Monday, August 13, 2007

Fighting the long hard battle

I was truly honored to be able to attend-thanks to Linda Noe -a special rally in Morristown sponsored by Tennesseans for Immigration Reform and Education (T-FIRE) to draw public attention to the problem of illegal immigration in Tennessee. The T-FIRE rally was called for two purposes: The first was to celebrate the defeat of the President's treacherous amnesty proposal. As T-FIRE President Fabian Story was keen to remind the audience, the Capitol switchboards in Washington were jammed the day the wicked bill went down.

The featured speaker at Saturday's event held at the VFW Hall in Morristown was none other than my friend and fellow blogger State Representative Stacey Campfield. One of the first things that Stacey pointed out was the cost to the American taxpayer of the tide of illegal immigration.

  • Education-$22.5 billion
  • Bi-lingual Education - $3.3 billion
  • AFDC (for legal and illegal immigrant's offspring) - $2.4 billion
  • S.S.I. - $2.9 billion
  • Social Security - $24.8 billion
  • Housing Assistance - $2.6 billion
  • Criminal Justice - $2.6 billion
  • Jobs Lost by Americans - $10.8 billion
  • Other Programs - $51.4 billion
  • Food Stamps-$7 billion
  • Health Care-$1.4 billion
  • Those are 1997 statistics and in some cases those numbers have nearly doubled in the last ten years. The federal government not only refuses to tackle the problem in a serious way, in failing to do so they have burdened State and local governments with the cost of illegal immigration. In Morristown-Hamblen County Schools this school year, 2/3rds of new enrollees are of Hispanic origin, and many of these are illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens. There is a shortage of Court interpreters in Hamblen and Jefferson County who speak Spanish because the number of Spanish-speaking offenders have ballooned in recent years-many of these are of questionable legal status. Now many East Tennesseans have had enough.

    As Stacey pointed out, we managed to get one significant victory in defeating the driving certificate program that allowed illegal aliens to drive without sufficient knowledge of the English language. More could be done, but the General Assembly refuses to use the tools that they could use to combat this increasing problem. Georgia passed strict immigration laws within their State, and the illegals poured out of Georgia like a river flowing to the sea-many of them have come to Tennessee because of our quisling Governor and our weak enforcement of the law.

    There are those who may ask "doesn't all of this talk of enforcing immigration laws really mean you are racists?" Some may think that, it is true, but I haven't talked to a single leader within the movement who was a racist or who was even opposed to legal immigration. As a Catholic, I am certainly not opposed to predominately Catholic people settling here-but they have to do it the right way-they must do it legally. We see the results of the strain on our system and our society when the law is not followed where immigration is concerned.

    "Gosh Oatney, aren't there racists who hold these positions?" Yes there are. There are also racists who hold the opposite positions, but we don't give them any attention, do we? An entire movement is not to be discredited because of a few bigots.

    East Tennesseans are beginning to come together to put an end to the specter of unlawful immigration into this country. Our fight will not be easy, and there are many who support us who fear saying so because they fear being falsely labeled as racists. It will be a long, arduous, and often misunderstood and maligned battle-but for the sake of the future of our State and our country, it is a fight that we must wage and we must win.

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    1 Comments:

    At Wednesday, August 15, 2007 2:14:00 AM, Blogger Donna Locke said...

    Speaking of the bigots to our left who are bed with the corporatocrats to our right, I compiled the following several years ago and no doubt could add many more similar quotes to it today. I'm copying it from my e-mail, so the formatting may not go through. Sorry.

    The Anti-American Dream:

    Sam Zamarripa, who later became a Georgia state
    senator: "We shall overwhelm" (by sheer numbers). This
    is a slogan of the Mexican reconquista movement.
    Zamarripa was quoted by Georgia newspapers. Among
    other things, Zamarripa sponsored bills that would
    allow illegal aliens to get Georgia driver's licenses
    and tried to kill demagnetization bills.

    Mario Obledo, former California Secretary of Health,
    Education, and Welfare; co-founder of the Mexican
    American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF);
    former president of the League of United Latin
    American Citizens (LULAC); recipient of the
    Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton:
    "Eventually we are going to take over all the
    political institutions of California." ". . . they
    (those who don't like it) ought to go back to Europe."

    Former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres, D-CA, while he was a
    member of Congress, said the following to a Latino
    crowd at a meeting of the Southwest Voter Registration
    Education Project in 1996:

    ". . . We are a swing vote -- the kind of swing vote
    that I've just described to you can cause governments
    to fall or to rise. This organization, its Southwest
    Research Institute, has been moving in this hemisphere
    . . . in Nicaragua -- in El Salvador -- in Mexico . . ."

