Thread: 'Anything' to fight immigration

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'Anything' to fight immigration
Billboard campaign seeks dead man's family's cooperation

By Source: Colorado Alliance For Immigration Reform By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
May 5, 2006

A Colorado anti-immigration group is starting a new billboard campaign, enlisting the family of a Thornton man killed in a hit-and- run crash involving an illegal immigrant.

The Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform has asked the family of Justin Goodman, who died in July 2004, to help unveil the first of three planned billboards in the Denver area in the next two weeks.

"We will do anything that will attract attention to this issue," said Goodman's uncle, Julius Vizzi, who said his nephew was like a son to him.

The first billboard will be modeled after one in New Mexico posted by Veterans for Secure Borders, which was founded by a World War II veteran who is also a former Border Patrol agent and immigration service investigator. It says, "Mr. President, They didn't die for open borders!"

The Colorado group plans to have a similar message on its first billboard.

The second will target other politicians, said CAIR director Mike McGarry. The third "is going to be a big surprise," McGarry said. "I don't want to say too much. We haven't made all the final decisions."

McGarry said KHOW radio host Peter Boyles and other "key people" were still planning the exact messages and locations of the billboards. The group has raised "close to" $15,000, he said. The billboards the group is considering cost $4,000 to $8,000, he said.

Any leftover funds would be given to a veterans group, McGarry said.

Bob Park, who left college to join the U.S. Border Patrol in 1951 and spent the next 28 years as an immigration agent and investigator, founded the Veterans for Secure Borders to give veterans a voice in the immigration debate, he said.

Goodman's family said its hope is to bring attention to the issue of immigrants who've committed crimes. Roberto Martinez-Ruiz, the illegal immigrant who crashed into Goodman's motorcycle, had a history of drunken driving.

Goodman's death at age 32 has changed the focus of all their lives, Vizzi said.

"I am a liberal Democrat," Vizzi said. "I am a gay man. My partner of 25 years and I are putting our own rights on the back table. There's nothing else I'm thinking about. I'm going to be voting on the immigration issue. And that person I'm voting for may not agree with my life, but this is more important.

"Immigration affects everyone."

Alliance's action plan

The Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform supports the principles of ASAP!, the Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population, formulated in Colorado in 1997. Its action plan calls for:

•A moratorium on immigration

•No more amnesties

• Enforcement of immigration laws

• No citizenship for illegal aliens' offspring

Source: Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5091

And that person I'm voting for may not agree with my life, but this is more important.

he probably speaks for everyone here -- this is more important.