http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3404596

Article Last Updated: 1/15/2006 01:37 AM


Schlafly slams guest worker program
Eagle Forum convention: Sen. Buttars is there and says gays harbor diseases at higher rate than others
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

TAYLORSVILLE - The Bush administration's support of a "guest worker" program and other exceptions to U.S. immigration policy is feeding a $140 billion organized criminal racket that makes victims of citizens and immigrants alike, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly said Saturday.

Schlafly said apologists who say the border ought to be loosened because immigrants are needed to work jobs Americans don't want undermine the nation's egalitarian principles.

"There isn't any job that Americans are too good to do," said Schlafly, an ardent proponent of sealing the U.S. borders. "This is creating a serf class, a peasant class. . . . That's not America."

Worse, she said, if the tide of illegal immigration to the United States - estimated at 1 million people annually - doesn't stop, "we might as well give up on the drug war."

But she also talked about the crimes committed on the immigrants, most from Mexico, who pay $2,000 to $50,000 to human smugglers to get them across the southern border in trucks with no food or water and little oxygen. Once here, they are at the mercy of an underground economy peopled by corrupt employers who underpay them or don't pay them at all.

Large corporations join in the victimization when they sponsor workers from overseas, claiming they have a shortage of qualified workers here, which isn't true, Schlafly said. The hitch is those foreign workers remain at their corporate employers' mercy, virtually indentured because if they quit their jobs, they can't get another.

Cheap immigrant labor depresses all wages while corrupt employers skimp on benefits, leaving taxpayers to make up the rest.

"If taxes were paid on what is earned in the underground economy, that would be enough to wipe out the entire national debt," Schlafly said. "Bush talks about bringing in willing workers. There are probably 5 billion people in the world poorer than Mexicans."

The 80-year-old founder of the Eagle Forum was the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the conservative organization's Utah chapter, held at Salt Lake Community College's Redwood campus in Taylorsville.

A powerful speaker, Schlafly has led the national conservative movement since 1964, when her book, A Choice Not An Echo, was published. A close ally of former Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Republican who lost that year's landslide presidential election to Lyndon Johnson, Schlafly fought the Equal Rights Amendment to a standstill and has continued to demonize feminists. She organized the Eagle Forum in 1972, and still writes a syndicated newspaper column and is a radio personality.

The convention drew about 200 people and was timed to excite conservative activists about the upcoming state legislative session, said Utah chapter president Gayle Ruzicka.

As usual, the Eagle Forum will focus on bills concerning family issues and parental rights, Ruzicka said. Eagle Forum adherents - Ruzicka said the group doesn't have an actual membership list - this year are lining up to support Sen. Chris Buttars' bill that questions evolutionary science and his measure that would outlaw gay-straight alliance clubs at Utah high schools.

Buttars, a West Jordan Republican, also was a featured speaker at the convention. He said his "origin of life" bill will be taken up next week when the Legislature convenes. He said the bill doesn't touch on matters of faith or so-called intelligent design, which questions the validity of the scientific community's adherence to evolution as the basis of modern biology. "We're going to say, 'Scientists, just tell what's true, and don't overstep what you know,' " he said.

Buttars disparaged homosexuals, claiming they are "changing the meaning of everything," that "their definition of morality is they have no morality" and harbor diseases at a higher rate than the general population.

"If you read the homosexual rule book, you'll find their greatest target is your kids," he said.

But Buttars talked only generally about the school-clubs bill, saying it's being held up while drafters figure out how to define certain terms, including "acceptable."

Buttars said he figures he has the votes for both bills. But if the gay-clubs bill doesn't pass this session, that's it. "If I lose this time, I probably won't get to rise up again," he said.