Posted on 03/24/2004 1:10:39 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
“It breaks my heart to see what’s happening here,” lamented 47-year-old Utah native Alex Segura to THE NEW AMERICAN. For more than 10 years, Segura resided in California, watching in disbelief as large portions of that state were effectively reclaimed by Mexico through rampant illegal immigration. “Now I’m seeing the same thing happening here,” he observes. “We see very militant people, allied with the Mexican government, and supported by political leaders in this country, ignoring our borders and defying our laws.”
For Segura, a third-generation American of Mexican ancestry, La Reconquista (the “re-conquest” of the American Southwest, or “Aztlan,” by Mexico) has offered more than a few ironies. “When we were living in San Clemente, my then-teenage son tried to get a job at one of the local restaurants,” he recounts. “There were some very well-paying jobs in the area, but almost all of them were at restaurants owned by illegal aliens. In order to work there, my son … was expected, in essence, to become a Mexican. On several occasions he came home very discouraged after being told that he wasn’t ‘Mexican enough’ for a would-be employer, who in many instances was here illegally.”
After moving back to Utah, “it just amazed me to learn that illegal immigrants could get driver’s licenses,” Segura continues. “This started back in 1999, and I simply couldn’t figure out how that happened. And in Ogden and Salt Lake City I began to notice many of the same things I had seen back in California, such as large groups of illegal immigrant men just loitering around. Many of them are genuinely interested in working and are willing to work hard. But many others end up committing serious crimes, in addition to the crime they committed by violating our immigration laws.” In California, the unchecked tide of illegals had led to overburdened classrooms, hospitals, and jails — and Segura began to notice similar symptoms afflicting Utah as well.
Segura points out that “many, if not most, of the people from my background here support our laws and want to see them respected. I know many Hispanic Utahns, people who were born here or came here legally, who desperately want to get immigration under control. The very visible activities of the illegal alien lobby here tend to put law-abiding Hispanics in a very bad light. And some of them [the law-abiding Latino citizens] have been intimidated by militants, including agents of the Mexican government.”
After moving back to Utah several years ago, Segura founded a grass-roots activist group called the Utah League of Citizens for Immigration Reform. The great-grandson of Mexicans who legally immigrated to the United States, and the son of a Mexican-American who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, Segura is proud of his heritage. This is why he was amazed when the Mexican government publicly accused him and his allies of inciting hatred against Mexicans.
Their supposed offense was to support House Bill 109 (HB 109), a measure making it more difficult for illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses in Utah. Thanks to opposition from the Republican Party’s leadership and the direct intervention of the Mexican government, HB 109 was defeated. Remarkable as it is on its face, this episode is all the more valuable as a case study of the increasing brazenness with which the Mexican government is interfering in U.S. politics as part of a campaign of demographic warfare against our country.
Consular Interference
HB 109 would have required an applicant for a state driver’s license to have a Social Security number or other proof of legal residence. This would counteract a key element of the Mexican government’s ongoing campaign to entrench illegal immigrants in this country by issuing matricula consular cards — a nonsecure, easily counterfeited document issued by Mexican consulates to Mexicans without regard to their immigration status. (Segura himself, who has never lived in Mexico, learned he could obtain one with little difficulty.)
In 1999, Utah became the first state to accept the matricula cards for the purpose of issuing driver’s licenses. Since then, thanks to pressure from both Mexico and Washington, many other state and municipal governments have begun to accept the spurious Mexican document as a legitimate identification, allowing countless illegal aliens to embed themselves in this country and tap into various welfare programs (such as Medicaid and Food Stamps).
On February 26, the Mexican consul general in Salt Lake City, Patricia Deluera, called a press conference at the state Capitol to condemn the measure. “I am very concerned that the relationship between Utah and Mexico will be damaged if HB 109 succeeds,” she declared. “This bill promotes hatred against the Mexican people.” Deluera’s comments were echoed by Joe Reyna, who was identified by the Associated Press as “a foreign adviser to President Vicente Fox of Mexico.” Specifically targeting a group called Utahns For Immigration Reform and Enforcement (UFIRE), Reyna pronounced: “This group … [has] one objective in mind, and one only — to promote hatred against the Mexican people living in the state of Utah.”
