Posted on 08/23/2003 3:25:07 AM PDT by sarcasm
Los Angeles, U.S., August 22, 2003 (EFE).- Hispanics in the South L.A. municipality of Maywood are angry at what they say is a discriminatory campaign in which police are stopping Latinos and impounding the vehicles of those without a driver's license.
"We're not talking about agents of law and order but of official corruption, as though this were Latin America," an irate Felipe Aguirre of the Comite Pro Uno, an activist group organizing protests against the practice, told EFE.
In the last 12 months, more than 1,800 vehicles have been impounded from members of the Hispanic community in a town of some 40,000 inhabitants.
Although the underlying reason for the regulation is road safety, the Comite Pro Uno, supported by the nationwide League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, allege the manner of enforcement in Maywood has made it a new form of racial discrimination.
"They're taking it out on the immigrant community," said Aguirre, after pointing out that the number of vehicles impounded in the community exceeded the total for the rest of the state of California.
The cars were impounded after their drivers could not produce a valid license. Latino activists say seizure of the vehicle is a drastic measure.
The vast majority of undocumented immigrants do not have a driver's license, because documentation is required in order to obtain one. The California state legislature is currently debating a bill that would allow many illegal immigrants to get a license.
Maywood is "99.9 percent Hispanic," as attested by the fact that even the council members are Latino, but the traffic cops are "all white," Aguirre said.
The activist alleges, however, that the problem is not only another instance of racial discrimination.
According to Aguirre, the massive impounding of vehicles in the Hispanic community is aimed at fattening the municipal coffers with easy money obtained from the most needy, whose cars are usually worth less than the fines that must be paid to get them back.
Such was the case with Yolanda and Paolo, a Mexican couple who in the last three months have had their Dodge Shadow - which cost $1,000 - impounded twice, and had to pay $656 each time to get it released.
"It's clear we need to resolve the problem of people driving without licenses in California, but to use traffic laws to seize the property of undocumented immigrants is not the solution," said LULAC president Hector Flores.
This situation should be debated in the state legislature, said Aguirre, who expressed hope that amid the turmoil California is presently experiencing the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis, the embattled incumbent would see fit to authorize the state to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.
Californians, and Americans all over the country, are completely fed up with illegal immigration. Even moderates are becoming angry with the way our government allows this to go on, at a time when Grandma gets strip-searched at the airport.
Something will be done...sooner, rather than later, I suspect.
Sheesh. I'm glad it's not that way in Texas. In Texas you're only required to have insurance on the vehicle if it's actually moving.
That's exactly right. In Mexico they're actually supposed to have drivers' licenses too --- but they don't. They're used to paying their cops a little mordida and now they find that system doesn't work here. Of course if the Mexican politicians in California have anything to do with it, they soon will have that system in place.
Not everywhere in Texas. In El Paso city limits who cannot have a car that doesn't run and if a car runs it's supposed to be licensed --- at least this is the law for citizens. I know people who actually had to go out and show the cops that their cars could start.
Depends on where it's parked. If it's in your driveway, a private garage, or otherwise on private property, then you are correct that you don't need for it to be insured, registered, or have a license plate on it.
Depending on the town, parking on a public street may be a different story. In Pennsylvania, for example, it is illegal to park an uninsured vehicle on a public road, so a parking enforcement agent COULD go down the row of cars on the street and have towed any which showed up as uninsured. The most likely reason for not doing that here iis that the two cities with the major problem with uninsured motorists are Democrat strongholds, and the uninsured motorists are mostly Dems.
These illegals are at the bottom of the economic barrel. The BS spread by these squatter advocates about them yearning to get insurance is hilarious. A driver's license is a defacto national ID card.... these detestable leeches could care less about insurance. They want licenses in order to avoid scrutiny that could result in their much warranted forced removal, to scam the system, etc. These losers wouldn't buy insurance even if they could afford to.
In fact the entire premise of this EFE article is a laugh. They try to use the dreamt-up catch-all term 'Hispanic' instead of 'Mexican invaders', who are the real culprits here, to try to convince the reader that somehow all Spanish speakers are being unduly discriminated against. Frankly I don't personally know a single legal Venezuelan or Spanish (as in from Spain) immigrant who needs to be included in some 'protected species' program dictated by vile Mexican nationalists who have found their way into the state legislature to try and hide these intruders, but I do know of many Spanish, Venezuelan, Costa Rican, and Chilean legal immigrants who are livid over the monopolization of the bogus term 'Hispanic' by a bunch of sleazy Mexican criminals. They don't appreciate being arbitrarily included in their bloodsucking lot.
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