Thread: A rising force against the tide

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3844575.html

May 6, 2006, 12:32AM


THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE
A rising force against the tide
A homemaker turned activist leads group's call for tighter border
By ZEKE MINAYA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

At 76, Louise Whiteford envisioned a different life for herself by now.

"I was going to be doing watercolors," the soft-spoken grandmother said.

Instead, she's at the center of a movement in Houston to stem the tide of illegal immigration, marshaling a small but politically savvy core of activists in defense, as she sees it, of the United States of America.

"If we continue this way," she said of the relentless flow of undocumented immigrants, "we stand to lose our country."

Whiteford heads a 230-member group called Texans for Immigration Reform. And at first glance, the self-effacing woman, who tends to listen before she talks, seems slightly out of place in the heated, sometimes raw debate about illegal immigration.

But it's a role she's grown into, finding strength from within as she sees immigration change the face of Texas.

"If I actually believed that opening the border with Mexico would benefit both countries I would have to look at that carefully," she said. "I just don't see the benefits. I see the benefits for corporations as far as cheap labor, but I don't see what we gain as a country."

Today, Whiteford and other members of her group plan to join a protest against illegal immigration in Crawford, near President Bush's ranch.

"We would like to see the president sign an executive order closing the border," she said.

Whiteford's supporters say she has emerged as a leading spokeswoman in the fight against illegal immigration.

"She has played a huge role," said Nick Swyka, district director for U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston. "Before her, our office would hear from people who call and vent, and she has managed to harness that into action."

Some of her critics contend Whiteford's group is blind to the contributions of illegal immigrants.

"There are many people in this country who are undocumented and have provided a very positive impact in this community, in this country," said Jose Luis Jimenez, deputy director of the Houston branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Too often, he said, Whiteford takes aim at immigrants from the lowest socioeconomic classes — "the part she wants to ship out" of the U.S.

"They are focusing on one culture, one race, one group," Jimenez said. But "there's no such thing as one type of Mexican."

Jimenez also worries that groups advocating tighter controls are turning the national discussion about immigration laws into a "cultural war."

"It's becoming a debate of 'us against them,' " he said.


'Pressure on Mexico'
Whiteford said she's not opposed to any country, class or culture. She's against illegal immigration.

"No one that ever comes here illegally should ever get citizenship," she said. "And we should put a heck of a lot of pressure on Mexico to choke up some money to educate their people, to raise the standard of living and get rid of corruption there."

Her views have won her support, especially since immigrants took to the streets in March demanding amnesty. And these days it seems as if her phone never stops ringing. It's as likely to be one of her four children on the other end of the line as it is, say, an interviewer from the Fox News cable channel or a congressman's staffer in Washington.

"I need a secretary," she jokes.

Before getting involved in the immigration debate, Whiteford was content to be a homemaker and mother.

Her children call her a late bloomer, she said.

She was born in Ohio in 1930 during the Great Depression. She remembers growing up and watching her father, a proudly self-reliant man, keep the family afloat as he struggled to get a sign-making business off the ground. He often held court on the issues of the day around the dinner table, she said.

"Dinnertime talk was always serious," she recalled. "We didn't talk about fashion and purses."

She also inherited from him worries about the deterioration of the American middle class; threatened in his day by unions and government officials, and today by the crushing flow of illegal immigrants, Whiteford said.

"If we continue the massive influx of people, we will depress wage levels such that we won't have a strong middle class anymore," she said.

She attended Ohio State University, where she met her future husband, who was in the oil business. In 1955, the couple came to Houston, where Whiteford, a Republican, found herself in Democrat country.

Her friends told her that backing Republicans was a lost cause. "But it wasn't," she said. "I was in the precinct that first elected George Herbert Walker Bush to Congress."

And though she was a charter member of the Magic Circle Republican Women's group, Whiteford said, she was not particularly active in politics and dedicated her time to her children and husband.

But that changed in the early 1990s, when Whiteford moved alone to northern California to care for a relative. For three years, she lived in San Francisco, surrounded by recently arrived immigrants.

She was shocked by the crowded, clandestine existence of some tenants in her apartment building, people she never met, but suspected were illegal immigrants. She recalled "mattresses all over the living room" of one neighboring apartment.

"I had never experienced anything like that. It was sad."


Elusive American dream?
Whiteford resolved to learn all she could about immigration. The seed was planted.

She soon decided that illegal immigrants are drawn to the U.S. by what amounts to a perversion of the American dream. The classic Horatio Alger depiction of America as a place where riches were available for anyone willing to work hard was not true in the face of unchecked immigration, she said. With low wages, little opportunity to rise in society and climbing population, illegal immigrants were out of reach of the prosperity that had once brought migrants to American shores.

"I don't want all these people to come here thinking they are going to have the American dream when they are not," she said.

When Whiteford returned to Houston, her life took yet another turn. Her time away had strained her marriage and, after 44 years together, Whiteford and her husband divorced.

"It put my marriage at risk when I went out there," but now, she said, "I can be myself. I don't have to ask for anybody's opinion."


'Her time to shine'
That road led her to Texans for Immigration Reform in 2003. The seven-year-old group was founded by J.C. Hernandez, a third-generation Texan of Mexican descent and Vietnam veteran who once compared the fight about immigration to war.

"When you fight a war, you don't fight it with rhetoric," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. "When you fight a war, man, you go in and kill the enemy. ... A signal has to be sent to Mexico and all those countries that we are tired of it and we're not going to put up with it."

Whiteford distanced herself from those comments. "I wouldn't be saying anything like that," she said. Hernandez has since gone on to start another group, Americans for Zero Immigration, but remains involved with Texans for Immigration Reform.

Whiteford became president of the group a year ago. "No one wanted the job," she said, laughing.

Then the immigration debate burst onto the streets with marches and rallies. And as the fight climbed onto the national stage, so has Whiteford. She has appeared on the Fox News Network and on the pages of newspapers as she leads her group in support of a House bill that would turn illegal immigrants into felons.

"Louise is a hardworking, dedicated woman, and her leadership has become very important to our group," said its vice president, Mary Ann Wall. "She knows that this is her time to shine on this."

zeke.minaya@chron.com

And she is absolutely right on all points. Godspeed, Ms.Whiteford.

MJ

Darn glad to have her and her group on our side. Keep up the great work. This is the age group that the Illegal Alien Terrorists are waiting for to just pass on peacefully. They dont know Our elders very well do they

great work!!!!....we're not turning this into a cultural war....THEY always fall back on it NOT us..god bless this lady.