UFIRE founder Matt Throckmorton, a former state legislator who is running for Congress against Chris Cannon (R-Utah), describes the group’s objectives quite differently. “We don’t hate anybody, and don’t promote hatred in any form,” he told THE NEW AMERICAN. “It shouldn’t be considered hateful or even controversial for a group of law-abiding citizens, including many from a Hispanic background, to defend the integrity of our laws and borders. And it’s outrageous — not to mention a violation of diplomatic procedures — for the consulate of a foreign nation to interfere in our state’s political process, and vilify Utah citizens who are working to see that our laws are respected.”
Particularly galling to Throckmorton and many other Utah immigration reform activists is the role played by Joe Reyna. In addition to being an adviser to Mexico’s Institute for Mexicans Abroad — an official cabinet-level body established by Fox — Reyna is a prominent leader in Utah’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Last fall, he was appointed deputy mayor of Ogden, Utah’s fourth-largest city and home to a large and growing Mexican population.
Ogden is currently the only Utah city to have a deputy mayor, and almost certainly the only one to have hired an agent of the Mexican government. “This individual, who draws a salary from Utah citizens, is acting on behalf of a foreign government and publicly defaming those of us seeking to uphold our state and national laws,” states Throckmorton. Interestingly, Reyna was “one of only 40 Hispanic leaders invited to attend the Washington announcement” of George W. Bush’s proposed illegal alien amnesty, reported the January 8 Deseret Morning News.
Also in attendance at the announcement was Representative Cannon, one of the House’s most outspoken amnesty supporters and an advocate of political and economic convergence with Mexico. Toward that end, Cannon helped create the U.S.-Mexico Political Caucus in March 2003. “We love immigrants in Utah,” gushed Rep. Cannon at a June 6, 2002 gathering of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), a foundation-funded radical group. “And we don’t oftentimes make the distinction between legal and illegal. In fact I think Utah was the first state in the country to legislate the ability to get a driver’s license based on the matricula consular [card] and of that I am proud.” Rep. Cannon was on hand to receive MALDEF’s “Excellence in Leadership Award.”
“Representative Cannon is commonly perceived to be the Bush administration’s point man on immigration,” Matt Throckmorton (who is, recall, running against Cannon) told THE NEW AMERICAN. “Cannon is considered to be politically secure, since he represents the most Republican district in what may be the most Republican state in the country. I believe that the White House is using Cannon to advance its open borders agenda out of the belief that he can do so without causing adverse political repercussions for the party.” Throckmorton asserts that Cannon’s office was deeply involved in derailing HB 109.
Viva Mexico!
Complicating matters in the torpedoing of HB 109 were the Mexican government’s complaints aired to the state’s most prominent church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the LDS Church, or the Mormon Church). Mexican officials claimed that an activist from UFIRE had insinuated LDS Church support for HB 109. “Members of a Latino task force,” concerned about the church’s position on the legislation, “[met with] officials from the LDS Church … to ask the state’s most powerful institution to take a stand against proposed legislation that could prohibit the use of a Mexican identification card in Utah,” reported the February 26 Salt Lake Tribune.
LDS church spokesman George Monsivais attended the February 26 press conference to give the church’s official position. At the conference, the church issued “a public statement that it doesn’t want to be part of the debate over a bill the Mexican government says is blatant discrimination,” reported Salt Lake’s KSL-TV. The church repeated “its oft-stated caution to members that they should never infer that the church endorses their personal political positions,” stated the February 27 Deseret Morning News. Monsivais also stated that “the church is investigating complaints [that] Utahns For Immigration Reform and Enforcement are citing church teachings as apparent justification for their political purposes.”
“We did have one board member make some unwise statements implying more than was justified,” UFIRE leader Throckmorton told THE NEW AMERICAN. “It’s true that LDS doctrine affirms the need to uphold and sustain the law, and we believe that this includes immigration laws. But as a group we never sought to involve the church in this debate.”
