Footage of the Arkansas Friendship Coalition Press Conference that we protested!

Members of KeepArkansasLegal, along with other immigration reform activist protested a press conference held by a pro-illegal immigration group. Here is the link to our blog with video footage and a description of what happened:

The Arkansas Friendship Coalition held a press conference at 2pm in the State Capitol in the Supreme Court Room. The whole room had about 15-20 people with about half dozen members of the AR Friendship Group in the front. I hurried in from work, then setup a camera, met with one of our group, and then held a sign along with some activists from Fayetteville . The conference was about an economic study done in Oklahoma. The study claimed that the effort to reduce immigration in Oklahoma had caused damage to the state economy. The ARFC then stated their opposition to any enforcement of immigration laws by local and state authorities. After the press conference, there was a Q/A session. The first questions came from the press. That's when the first concerned citizen stood up.

As it turns out, a member of KeepArkansasLegal has been investigating illegals doing construction at UAMS. The gentleman talked about how legal workers had been working on the construction at UAMS when contractors laid them off and replaced them with illegal alien workers for about half the wages. The ARFC refutted the statements about UAMS. One of the speakers claimed that illegals working at UAMS was "utter nonsense". Rita Sklar of the ACLU then made one of the most arrogant statements ever made in the Arkansas legislator; "If you want your press conference go and setup one yourself". The citizen demanded that they make an effort to investigate the matter.

After the UAMS exchange, a reporter asked about the ballot initative from securearkansas.com. The ARFC stated their opposition to the initiative but not in a strong way. When pressed they admitted that they would campaign and raise funds to oppose the ballot initiative. The Q/A session was ended and it seemed that whole thing would be over. That's when the press came to us! The activist from Fayetteville talked about the Daniel Francis shooting with details about how the illegal alien had been let go by the law multiple times and had even been deported. I talked about the shooting as well and then led into other examples of crime committed by illegals. I also mentioned the fact that this study appears to mix legal immigrants with illegal aliens and talked briefly about who really benefits from an illegal immigrant economic system. Afterwards, I had a more detailed interview with Kristin Fisher from Channel 7.

Here is another link to the story:

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0408/509514_video.html?ref=newsstory

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