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The "Immigration Invasion" on group's agenda tonight

Home News Tribune Online 02/21/07
By ALESHA WILLIAMS
GANNETT NEW JERSEY

MARLBORO — Area residents and activists said they were surprised and upset to learn nationalist group The John Birch Society plans to hold an anti-immigration meeting here tonight.

A flier for the meeting, which some residents received by mail Feb. 12, advises that a film, "The Immigration Invasion," will be presented at 7:15 this evening at an office building at 457 Route 79.

The mailer asks recipients: "Are you ready to accept a "leveling down' of your standard of living? . . . What can you do about it?"

It also invites recipients to "discover a hidden agenda" behind illegal immigration, which it refers to as a "major social and economic crisis of the 21st century."

"I was surprised I would be on their mailing list because anybody that talked to me for more than 10 minutes would know I would not be interested in such a thing," said Lynn Franco, 49, of the Morganville section of Marlboro, who received the flier in the mail.

"It seems to me like a hunt to get rid of them (immigrants)," said Teja Anderson of Marlboro, a mother of two who also received a flier. "I just thought people were more compassionate now. I'm appalled by it (the meeting)."

Kevin O'Grady of Holmdel, one of the event organizers and a member of The John Birch Society, said the invitation-only meeting is about "something bigger and broader than immigration."

O'Grady said immigration expansion is part of a larger government agenda to "abolish our borders" in favor of a one-world supergovernment under which Americans would lose their constitutional rights.

O'Grady, who said the organization has five to 10 members in the Monmouth County area, declined to comment on whether the society had rented the Route 79 office building. The mortgage company which owns the property, New Jersey Home Funding, is owned by Robert Heath Jr.

Heath did not return calls for comment Tuesday.

But Frank Argote-Freyre, director of the Monmouth County chapter of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey, said he had "a hard time taking them (the society) seriously" and doesn't plan to protest the meeting.