The Utah media characterized the church’s politically neutral position as harming the bill. For example, the March 4 Deseret Morning News opined, “What life the [bill] did have … may have been taken [on February 26] when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a public statement, took no position on the bill and warned UFIRE representatives not to imply otherwise.” The measure died in committee despite being supported by the overwhelming majority of Utahns.
The death of HB 109 prompted an exultant celebration on the part of the state’s illegal alien lobby. “What started out as a ‘call to action’ on Spanish language radio, became a concerted and noticeable lobbying effort by the Hispanic community that was capped off by an impromptu 10:30 p.m. rally in the Capitol Rotunda just as the House adjourned,” reported the paper. “The rally was punctuated by boisterous cheers from the hundreds of Hispanics....” Alex Segura, who was on hand to witness the rally, added one critical detail: Many of those gathered in the Rotunda were waving Mexican flags and chanting “Viva Mexico!”
Demographic Warfare
The defeat of HB 109 in Utah was a critical victory for Mexico in its campaign of demographic warfare against our nation. Utah, remember, was the first state to allow illegal aliens to use matricula cards to obtain driver’s licenses. Had Utah reversed course on this issue, it’s likely that other states would have followed suit. And Utah is just one of numerous states to witness such brazen, unabashed political meddling by the Mexican government — and occasional harassment of immigration reform activists.
Several years ago, Teodoro Maus, then Mexican consul-general in Atlanta, joined with local Hispanic activists in demanding the resignation of Norman Bingham, chairman of the Cobb County (Georgia) Board of Education. His supposed offense was making some admittedly intemperate remarks about “uneducated” illegal aliens working in the local construction industry. Bingham kept his position but was forced to issue a two-page formal apology. Maus also demanded and received an apology from a local radio talk-show host who had suggested militarizing the border between the U.S. and Mexico; attacked a city ordinance in Smyrna requiring that all commercial signs be written in English; demanded that illegal Mexican immigrants be issued driver’s licenses; and agitated against the declaration of English as the state’s official language.
The office of Sergio Aguilera Beteta, Mexican consul-general in Indianapolis, has “publicly humiliated Mexican nationals here who … do not share Vicente Fox’s goal of subverting our immigration laws and trashing our national sovereignty,” reports Dave Gorak of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. “One such ‘traitor’ is Esther Tapia Barber, who has lived in Indianapolis since 1997 after arriving legally from Mexico to marry retired police officer Bob Barber.”
Mrs. Barber is active in her local Mexican-American community. She and her husband are strong advocates of reforming our immigration system. Like millions of others who obey our laws and patiently work through our naturalization system, she has found herself pushed to the back of the queue by illegal aliens and their allies. Last November, Esther learned that a representative of consul-general Aguilera had contacted a local cemetery and instructed them to dis-invite her from the annual Day of the Dead Festival, a Mexican cultural event at which she had intended to sell home-made merchandise.
To their credit, cemetery officials ignored that arrogant request, and Esther attended in the company of two friends. During the event, the consul-general himself confronted Esther in person and (according to an eyewitness account) spat out the following malediction: “Aren’t you ashamed to show your face at this celebration, when your husband has been slandering Mexico and the Mexican people?” During an interview on a Hispanic radio program a few days later, Ricardo Gambetta, director of the Indianapolis Latino Affairs Commission, publicly denounced the Barbers as anti-Mexican bigots.
Esther Barber, who expects to become an American citizen this year, “has written to Vicente Fox and the State Department to protest [the consul-general’s] conduct,” reports Gorak. But the Fox regime is more interested in subverting our laws than in reining in its rogue diplomats — and the State Department has shown no interest in impeding Mexico’s subversive campaign.
“Since January of last year, Mexico’s consular offices across the U.S. have issued roughly 1.4 million identification cards — known as matriculas consulares — to its nationals in the U.S., mostly undocumented immigrants who don’t have access to other ID,” reported the October 3 Wall Street Journal. “More than 1,000 local police departments recognize the cards, and in more than a dozen states they can be used to get driver’s licenses. Seeing immigrants as a potential new market, roughly 280 financial institutions in the U.S. accept the matricula to open bank accounts.”
