Thread: Hostility rises against illegal immigrants

Published: Aug 19, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Aug 19, 2007 02:03 AM

Hostility rises against illegal immigrants
Furious messages sent to legislators

Dave Montgomery, Mcclatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Seven weeks after the collapse of legislation in Congress, the outcry against illegal immigration is louder than ever.

It's manifested by proposed clampdowns at the state and local levels and an uproar over the arrest of an illegal immigrant in the execution-style slayings of three New Jersey college students.

Scores of organizations, ranging from mainstream to fringe groups, are marshaling forces in what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls "a war here at home" against illegal immigration. He says the conflict is as important as the ones the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While most of the groups register widespread concerns about the impact of illegal immigration on jobs, social services and national security, the intense rhetoric is generating fears of an emerging dark side, evident in growing discrimination against Hispanics and a surge of xenophobia unseen since the last big wave of immigration in the early 20th century.

"I don't think there's been a time like this in our lifetime," said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Even though immigration is always unsettling and somewhat controversial, we haven't had this kind of intensity and widespread, deep-seated anger for almost 100 years."

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said the number of "nativist extremist" organizations advocating against illegal immigration has grown from virtually zero just over five years ago to 144, including nine classified as hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan supremacists.

Some senators who participated in the midsummer debate over President Bush's failed immigration bill said they were barraged with some of the most venomous mail of their congressional careers. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who supported the bill that would have legalized illegal immigrants, said he has received death threats because of his position.

"It is unbelievable how this has inflamed the American people," McCain said in a speech Thursday at the Aspen Institute in Colorado.

Eighty-three percent of immigrants from Mexico and 79 percent of immigrants from Central America think there is growing discrimination against Latin American immigrants in the United States, according to a poll conducted by Miami-based Bendixen & Associates.

Instead of taking a downturn after the collapse of Bush's immigration overhaul in June, the debate over illegal immigration has continued and seemingly escalated. As prospects for congressional action appeared increasingly in doubt this year, all 50 states and more than 75 towns and cities considered -- and in many cases enacted -- immigration restrictions, even though initial court rulings have declared such actions unconstitutional intrusions on federal responsibilities.

Two counties in the populous northern Virginia suburbs of Washington are among the latest to consider restrictions on immigration. Nationwide, many of the proposed ordinances strike similar themes, penalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants, barring illegal immigrants from certain municipal services or prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.

The murders of three college students in Newark -- and the wounding of a fourth -- reignited calls for a clampdown on illegal immigration after disclosures that one of the suspects, Jose Lachira Carranza, was an illegal immigrant from Peru who was out on bail awaiting trial on assault and child rape charges.

The Bush administration, in the absence of the sweeping immigration overhaul sought by the president, moved earlier this month to toughen enforcement of existing laws.

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/675369.html

The Bush administration, in the absence of the sweeping immigration overhaul sought by the president, moved earlier this month to toughen enforcement of existing laws.

His get tough policy fizzled within 3 days..

King Bush and Secretary Chertoff said they cannot enforce it

These 2 frauds need to go

Bush should be gonig on national television and telling the illegal aliens that the American public has spoken and they want your asses out of America yesterday. You better start packing or you will be arrested, tried and deported.

Then they need to start sweeping the nation for illegal aliens.

Write and executive order to end sancturary policies Bush! Write and executive order for aiding, hiding and harboring. Write and executive order to strip non-profit status and funding of orginizations that have been lobbying for illegals.

Opppps, those are just more unenforced laws.

Dixie

The only ones creating the hostilities are the Hispanics who support amnesty and the illegals themselves. Ever wonder why a certain group is failing in our schools, have a high percentage of pregnant teens, fradulently use and abuse our social programs, high percentage w/o HS degrees, fastest growing prison population, very high percentage in gangs, fill our emergency rooms, and can't/won't speak English.

Mornin' Dixie, how ya doin?

Originally Posted by Dixie

Bush should be gonig on national television and telling the illegal aliens that the American public has spoken and they want your asses out of America yesterday.

Well, we all know that won't happen. Maybe we need other means to remove the "welcome mat," like billboards in Spanish with pictures of MS-13 gang bangers crime-scenes and captions like "Illegals, go back to Mexico!"