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Posted on Mon, Apr. 17, 2006

Anti-immigration advocates hold rally in Kansas City

GARANCE BURKE
Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Several hundred advocates for tighter immigration controls and stiffer security on the U.S.-Mexico border gathered in Kansas City on Monday to press for immigration reforms.

"A year ago there was hardly any talk about border security," said Tony Dolz, a California businessman who stopped in Kansas City on a national tour for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "Now everyone knows our borders are being violated and any of those people could be terrorists."

Carrying signs that read "I want the job an illegal took" and "Go Back to Your Casa," supporters said the crush of illegal immigrants from Mexico was driving down wages and putting a strain on government.

The counter-protest, small compared to the wave of national immigration rights rallies in recent weeks, was organized by the Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition and Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who was an immigration adviser to former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Dolz told the crowd he would take their message from Country Club Plaza to Washington, along with the 15,000 signatures he'd gathered for a petition urging Congress to station troops along the border.

Several protesters said congressional proposals to grant illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship had motivated them to get active in local politics.

"We pay for their hospitals, their education, everything they use while they're here," said Bonner Springs, Kan., resident Rhonda Owsley, who said Monday's event was the first rally she has ever attended. "Our taxes are too high and they're not paying them."

Others decided their battle was better waged outside the Midwest. Steven Williams, of Poplar Bluff, said he would miss the rally because he was driving to Falfurrias, Texas, early Tuesday to join the Minutemen, the controversial civilian watch group whose members stake out the desert in round-the-clock shifts to report illegal immigrants to immigration officials.

"The whole thing impacts a Christians' response as a responsible member of this country," said Williams, a minister at the First Christian Church. "Drugs, gangs and violence are all coming across the borders, and our government isn't doing anything about it."