Thread: R.I. group forms to fight illegal immigration

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R.I. group forms to fight illegal immigration
Rhode Island Immigration Law Enforcement, or RIILE, is conducting a low-key campaign to get immigration laws enforced.


01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 7, 2006
BY TATIANA PINA
Journal Staff Writer


It's tough to get through on the phone when Governor Carcieri is the guest on radio station WHJJ, but Terry Gorman of Lincoln is an old pro at this, and he manages to be the fourth caller.

The governor is taking calls with talk show host Helen Glover. People can talk about anything.

Gorman's question has been gnawing at him.

He tells Carcieri that he should win the national governors' Profiles in Courage Award for proposing to drop 3,000 illegal immigrant children from the RIte Care health-insurance program. Then, he asks the governor how he figures it costs only $4 million to provide health insurance for 3,000 children. Gorman is sure it costs more like $18 million.

Carcieri tells him that children do not get sick as much as adults.

Gorman, a tanning salon owner who worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 28 years, is satisfied with the answer. To him, the governor is one of the few politicians in the state who have dared to do something about the growing, high cost of providing health care and education to illegal immigrants.

(Carcieri has since said that he might abandon the plan to remove illegal immigrant children from the RIte Care program in the next fiscal year.)

For the past eight years, Gorman has been taking note of the amount of money spent on illegal immigrants. He notices neighborhoods with increasing numbers of Hispanic businesses where people don't speak English. They are not assimilating -- and the government is encouraging this by providing interpreters in the courts and many other services in Spanish, he says.

In February, when he turned 66, Gorman decided it was time to act on his growing frustration. He decided to to see if there were other people out there like him, fed up with shouldering the cost of illegal immigration. He called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FAIR, a Washington, D.C.-based group that seeks to reduce illegal immigration.

Sandra Gunn, of FAIR, advised him to rent a hall and publicize the meeting, and she would help get the group organized, she said.

The meeting was at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Pawtucket, the Capt. Elwood J. Euart Post 602, in a quiet neighborhood in the city's Fairlawn section, near North Providence. Gunn, dressed in a gray, tailored suit, brought a briefcase full of information. Eight people showed up -- a doctor and his wife, a nurse, a state employee, a veteran, an organizer from Massachusetts, and Gorman and his wife, he says.

Gorman had invited a reporter, but when she arrived, Gunn asked her to leave, saying the people who had come did not feel comfortable with the press there. Some people feared reprisals at work or harassment from others, Gorman says.

The participants agreed that night in February to create Rhode Island Immigration Law Enforcement, or RIILE, joining an increasing number of groups around the country that have organized in response to a growing frustration with the government's inability to get a handle on illegal immigration.

RIILE, Gorman says, now has about 20 members; he was the only one who would agree to be interviewed.

So far, their activity has been low-key. They have called state and federal representatives to pressure them to vote against any legislation that favors illegal immigrants, such as a bill proposed by Providence Democrats Sen. Juan Pichardo and Rep. Grace Diaz, which would give the in-state tuition rate to illegal immigrants who attend one of the state's public colleges.

At RIILE's first meeting, Bob Casimiro from the Coalition for Immigration Reform of Massachusetts explained how his group had successfully lobbied against a similar effort.

In Connecticut, a group called Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control has gained national attention by organizing protests favoring stronger enforcement of existing immigration law and opposing the guest worker and amnesty programs favored by President Bush and some members of the U.S. Senate.

In recent weeks, the Senate has considered various alternatives to a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would criminalize illegal immigrants. But Congress is not even close to a compromise measure. (See related story, Page A8.)

THE NUMBER of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown to approximately 12 million, and they now account for 1 in every 20 U.S. workers, according to a recent estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center, based on Census Bureau data. Half of the estimated illegal immigrant population is Hispanic.

Rachel Miller, of Providence, who heads Jobs with Justice, an immigrant and workers' rights organization, says the emergence of groups like RIILE are a sign that groups like hers need to do a better job of explaining the role immigrants play in the economy. Those who don't understand tend to respond with fear, she says.

Cynthia Garcia-Coll, a professor of education at Brown University, says there is a link between the increase in the Latino population nationally and the emergence of groups opposed to aiding illegal immigrants.

"We have learned that when there is a threshold -- when groups become bigger than a particular size -- prejudice and discrimination perk up," she says. "It is a human, primal population phenomenon. When there is a perception of scarce resources, and people perceive that a group is taking those and getting preferential treatment, they react."

The Latino population has shown the most growth of any immigrant population in Rhode Island, Garcia-Coll says. "All the federal money we are getting is because of the Latinos."

"The white population is growing older and moving out of the state. That doesn't mean anything to anybody when they feel threatened and don't see the contributions to the economy Latinos make."

If you look at history, says Garcia-Coll, "the Irish were the target of prejudice, so were the Jews, so were the Italians. This is not the first time in history. Like any other group, we are here to stay and will be part of mainstream America."

RECENT pro-immigrant marches in Rhode Island and across the nation anger Terry Gorman, founder of RIILE.

"There was a man in a march asking to live here, and carrying a Mexican flag," Gorman says. "He wants the benefits of living here, but he has allegiance to another country?"

The worst thing, says Gorman, is that the new wave of illegal immigrants seems to be disdainful of the people already here. He says he feels that when he drives through Central Falls and sees an enclave of Latinos.

In the past seven years, Gorman says, he has not missed Sunday Mass, but he is uneasy with the Roman Catholic Church's stance on helping illegal immigrants. When his priest talked about helping illegal immigrants, Gorman says, he walked out until the priest was done.

"I believe we should be helping the poor, and that's what I've done my whole life," he says. "But I don't put these people in the category of poor and oppressed, like the church does. There are hundreds of poor and oppressed people who are citizens who can't get help.

"I don't know what the solution is," Gorman says. "I don't know what God would say. I struggle with it, terribly.

"If a person robbed a bank, does the Catholic church hide him? These people are here illegally. They broke the law."

With wire-service reports.

tpina@projo.com / (401) 277-7394

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