Last July, responding to congressional concerns, the Treasury Department opened a period of “public comment” on banking rules allowing use of the matricula; negative comments immediately outpaced positive ones by more than a two-to-one ratio. However, “behind the scenes, the Mexican government itself did a lot of work to support the card, mobilizing the Mexican immigrant community in the U.S. to push for a favorable decision,” noted the Journal.
That campaign — drawing heavily on groups such as MALDEF, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Immigration Law Center — was coordinated by the Institute for Mexicans Abroad (IME). “They have done a masterful job, quietly and methodically,” admitted Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), an outspoken opponent of the matricula cards, who estimates that Mexico spent millions of dollars in its lobbying efforts.
Mexico is mounting an even larger effort on behalf of George W. Bush’s amnesty proposal. “The Mexican government is lobbying U.S. lawmakers and civic leaders for amnesty or guest-worker status for millions of illegal aliens now in the United States, working through a coalition of U.S.-based immigration rights associations, Mexican-American organizations and grass-roots Hispanic groups,” reported the March 4 Washington Times. Spearheading this campaign once again is the IME.
The IME is composed mainly of Mexican-Americans residing in this country. The body claims a mandate to represent the interests of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans residing here — both legal and illegal immigrants, as well as legal resident aliens, naturalized citizens, and even native-born Americans of Mexican ancestry. Each individual selected for the IME, noted the November 25, 2002 Chicago Tribune, becomes “a formal part of President Vicente Fox’s government.”
On several occasions, both Fox and his predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, have referred to a Mexican “nation” extending beyond that country’s northern border. Speaking at a 1994 convention of the National Council of La Raza (a foundation-funded radical Hispanic lobby), Zedillo declared, “you are Mexicans too, you just live in the United States.” On another occasion, Zedillo denounced attempts by the United States to enforce our immigration laws, insisting that “we will not tolerate foreign forces dictating laws to Mexicans.” In a similar vein, Fox and his administration have repeatedly referred to a population of “23 million Mexicans” living in the U.S. — a figure that includes U.S.-born Mexican-American citizens.
The Mexican government has been similarly brazen in forging links with radical Hispanic lobbies and other street-level militants, thereby creating a classic “fifth column” in our nation:
An Ongoing Invasion
By any rational reckoning, Mexico is conducting an invasion, occupation and colonization of our country, with the complicity of our own government.
“A peaceful mass of people … carries out slowly and patiently an unstoppable invasion, the most important in human history,” wrote columnist Carlos Loret de Mola for Mexico City’s Excelsior newspaper in 1982. “You cannot give me a similar example of such a large migratory wave by an ant-like multitude, stubborn, unarmed, and carried on in the face of the most powerful and best-armed nation on earth.... [Neither] barbed-wire fences, nor aggressive border guards, nor campaigns, nor laws, nor police raids against the undocumented, have stopped this movement of the masses that is unprecedented in any part of the world.”According to Loret, the migrant invasion “seems to be slowly returning [the southwestern United States] to the jurisdiction of Mexico without the firing of a single shot, nor requiring the least diplomatic action, by means of a steady, spontaneous, and uninterrupted occupation.”
When Loret published those words 22 years ago, few reasonable people could have imagined the transformation that has since taken place in the U.S. Southwest. It’s doubtful that many observers could have anticipated the 1986 amnesty that entrenched millions of illegal aliens in our nation, and opened the doors to millions more. For that matter, it’s most unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the day when the Mexican government would be able to demand that a state legislature continue to grant driver’s licenses and other benefits to illegal aliens, as it just did in Utah.
The “invasion” and “occupation” of America by Mexico (to use Loret’s provocative but correct terminology) is hardly “spontaneous.” It is supported and encouraged by the Mexican government and passively abetted by our own.
“I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders,” declared then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at a 1997 conference of La Raza. “We have recognized that the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and the 23 million who live in the United States,” asserted Juan Hernandez, the dual national who was the first chief of the IME, in a 2001 interview. “We are a united nation.”
“There are several million Mexican people in the United States,” Hernandez commented in an interview with HispanicOnline. “These individuals need to be legalized, they need to be able to come home and see their families and not have to cross a dangerous border....” (Emphasis added.)
