Joe Arpaio & Nazi friendship exposed!

U.S. Justice Meets LatinoJustice re: Suffolk County Injustice

Investigators from the U.S. Justice Department met in New York with LatinoJustice regarding allegations of anti-Latino bias in Suffolk County.

LatinoJustice's complaint charges Suffolk County government officials with violating the equal protection clause in its treatment of Latino residents; stirring up anti-Latino resentment, indulging bigots and promoting hate speech through its anti-Latino immigrant proposals -- culminating in the hate killing of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue.

While the DOJ has not yet launched a formal investigation, their presence last week in New York is reassuring.

As for the response from Suffolk officials, the usually ultra chatty Steve Levy has gone silent--as have his co-conspirators in the legislature. However, the county police are said to welcome any investigation--although spokesman Tim Motz claims that Suffolk's "hate crime statistics are essentially the same" as in other jurisdictions.

In addition to insulting the intelligence of county residents, the Long Island Latino community, the memory of Marcelo Lucero, as well as most U.S. counties without official campaigns against Latino immigrants, Mr. Motz misses an essential point: that the county's numbers are totally out-of-whack with reality -- reflecting the possibility of a systemic failure to protect Latinos residents.

Recommendation for Mr. Motz: Read the LatinoJustice complaint to learn about what's really happening in Suffolk County.

Moreover, the concern is not that hate crimes only happen in Suffolk County. No one is saying that. The concern for Latinos in Suffolk is that authorities are actively fomenting anti-Latino hostility. And it's not just the county. DOJ should also look at the embedded biases in the code enforcement, provision of services, staffing, and policing practices of a number of towns and villages--often in coordination with the county.

So, Mr. Motz and Mr. Levy should also welcome more 'sanctuary' sessions of the sort held at the church in Patchogue in which residents can step forward and tell the truth without fear, right? At least 20 hate victims came forward in Patchogue. How many more are out there that the bright lights of Suffolk County don't know about?

And while they're at it, perhaps DOJ should look closely at the embedded practices and attitudes which systematically undermine the rights of racial "minorities". For example, why are at-large election districts which ensure African American and Latino political under representation allowed? Why are racially segregated and unequal public schools condoned? How is it that Long Island manages to remain one of the most segregated places in the country even though people of color are a significant portion of the overall population?

Latino Immigrant Marcello Lucero Murdered by Gang of Thugs in Suffolk County

Latino immigrant Marcello Lucero, 37, was murdered in what Suffolk Police are calling a hate crime. He was beaten and stabbed in Patchogue Saturday night by a gang of seven thugs from the East Patchogue/Medford section of South County. All seven were arrested and face a charge of first-degree gang assault.

The Lucero killing follows an eerily similar incident this past July in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Another gang of young thugs murdered Luis Eduardo Martinez for the crime of being an Latino immigrant. Both incidents were preceded by a growing bias incidents spurred, in part, by the irresponsible rhetoric and actions of local politicians, hate radio and national nativist agitators.

To his credit Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy immediately issued this statement: "This heinous crime that led to the death of an individual because of his race will not be tolerated in Suffolk County,"

However, what's needed for Levy, Suffolk legislators, town leaders, clergy , educators, business leaders and parents to stand united in condemning the Lucero murder. Additionally, politicians must stop contributing to a hostile environment with irresponsible rhetoric and scapegoating measures.

Link: Cops: Fatal stabbing of Patchogue man a hate crime

Photo: Marcello Lucero

The Shenandoah Murder of Luis Eduardo Martinez

Pro-immigrant bloggers, Latino advocates, immigrant activists and human rights workers across the country are stunned and angry, not only by the horrific murder of Mexican immigrant Luis Eduardo Martinez, but by the shameful attitudes of some local officials.

Martinez was beaten to death in his homwtown of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania by a pack of six young toughs -- none of which has yet to be charged with a crime. Even with eye witnesses confirming the racially motivated murder, local authorities haven't acted against the young men.

Why?

Check out this outrageous comment by Borough Manager Joseph Palubinsky who doubts that race was a factor in the killing: "I have reason to know the kids who were involved, the families who were involved, and I've never known them to harbor this type of feeling."

Meanwhile, Ms Crystal Dillman, Mr. Martinez' fiance and mother of his two children, knows the locals all too well and has witnessed the heightening of anti-Latino bigotry. She rightly asks, 'How is it not a racial issue?'

Of course, if anyone in the Northeastern section of Pennsylvania is responsible for inflaming racial hatred it is Lou Barletta, mayor of nearby Hazelton. Barletta has used unconstitutional means to harrass and push out Hazelton's growing population of Latinos--most of which are legal residents and citizens.

A few days after Mr. Martinez' murder, Barletta was named the Mayor of the Year by the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association for his anti-immigrant work. How's that for justice?

The Shenandoah murderers, Mr. Palubinsky, Hazelton's Barletta and other accomplices must be held accountable.

