Thread: Lightning strikes illegal immigration foe

Sunday, September 2, 2007
Lightning strikes illegal immigration foe
Questions remain about whether Anaheim school board member Harald Martin should have been forced out.

GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
http://www.ocregister.com/column/martin ... aheim-says

Former Anaheim school board member Harald Martin puts it this way: "I've been out there pushing for a long time. When you do that, eventually they're going to get you.

"And I got got."

As you may have heard, Martin resigned from the Anaheim Union High School District board of trustees last week in the face of a recall effort. The recall was largely driven by community activists who have long hated Martin – "hate" is not too strong a word – for his stands against illegal immigration.

And in some people's minds, to be against illegal immigration is to be, by definition, a "racist."

Martin is a 52-year-old retired Anaheim cop who spent years working in some of that city's toughest gang areas. As a community-based officer charged with helping to clean up crime-ridden neighborhoods, he once led a citizens group in dumping steer manure and grass seed in a city park to drive away drug dealers – sort of a "stink 'em out of the park" strategy.

Martin was first elected to the Anaheim school board in 1994, while he was still a police officer. He ran for the office, he says, because making arrests wasn't enough.

"Just making arrest after arrest after arrest is a failed police strategy," he says. "And how many of the people I arrested were 'A' students? The answer is none. The ones I was arresting were the 'F' students. I wanted to work through the school system to make a change."

Martin spent the next eight years on the board, getting high marks from some people for his grasp of school finances and other issues. But he also did what was for some people unforgivable, especially in a school district in which more than half the students are Latino – that is, he spoke out publicly about the costs of illegal immigration.

In 1999 Martin proposed that the school district bill the government of Mexico for the costs of educating students who had entered the U.S. illegally from that country. Specifically, he wanted the Mexican government to fork over $50 million for past costs and $10 million per year for future costs.

"I knew the odds of getting any money were close to nil," Martin says. "But I thought it might at least have opened up a dialogue."

It opened up a dialogue all right. Martin was called a "racist" and a "Nazi" and worse.

"A lot of people were saying, 'Hey, that's a great idea,' " Martin says. "But the politically correct view was, 'This is racist.' And that's what scares most politicians. They don't want to be labeled that way, so they bend over into pretzel form and don't say anything."

Martin also caught "racist" heat for opposing bilingual education and for suggesting that Anaheim police officers be empowered to arrest immigration law violators, among other things. But it was the "send the bill to Mexico" idea that has stuck with him to this day, even though the proposal never actually went anywhere.

(True, there was one non-immigration-related issue in which Martin admits that his mouth foolishly got him in trouble. After a $2.5 million damage award to a teenage girl who had been molested by a teacher, Martin had suggested that because the girl had kept quiet about it she might have shared the culpability. He now calls that comment "dumb" and "stupid" and "my greatest error.")

In any event, Martin lost his re-election bid in 2002, and lost again in another board election last November, coming in seventh out of eight candidates. Nevertheless, he was appointed to fill a vacant seat in July – "Anaheim Union School Board Appoints Former Trustee Who Wanted to Bill Mexico," the Register headline said – which immediately touched off the recall effort that led to Martin's resignation. The school board now has to decide whether to appoint someone else or, as recall proponents are demanding, to hold a special election at a cost of about $500,000.

As you might expect, Martin's enemies are delighted that he's gone.

"Yes, of course we're happy," says Amin David of the Latino advocacy group Los Amigos. Although Amin wouldn't directly call Martin a "racist" – at least not to me – he said that Martin "is tainted with that (racism)" and that "he's after Latinos."

Martin, meanwhile, is philosophical about it.

"When you're a lightning rod, you're going to get hit by lightning," he says.

Now, I don't live in the Anaheim Union High School District, so it's not my place to tell the good people there who they should have on their school board.

Still, it's discouraging that a politician who is willing to speak out on a critical national and local issue is so quickly – and permanently – branded a "racist." It makes me wonder if other local politicians will hesitate to speak out about illegal immigration.

Because they've seen what happened to Harald Martin.

And they may be afraid of the lightning.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7953 or GLDillow@aol.com

"Just making arrest after arrest after arrest is a failed police strategy," he says. "And how many of the people I arrested were 'A' students? The answer is none. The ones I was arresting were the 'F' students. I wanted to work through the school system to make a change."

Oh my. It is good that this man resigned from the school board. He has all the qualities for a MUCH higher office. I certainly hope he is consdering it.

Sad when someone like Harald Martin speaks up out of frustration over illegal immigration and because of that he's called names.

The name calling is getting old but guess that's what people resort to when they have a weak argument.

He sounds like a real stand-up guy, someone you can respect.

The pro-illegals are trying to silence the voice of anyone in opposition to the illegal alien invasion. They don't have the truth on their side, so their only recourse is to accuse others of being racists, xenophobes, anti-"immigrant" etc., etc.

When everything is done on the basis of lies, in time, you run out of options. Such is the current status of the pro-illegals.

It's time for Americans to reclaim America.