The ongoing immigration invasion is gradually eradicating the border while creating a Mexican nation within our nation. And the U.S. government, instead of thwarting these developments, is actually encouraging the invasion from the South. Take, for just one example, the following statement made by President George W. Bush on August 24, 2001:
There are people in Mexico who have got children who are worried about where they are going to get their next meal from. And they are going to come to the United States, if they think they can make money here. That’s a simple fact. And they’re willing to walk across miles of desert to do work that some Americans won’t do. And we’ve got to respect that, it seems like to me, and treat those people with respect.
On January 7 of this year, President Bush proposed his amnesty program (which, he claimed, was not amnesty) to grant “legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented [read: illegal] men and women now employed in the United States, and to those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program and have been offered employment here.” Not surprisingly, Bush’s proposal caused an immediate increase in the flood of illegals who cross our borders every day.
Speaking at his Crawford, Texas, ranch during a March 6 joint press conference with Vicente Fox, Mr. Bush described the U.S. and Mexico as “partners in building a safer, more democratic and more prosperous hemisphere.” He even praised “cooperation between Mexico and American border and law enforcement” — as if the Mexican government shared the desire of most Americans to restore our nation’s borders.
The cruel reality is that the Bush and Fox administrations are indeed partners: They seek the amalgamation of our nations as part of a long-term design to create a hemisphere-wide superstate modeled on the European Union.* This is why the same Bush administration that was willing to wage a “pre-emptive” war against an entirely hypothetical threat from distant Iraq is permitting — and even encouraging — Mexico to continue its campaign of demographic warfare and cultural subversion against us.
According to Ambassador Garza -- Since the President announced this plan, it seems that no one is completely happy... The plan does not guarantee an easy path to permanent residence or citizenship for those people who have broken U.S. laws, nor does it call for massive deportation of those same people.
It would break my heart to have such a thankless job, but SOMEONE will have to do it...
I'll be glad to help you with your task.
Interesting, that's how the INS has done it for decades.
Apprehensions have always been the way of judging the number of illegals crossing the border, at least in my lifetime.
If you work for the INS in Arizona, you only need ask yourself what is the scuttlebutt in the office and in your community regarding anecdotal evidence of immigration rates?
I do, and we all use the traditional method of apprehensions.
We know how many are caught and we know approximately how many are not.
When to BP responds to a call or a sensor hit, then take the number of illegals apprehended and then they compare the apprehension to the number of tracks on the ground and the number of hits on the sensor. From that information, they can get a very accurate number of aliens that got away.
The INS minimizes that number publicly, but if you take to the BP agents on the street, he’ll tell you the truth.
The BP apprehends approximately 10 to 20 percent of the illegals that cross. So, if you have 100 apprehensions, you pretty much guess that 1000+ got through. Now, that does not mean 1000+ illegals have made the US there new home, because some still head back home to Mexico or were ever they come from, but we know 1000+ made it through.
Like I stated before, the reason for the major increase in the permanent illegal alien population, is because they are not returning to their home countries, not because more are coming over, and that is because of the crack down on the border.
The current policy is causing the illegal alien population to take up roots here as opposed to moving back and forth across the border.
One must also understand that this applies to the Mexican illegals and not the illegals from other countries. The illegals from other countries are far more likely to stay here and never leave, due to the distance between their home and the United States.
I’m sorry, but counting the number of folks that speak Spanish in your neighborhood, is not a very good way to gage the increase or decrease of illegal aliens.
Everyone knows the numbers are increasing, but that does not correlate with an increasing number of border crossers. It correlates with an increased number of illegal aliens not returning home, like they did in the past.
This is another funny story that's not true.
If Bush did cave to Fox, then it happened about 6 months before this meeting, as that was when it was announced internally, that Mexican laser visa holders would not be run in US-VIST when it was implemented along the US/Mexico border.
Yes, we knew almost 6 months ago, this was the plan.
And while I don't like it, I know exactly why they are doing it. It would slow your average 30-minute wait at the border to about a 10+ hour wait.
Not only would the Mexicans raise hell (which I could care less about), but American citizens who had to wait 10 hours to cross, would raise hell also.
