Thread: Local attendees say immigration forum was even-handed

Local attendees say immigration forum was even-handed
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September 24, 2008 - 6:26PM
Robert Boyer / Times-News
The recent Civitas Institute forum on how local governments can curb illegal immigration in their communities was balanced and didn't promote bigotry, said several local officials who attended.

County commissioners Ann Vaughan, Bill Lashley, Tim Sutton, and Assistant County Attorney Clyde Albright attended the forum on Sept. 19 in Durham. So did Democratic commissioner hopeful Linda Massey, and Celo Faucette, the GOP candidate for District 63 House seat now held by Democrat Alice Bordsen.

An attempt to reach Faucette Wednesday was unsuccessful. But the others who were there agreed that the gathering co-sponsored by the nonprofit NC Listen was even-handed.

"I thought it was a good presentation ... very well-rounded," Vaughan said. "I think Civitas is very unbiased and middle of the road and open to all sides."

Albright characterized the event at "pretty straightforward."

"They went out of their way to give the other side a voice ... to say this is not a personal thing and the color of your skin doesn't matter," Lashley said.

The John W. Pope Civitas Institute is funded by Art Pope, the founder of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank.

According to a report from the News and Observer of Raleigh, the crowd booed Durham Democratic Rep. Paul Luebke when he accused John Stirrup, a forum speaker, of "stereotyping Hispanic immigrants.

"Before organizers cut off his microphone during a question-and-answer session, Luebke said the group was, essentially, looking for legal ways to discriminate," the report stated.

Stirrup, the supervisor of Prince William County, Va.; and Michael M. Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington D.C. were the featured speakers at the forum.

Stirrup spoke on ordinances and other measures local government can take to lessen the financial public safety and other burdens posed by increased illegal immigration. Hethmon advised attendees on immigration law, and met "with local officials and activists interested in drafting legally effective and constitutionally valid proposals aimed at curbing illegal immigration in their communities," the Civitas Web site reported.

"I went just to learn more about Civitas," Massey said. "I didn't hear any hate from anybody," except from Luebke and another speaker. "They were very out of order."

Strengthening nuisance laws and targeting employers and landlords were among the forum recommendations, some of which Massey characterized as "a little bit harsh."

"These people had really taken the law to a greater step than we've taken it," she said.

Massey added that she doesn't "like some of the views from both sides" of the immigration debate but said Alamance County officials "need to enforce the law."

Opponents of 287(g) "need to go back to the federal government and have them to look at it again if they don't think it's right."



THE ISSUE OF possible racist overtones at the forum arose when Laura Roselle, a political-science professor at Elon University, asked commissioners at their Sept. 15 meeting why some board members were "attending a partisan meeting outside of the county orchestrated by people who are not interested in facts or ideas with which they disagree." The presenters, she said, are "associated with what I consider to be a hate group."

Roselle later identified the Federation for American Immigration Reform as the supposed hate group.
Forum co-sponsor NC Listen "partners with the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Southeast Alliance for Sensible Immigration Policy," according to the NC Listen Web site. Ron Woodard of NC Listen says his organization is not a hate group and never has been. It is interested in reform, he told the Times-News on Saturday.

According to people there, no one from FAIR spoke at the Civitas event.

A December 2007, article on the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site, said FAIR, created in 1979, "has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes.

"It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation," the article continues. "It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought ‘advice' from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party."

The Southern Poverty Law Center later listed FAIR as a hate group.

"I find the SPLC's arguments and documentation persuasive and credible," Roselle wrote in an e-mail to the Times-News. "My point is that the commissioners should be willing to listen to all sides - in a fair and open manner - and not present this forum as some balanced view of immigration reform," Roselle added.

Sutton called "absurd" the notion that NC Listen and FAIR are hate groups.

"I didn't think there were any racial overtones at all. It's just a group of people who feel helpless, who want to do something about illegal immigration."

Sutton, the county's leading anti-illegal immigration advocate, thinks Roselle and others who share her views are "playing the hate card" against anybody who isn't for open borders.

FAIR officials vigorously deny the Law Center accusations, and its designation of their organization as a group promoting hate.

According to the FAIR Web site, the group of more than 250,000 "members and supporters" is a "national, nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization of concerned citizens who share a common belief that our nation's immigration policies must be reformed to serve the national interest."

Its aims include a "temporary moratorium on all immigration except spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and a limited number of refugees.

"A moratorium would allow us to hold a national debate and devise a comprehensive immigration reform strategy," which would reduce the annual immigration rate from more than 1 million legal and illegal immigrants to "more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year," the Web site continues


http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/say_17 ... forum.html

Was there, it was excellent! Got to meet several other groups in the fight.

The founder of the Ford Foundation Henry Ford actually did business with the Nazis and financed publication of "The International Jew" a screed. Ambassador Kennedy wrote several articles and made statements favorable to the Nazi movement. Have the OBL tried to recuse either Ford financed groups or the Kennedy's