Thread: Border Security Proponents Air Message On Radio

Border security proponents air message on the radio

By Nicole Gaouette, Times Staff Writer
5:55 PM PDT, April 27, 2007


WASHINGTON -- John and Ken, the Los Angeles area radio talk-show hosts, were on the air. They discussed claims by the Homeland Security secretary that more guards had been stationed along the Mexico border. "Outright blatant lies!" John said. They trashed the Border Patrol chief. "A cardboard bureaucrat," he added.

From the back of the crowded hotel conference room here, where the pair were broadcasting, one listener couldn't contain himself. "You betcha!" he roared, and the sympathetic audience erupted in laughter.

For four days this week, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou joined more than 30 other radio hosts from across the country, broadcasting live from D.C. to demand immigration laws that secure the border, punish employers who hire illegals and deny citizenship to immigrants who sneaked into the country.

They brought with them a chorus of more than 600 listeners, who lobbied all 535 lawmakers and provided a refrain of cheers and groans during the daily 5 a.m.-to-midnight broadcast marathon.

Those listeners appeared to be a kinder, gentler embodiment of the often brash and alarmist talk-radio advocates of an immigration crackdown.

It's not clear how much of an influence these listener-lobbyists will have on the debate in Washington. But as Congress prepares to take up immigration again in May, there is no mistaking their determination.

"We will make Congress listen and hear," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that helped organize the event, the second of its kind. "We will not be belittled, we will not be diddled."

Those who made the lobbying trip spanned old to young. They wore their patriotism on their sleeves in the form of American flag clothing and pins. Many were military veterans or related to them. Most, but not all, were white -- and they bristled at charges of racism. They said the accusation is meant to silence them.

"Brown, black, white, they're all here," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a firebrand immigration critic.

This crowd loves Tancredo. Largely Republican, they have contempt for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., but save their special fury for President Bush -- who, like Kennedy, wants to offer legal status to people in the country illegally. "Amnesty," they disdainfully brand it.

Passionate, committed and largely middle-class, they see themselves as a silent majority given a voice through radio.

Retired doctor Ralph Hylinski made the trip from Alamo, Calif., motivated partly by concern about the country's cultural fragmentation and the need for English as a common language. Carol Angus, the owner of a Ramona, Calif., asphalt paving company, said it was hard for her company to compete against those who hire illegal immigrants. She visited lawmakers with Ray Boettinger of Escondido, Calif., who is angry about the border's effect on national security and "the fact that the federal government is not trying to do anything about it."

For these listeners and others, the trip transformed airwaves into community, physically linking them with others who share their anger and unease about immigration.

"This has been a great place to test ideas, share ideas, lobby our congressmen and make connections," Hylinski said. "We didn't know who was in the fight with us, and this gives us a chance to meet them."

Hylinski reeled off examples of the negative effect immigration has had on California, starting with "unlimited population expansion, overwhelmed schools and medical facilities." He fended off an interruption -- "I'm not done yet!" -- and went on to list overcrowded jails, drug trafficking, damage to private property and the destruction of the environment along the border.

His solution: "All we have to do is enforce the laws on the books, but Bush doesn't want that. If he wanted to, the borders could be shut tomorrow."

Michael Crowe of Alexandria, Va., laid out a more immediate ambition. He suggested that an airwave onslaught could slow legislation until preoccupation with the 2008 presidential races makes it impossible to proceed.

"As long as we can hold them off, the better our chances of victory," said Crowe, a self-described immigration reform activist.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... &cset=true

"As long as we can hold them off, the better our chances of victory," said Crowe, a self-described immigration reform activist.

The longer we hold them off the longer we have to get more people involved, and then the victory.
Just keep pushing them to enforce our laws we must stem the flow, the more the mightier and they already have to much power in our country, it has to stop!

Sometimes the LA Times surprises me.

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JEAN wrote:

Sometimes the LA Times surprises me.

I'm as shocked as you Jean. The article was almost objective. I wonder if the writer was fired?