Everybody in government, when finally pressed, expresses many variations of a final 'monetary' excuse, "It will cost too much", "We can't hire that many border agents", "A wall is too expensive".
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
10 Million Illegals.
Deputize US Citizens.
$10 Bounty per Illegal.
Problem solved for $100 Million.
Done.
That's exactly why I would never leave California. I don't care what state your in, the illegals are pouring in.
Of course, we knew this was going nationwide over 10 years ago.
It's damn sad. What government on earth would want their country filled with unskilled, uneducated, third world, illegal aliens, as they just sit back and watch it go southbound.
Obviously not. An increasingly larger percentage of illegal aliens gain entry through birth on US soil. These aliens, while subject to deportation, are afforded certain protections by a recent Supreme Court decision (1982) and don't show up in the statistics because we've eliminated the neighborhood sweeps.
But ... illegal immigration (by birth and trespass) has been increasing steadily since 911.
An interesting and informative observation about the vanity title of the article but beside the point of the cite.
The point of the cite was an example of Bush's acting to degrade existing immigration policy. The policy was individual inspection which Bush eliminated, under defined circumstances, for the reasons you cited. In place of a policy of vigilant inspection, Bush instituted a policy of mutual trust. Even Reagan admonished that trust without verification was worthless.
Sorry, but Plyler v. Doe had to do with public education rights for illegal aliens, not birth rights.
The current birthrights are written into US Constitution, and have yet to be argued in the Supreme Court. Although it will be soon.
So, no illegal aliens gain entry by birth.
Incorrect, no inspection has been eliminated.
They will be inspected exactly as they have been in the past. Nothing was eliminated. You can't eliminate a program that has not even go into effect nor was even to apply to this group of visitors.
What happened, was that stricter inspections were not to be added to this group of visitors.
?
While the SCOTUS has not directly addressed the issue in an adverse finding it has offered it's opinion. The children of illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the state in which they reside and therefore not protected by the provisions of the amendment. The myth that these children are automatically granted citizenship is rather recent folklore. The 1982 decision avoided directly addressing the issue of the rights of this suspect class and instead addressed the ability of states to protect themselves from illegal immigration.
Adding to the confusion, the 14th Amendment was never constitutionally adopted. It was ratified by less the 3/4 of the states, even excluding the antebellum states, and was certified by an individual who lacked the constitutional authority. Probably one of the worst examples of the tyranny of the majority: a Republican majority.
The irony is that this tyranny may well be the undoing of the republic given the increasing politcal power of this suspect class.
LOL, not surprising at all. Anyway, the vast majority would not like it.
How the heck are you? PsyOp and I meet in Yuma and did a little shooting last week. Had a great time.
It would demonstrate that there are not enough rail cars in the u.S. to get out JUST the ones arrested in a single sweep. There would be a significant percentage that will realize that hanging around in a country that really does NOT welcome those that thumb their noses at the immigration law and decide that moving back to mexico WITH the wealth they have accumulated here is far preferable to being dumped on the south side of a border bridge with nothing.
and waste millions of dollars.
Well Gollllllee Bum. It is just gonna break all those gubberment workers and bureaucrats LIL OL HEARTS to wast millions of dollars! That has just NEVER happened before!
Get a grip mister. First, it ain't And you would be one of only a few thousand that fell that way. it is more like 75% of the entire nation wants them out, now. You don't get those kinds of percentages by bringing up a Republican or Democrat issue. You get THOSE kinds of percentages by bringing up an issue that folks will go to war over. Oh, wait, we did that once twice here already and KICKED A$$. The rest of the country is being affected by this and they do not like it. Like I said as soon as one political party switches on to this and beats the drums loud enough for the American people to hear them . . .
T S W H T F
When it gets to that point, there will be many that will bitch and moan "why did the fed's not enforce the law?" It will be far to late by then. Uncontrolled breeding combined with unabated aggressive invasion of a incompatible culture WILL create an openly unwelcome element in an extremely hostile environment. And that hostile environment just happens to be armed to the teeth.
Correct, but very few would agree to door to door sweeps.
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