Thread: Group opposed to illegal immigration establishes city chapte

http://www.newsok.com/article/1690698/? ... =news/main

Tue November 29, 2005

Group opposed to illegal immigration establishes city chapter

By Judy Gibbs Robinson
The Oklahoman

A group opposed to illegal immigration organized in Tulsa two years ago has extended its reach into Oklahoma City, first with billboards and now with a formal chapter.

Leaders of Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now, which goes by the acronym "IRON," said they need a presence in the state's largest city.

"You have the Capitol here. You have the I-35 corridor. You have the interest. And you have the neglect. It's basically time," said Steve Merrill, a retired Immigration and Naturalization Service agent and spokesman for the new chapter.

The group's arrival concerns advocates for legal immigrants in the metro, who say it spreads false and misleading information to create fear and foster hatred.

"It's a way to polarize the community when, in fact, in Oklahoma City we've had a very peaceful co-existence," said Patricia Fennell, director of the Latino Community Development Agency, a nonprofit provider of social services at 420 SW 10.

Every immigrant wave in U.S. history after the original northern Europeans has been met with similar tactics, said Giovanni Perry, an immigration lawyer and member of the Governor's Advisory Council on Latin American and Hispanic Affairs.

"It sounds like they're scared of change. It sounds like Nazi talk," Perry said.

Robert Depew, president of the new chapter, denies the organization has racist or even anti-immigrant intentions. Depew, an Oklahoma City cabinet maker, said while some members may harbor such views, the only common bond within the organization is opposition to illegal immigration.

However, the group's Web site mixes messages against illegal and legal immigration.

It warns of an "immense cultural transformation" under way in Oklahoma, caused by "a vast influx of foreign nationals." It also heralds the organization's link to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national grassroots campaign to stop illegal and curtail legal immigation.

The group advocates using local police departments, state agencies like the Department of Human Services, and private entities like hospital admissions departments to help the federal government find and deport illegal immigrants.

"To say there is nothing we can do as a nation, or even as a state, is absolutely false," group founder Carol Helm of Tulsa writes on the group's Web site, www.okiron.org.

The group's central Oklahoma campaign began in October, when it started putting up billboards in Oklahoma City warning of an "illegal alien invasion" and urging people to report suspected illegal immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration Control and Enforcement unit.

The five billboards say illegal immigration costs Oklahomans an estimated $475 million annually in education, health care, welfare and incarceration costs -- a claim The Oklahoman could not confirm. Helm said the figures come from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Americans for Immigration Control, media reports and other sources.

"These are best estimates based on known information collected from Web sites," Helm said. "We'd love it if you could prove us wrong."

Fennell, the Hispanic agency director, fumes when she hears figures like that. She said while she does not condone illegal immigration, immigrants come here illegally because the United States needs their labor and they need the work.

"These people are not here draining the economy but contributing to the economy," Fennell said.

Isn't it amazing, how these people -- WHO ARE SNEAKING INTO OUR COUNTRY UNWELCOMED AND UNWANTED -- keeping making their speeches about how much we "need" them!

Even as virtually every poll I've read says that about 80% of Americans feel we "need" them like we need a hole in the head.