Thread: Activists Rally Against Illegal Immigration

Activists Rally Against Illegal Immigration
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 23, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Several hundred protesters gathered outside the White House on Sunday to complain about President Bush's handling of the immigration issue, including his push for "comprehensive" reform. The protesters demanded tighter border security.

"We are in a struggle to save the sovereignty of our nation," said protest organizer D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society (DIS). "The price of losing is open borders and the loss of the republic."

King said the protesters have nothing against "people who join the American family according to American laws." In fact, King mentioned that he has an adopted sister who is a legal immigrant.

DIS is a Georgia-based group "dedicated to educating the public and our elected officials on the consequences of illegal immigration," according to its website. The group is named after a Georgia teenager killed in a car crash involving an illegal immigrant.

Sunday's demonstration kicked off four days of action against illegal immigration. For the next three days, 35 radio hosts will broadcast from a Washington, D.C., hotel while their listeners visit elected officials to lobby against comprehensive reform.

The message from talk radio will be a simple one, said the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the group that is organizing the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" event.

FAIR and the radio hosts will demand enforcement at the nation's borders; a crackdown on employers who hire illegal aliens; an end all non-emergency benefits and services to illegal aliens.

"Above all the message of Hold Their Feet to the Fire is, no amnesty, no new guest worker programs," FAIR said in a news release.

Sunday's rally included several Hispanic protestors, including Anna Gaines, a member of American Hispanic Voices Speaking Out Against Illegal Immigration. Gaines, who said she immigrated to the United States from Mexico and became a citizen 42 years ago, told Cybercast News Service that she opposed "unchecked illegal immigration."

"Anybody that comes [to the United States] outside the law does not make a good citizen," Gaines said. "These are the same people that destroyed Mexico."

Gaines said people who are in the United States illegally "need to go home and ... go through the channels of immigration -- and by the law."

The Sunday protest also drew a few detractors. Several dozen pro-illegal immigrant activists from groups such as the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and the International Socialist Organization demonstrated near the bigger rally, using noisemakers in an effort to drown out cries of "secure our borders."

"Immigrants in, bigot outs," the counter-demonstrators chanted while blowing air horns and whistles. The groups called anti-illegal immigration protestors "racists" and compared them to the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.

In addition to increased enforcement along the U.S. border with Mexico, protest organizers said they want stepped-up enforcement against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

The demonstrators opposed Bush's push for a "guest worker program," which would allow non-citizens to work in the country while they try to gain citizenship. Opponents of such a program call it "amnesty" for lawbreakers.

The protesters also called on Bush to pardon Jose Alonso and Ignacio Ramos, two border patrol agents currently serving jail terms for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler in 2005.

"The majority of the American people understand ... that amnesty does not secure our borders," King said. Although the protests purported to speak for the majority of Americans, some recent polls suggest that Americans support a guest worker program.

An April Los Angeles Times poll found that 55 percent of Americans favor an approach to immigration that includes a guest worker program instead of one that focuses only on tougher enforcement. More than three quarters want greater enforcement against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Opponents of the guest worker plan say polls showing support for the program are biased.

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Anyone know what the real polls are? I'd like to add those numbers to the article on the Home Page.