GOP Congress Earmarks $4 Million for Leftist Pro-Illegal Alien Group

Thanks to a congressional earmark, an open-borders advocacy group that pushes for driver’s licenses, free in-state tuition and healthcare for illegal aliens and bilingual requirements for state agencies and ballots is slated to get $4 million in new taxpayer money to add to the more than $30 million it has received from various federal agencies since 1996.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Spanish for “the race,” will get its latest grant through an appropriations bill passed by Congress on November 18. The Joint Explanatory Statement of HR 3058, available on the House’s Rules Committee website lists 1,100 plus earmarks in the bill, including La Raza’s grant under the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Self-Help and Assisted Ownership Programs. Under this account La Raza will receive four times as much as the Special Olympics, which won a $1-million earmark.

La Raza is the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy organization. It was adamantly opposed to the REAL ID Act, which will prevent states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens if they want them to be usable for federal purposes. It is also opposed to the CLEAR Act, which would grant state and local law enforcement agencies that wish to do so the authority to enforce federal immigration laws.

From DTN:

Currently the largest Hispanic organization in the U.S., the National Council of La Raza (“the Race”) was established originally in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, for the purpose of “improv[ing] life opportunities for Hispanic Americans.”The group was initiated by a research project funded by the Ford Foundation. Today La Raza has more than 270 formal affiliates serving 40 states, and a broader nationwide network of more than 30,000 groups and individuals who reach at least 3.5 million Hispanics in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Notwithstanding this large base of support, more than two-thirds of La Raza’s funding comes from corporations and foundations, and much of the rest stems from government sources. Between 2001 and 2003, the Ford Foundation alone gave La Raza some $9.83 million, including a single grant of $8.05 million.

In turn, each year La Raza grants large amounts of this money to “Hispanic cornmunity-based organizations,” some of which are quite obscure. Of the $1.3 million it gave out in 1996, for instance, $126,000 went to El Hogar del Nifio, $9,000 went to Chicanos por la Causa, and $30,000 was earmarked for Cabrillo Economic Development.

La Raza’s politics are at the far left of the political spectrum. Its Policy Analysis Center lobbies for affirmative action, bilingual education, stricter hate crimes laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens. La Raza characterizes increased immigration control as a violation of civil rights, and the reduction of government handouts to immigrants as “a disgrace to American values.”

La Raza was a signatory – along with more than 120 other leftwing organizations – to a 2000 campaign to increase the minimum wage. La Raza was also a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter exhorting members of the U.S. Congress “to oppose the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA), also known as ‘Patriot [Act] II,’” which was then under consideration. These signatories stated that the new legislation “fail[ed] to respect our time-honored liberties,” and “contain[ed] a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers . . . that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” In addition, La Raza has given its organizational endorsement to the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties campaign, a project of the California-based Coalition for Civil Liberties (CCL). The CLL tries to influence city councils to pass resolutions creating Civil Liberties Safe Zones; that is, to be non-compliant with the provisions of the Patriot Act.

La Raza has also endorsed the December 18, 2001 “Statement of Solidarity with Migrants,” which was drawn up by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. The statement called upon the U.S. government to “[r]ecognize the contribution of immigrant workers, students, and families, and [to] end discriminatory policies passed on the basis of legal status in the wake of September 11”; to “[g]uarantee and provide relief to the loved ones of the victims and those unemployed in the World Trade Center attacks, regardless of immigration status, without intimidation or threat of deportation”; and to adopt “the Plan of Action from the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance” – which was largely a forum for angry anti-American and anti-Israel tirades.

Furthermore, La Raza endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA) of 2004, which was introduced by Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Russell Feingold, Richard Durbin, and Jon Corzine, and Democratic Representatives Howard Berman and William Delahunt. The CLRA was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

La Raza is also a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride Coalition, which seeks to secure ever-expanding rights and civil liberties protections for undocumented workers, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and policy reforms that diminish or eliminate restrictions on immigration.

In addition to the Ford Foundation, La Raza also receives funding from: the American Express Foundation; the AT&T Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Fannie Mae Foundation; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Joyce Foundation; the W. K. Kellogg Foundation; the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the Verizon Foundation.

WHAT IS RAZA

"La Raza" (The Race) is a broad term which refers to those whose ancestry is indigenous to the area of Mexico (or "Aztlan"). MEChA members refer to themselves as "La Raza" or "Raza," but the term itself is used to indicate camaraderie among those in different organizations with the same objectives. There are a number of organizations who consider themselves to be La Raza.

The most visible of these groups are MEChA, The Brown Berets de Aztlan, OLA (Organization for the Liberation of Aztlan), La Raza Unida Party, and the "Nation of Aztlan" to name a few. Although the activism of these organizations vary from somewhat radical to extremely radical, they share the same objectives, the "liberation of Aztlan." Each follows the Raza manifesto "El Plan de Aztlan (sometimes called "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan"). The Nation of Aztlan, tied to La Voz de Aztlan disseminates the exact same propaganda that MEChA spreads including antisemitic propaganda. Believers in the Aztlan legend insist upon the indivisibility of "La Raza" and their common goals, one of them being the need to abolish the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There is a myriad of Raza college newspaper. Some are El Popo, Aztlan News, Chispas, Gente de Aztlan (UCLA), Voz Fronteriza (U.C. San Diego), La Voz Mestiza (U.C. Irvine) and La Voz Berkeley. It is not uncommon for the writers of these publications to refer to the U.S., as "AmeriKKKa."

Rhetoric by some Chicano educators strongly suggest Communist or Socialist leanings. Recently (May, 2000), more than 1,200 students gathered at UCLA for the seventh annual Raza Youth Conference, which the members say promotes higher education and recognition of the Aztlan culture. Sponsored by MEChA, the year's theme was "Reclaiming Our Razas through education, resistance, and promoting the idea of remembering the historical struggles of Raza" said Erika Ramirez, co-chair of the conference. The conference drew students from 80 middle and high schools and community colleges; featured speeches by those actively involved with the Chicano community.

The keynote speaker was Antonia Darder, a professor of education and cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University and director of the Institute for Cultural Studies in Education, who received a standing ovation for her speech.

Darder described American capitalism and what she said were its impacts on racism and sexism. "I grew up in a capitalist society, a society that taught us that the greed of corporations control politics," Darder said. "Capitalism is the root of domination. Racism and sexism exist because capitalism requires it." Darder said a globalized economy forced smaller countries to give up their self-sufficiency, resulting in people migrating to the U.S. "We're here because U.S. foreign policy in Latin America has forced us here," she said.

The University of Oregon Chapter of MEChA hints at its communist sentiments by posting a picture of Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro. On its web site, "La Voz de Aztlan" has an excerpt from a speech of February 7, 1997, by Fidel Castro who said "the United States should return to Mexico huge chunks of that country's territories it acquired more than a century ago" La Voz de Aztlan, whom Antonio Villaraigosa refuses to repudiate, also disseminates antisemitic propaganda,

Apparently, these "Raza" cults are composed of people who unabashedly hate the United States and often support other groups and leaders who also hate America. Raza's hatred of America is so intense, that most make bedfellows to anyone else who also hates America, like dictator Fidel Castro; murderer of his own people Sadam Hussain; and the women hating Taliban -- and of course they sympathize with all Islamic Terrorists over the Israel/Palestine issue. Raza cults are the loudest and most insistent element of the immigration lobby in California. Inebriated with a sense of righteous victimhood, and entranced by myths of a heroic racial past, devotees of the Aztlan cults are rapidly extending their influence within California's Hispanic population, particularly among students in the university system.

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