    -- recorded undercover by Voice of Citizens
    Together/American Patrol in 1996. Video and audio of
    the preceding and much more on Voice of Citizens
    Together/American Patrol's videotape "Immigration:
    Threatening the Bonds of Our Union," Part II.

    Art Torres, former California state senator, chairman
    of the California Democratic Party: "Remember, 187
    (proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to
    noncitizens) is the last gasp of white America in
    California! Understand that."

    Gloria Molina, Los Angeles County Supervisor: "We are
    politicizing every single one of these new citizens
    that are becoming citizens of this country. . . . I
    gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, 'I'm
    going out there and vote because I want to PAY THEM
    BACK!'"

    Augustin Cebada, Brown Berets: "Go back to Boston! Go
    back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the
    future! You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten
    you. Leave like beaten rats. You old white people. It
    is your duty to die. . . . Through love of having
    children, we are going to take over."

    Fernando Guerra, professor, Loyola Marymount: "We need
    to avoid a white backlash by using codes understood by
    Latinos . . . non-Latinos aren't watching, they aren't
    raising questions."

    Armando Navarro, professor, University of California:
    ". . . you are like the generals who command armies!
    We're in a state of war!"

    Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council: "They're
    afraid we're going to take over the governmental
    institutions and other institutions. They're right. We
    will take them over."

    Charles Truxillo, professor, University of New Mexico:
    "Republica del Norte," the Republic of the North,
    which would include the present U.S. states of
    California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plus southern
    Colorado, along with several current Mexican states,
    is "an inevitability." The new "Hispanic homeland"
    should be brought into being "by any means necessary."

    Jose Angel Gutierrez, professor, University of Texas,
    Arlington; founder of La Raza Unida political party;
    and beneficiary of American generosity: "We have an
    aging white America. . . . They are dying. . . . They
    are ******** in their pants with fear! I love it!" "We
    have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by
    that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got
    to kill him."

    David Lopez, sociologist, California State University,
    Northridge: "In 1848, Mexico lost the war, but in
    2050, Mexico will have reclaimed what was rightfully
    theirs."

    MEChA (Chicano Student Movement): "Chicano and Chicana
    students of Aztlan must take upon themselves the
    responsibilities to promote Chicanismo with the
    community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on
    indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for
    the self-determination of the Chicano people for the
    purpose of liberating Aztlan." -- preamble to MEChA's
    national constitution. Aztlan is the name given by the
    Mexican reconquista movement to the U.S. southwestern
    states these revolutionaries have vowed to reconquer
    and reclaim for Mexico, despite the fact that those
    lands belonged to the American Indians, not to
    Mexicans, the Spanish, or the Aztecs. "Raza" means
    "race." Among other things, MEChA busies itself
    spreading anti-Semitic propaganda. Read more about
    MEChA and how you are funding it.

    Juan Jose Pena, Hispanic activist, vice chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable, and national president of the Partido de la Raza Unida about 25 years ago: Said he'd written his own (unpublished) study of Hispanic separatist movements. "We discussed the issue then of whether there should be a separate Chicano nation. I knew armed rebellion would never succeed - we just didn't have the firepower." (as quoted in a Feb. 17, 2000, story by Frank Zoretich in the Albuquerque Tribune.

    La Voz de Aztlan, a Chicano organization based in
    California: Their racist and anti-Semitic
    self-indictments can be found on their Web site.

    I could fill many pages with quotes similar to those
    above. The quotes above were documented by Voice of
    Citizens Together/American Patrol and the California
    Coalition for Immigration Reform. I refer you to the
    documentary videotapes "Immigration: Threatening the
    Bonds of Our Union" and "Conquest of Aztlan" made by
    VCT/American Patrol.

    I have e-mail inboxes filled with threats against me
    by open-borders invasionary force/supporters, telling
    me I am wasting my time, because they are going to
    "take over." All in good time. I have taunts and
    veiled threats along this line from a Latino professor
    at a Texas university. He gave his name. He has
    nothing to fear. After all, as he wrote, time is on
    his side, the way things are going.

    The state senator who sponsored the Georgia
    enforcement bill has so many threats against him that
    he is afraid for his wife and children, according to
    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A Hispanic newspaper
    owned by The AJC even published a map of the senator's
    neighborhood and a photo of his house, The AJC
    reported.

     

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