpaio announced he would have his own deputies do the transport.

“Now we have to waste our manpower,” Arpaio said. “I don’t have to do this. I can just let them go on the street. Who cares? Because they’re convicted felons. They deserve to go back to Mexico because a judge said they’re going back to Mexico. He didn’t say how.”

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.

[Original posting in the Juan Mann Archive on VDARE.com] In taking a step back from the immigration and National Question orbit recently, I discovered the fascinating work of economic freedom heroine Catherine Austin Fitts. Here’s probably the most significant piece…