Links:
Murdered immigrant's fiancee ties death to Hazleton tensions
Immigrant's beating death exposes tensions in Pa.
‘How is that not a racial issue?’: Shenandoah residents react to homicide
Hazleton mayor named Pa.'s Mayor of the Year

Patrick Buchanan's Anti-Latino Racism Featured on Fox

Anti-immigrants have been able to hold up the "illegal" status of some as a fig leaf to cover their racism.

Until now.

Patrick Buchanan, spiritual leader of today's Know Nothings, and two time presidential candidate, said on Hannity & Colmes what it is that really bothers him about immigration: Latinos.

Yup. Buchanan admitted fearing Latinos will soon number 100 million (regardless of the flow of undocumented workers), and that we're contributing to the evolution of American culture. It's a major theme in his new book Day of Reckoning in which he breathelssly blames Latinos for the fall of America.

It's beyond silly and very dangerous propaganda--and it's being aided by Fox and Sir Hannity.

When asked by Alan Colmes if he isn't simply fighting immigration the way the Know Nothings did against his own earlier immigrant family members, Buchanan said a few very telling things:

1) That Latinos are different because they own media, hail from countries nearer to the U.S. and they come with their own culture.

“Let me tell you the difference in the American southwest. The fastest growing television stations and radio stations are Hispanic. There’s a huge number of folks contiguous to Mexico. Our ancestors came across the seas. Look, they’ve got their own language, their own culture. They don’t want to be Americans.”

2) That the Irish immigrants that were brutalized by American nativists damaged America because they too came in large numbers. Buchanan started to blame the so-called gang wars of New York City on Irish immigrants but he was cut off by Sir Hannity.

Buchanan coming out and speaking so clearly about his anti-Latino bigotry is actually a good thing. All Latinos and decent Americans everywhere need to be real clear about what we're up against. It's only when we as a society know the and who's afflicted can we being cut out the cancer.

Below is the video courtesy of NewsHound and YouTube. It offers an important teaching moment on the dangers of nativism, racism, politics and media for concerned Americans everywhere.

¡Ya basta! Petition

Under the pretense of fighting "illegal" immigration, racists across America are using the media and political offices to foment anti-Latino hostilities.

The anti-Latino bullies and bigots have thus far gone unchallenged.

If you believe that it's time to hold the anti-Latinos--and the institutions that support them--to account, please say so by signing the ¡Ya basta! petition.

Click here to sign the ¡Ya basta! Petition.

The Manassas Anti-Immigrant War of 2007: A 13 Part YouTube Documentary (Unedited)

Hi everyone,

We need your help to share this YouTube video and go viral!

Two colleagues (Eric Byler and Annabel Parker) have created this Interactive Documentary on YouTube about the battle over immigration in Virginia. They have been on the ground in Northern Virginia and It really feels like a battle over the meaning of America.

I believe that Youtube can be an important tool for civic activism. Help us achieve the goal of raising our voices in this very important debate.

We hope that the YouTube video below can help promote greater understanding and alleviate the hostility in Northern Virginia.

Here is the link: www.youtube.com/9500Liberty

The format is experimental. We're inviting people to give Eric and Annabel feedback and suggestions for what you would like to see in the series.

Background Information:

In July, Prince William Co. Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the harshest local legislation in the nation aiming to remove "illegal immigrants" from their county. Supporters say that the Board is brave and it is necessary in order to preserve the law and quality of life. Critics say that it's racist and a cynical case of self-serving political grandstanding in an election year.

On November 6th, all local and state-level seats are up for election in Virginia including PW Co. Board Chairman Corey Stewart and Supervisor John Stirrup who introduced the controversial resolution.

Because of the timeliness of the subject, we felt compelled to create a real-time, interactive documentary YouTube channel--breaking with the usual documentary post-production method that delays public feedback for months and months.

We invite you to join the conversation on our YouTube channel and/or on one of the following blogs:

http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2007/10/14/documentary-filmmakers-release-clips/#comments
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/15/74153/725
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/12/163236/60
http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10891
http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10864
http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10878
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2007/10/14/documentary-filmmakers-release-clips/#comments
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2007/10/documentary-chorus.php

Thank you for your support! And feel free to contact Annabel about this project. Her email is parkinstein@ gmail.com

Cordially,
Carlos Soles

Ain’t That America

Ain’t That America (NYTimes Editorial - 10.22.07)

Think of America’s greatest historical shames. Most have involved the singling out of groups of people for abuse. Name a distinguishing feature — skin color, religion, nationality, language — and it’s likely that people here have suffered unjustly for it, either through the freelance hatred of citizens or as a matter of official government policy.

We are heading down this road again. The country needs to have a working immigration policy, one that corresponds to economic realities and is based on good sense and fairness. But it doesn’t. It has federal inertia and a rising immigrant tide, and a national mood of frustration and anxiety that is slipping, as it has so many times before, into hatred and fear. Hostility for illegal immigrants falls disproportionately on an entire population of people, documented or not, who speak Spanish and are working-class or poor. By blinding the country to solutions, it has harmed us all.

More

Evangelicos Sue Georgia Over Anti-Latino Immigrant Law

Atlanta Latino, Posted on New America Media:Sep 25, 2007

ATLANTA – The Hispanic Evangelical Church of Georgia, with the support of the National Latino Coalition of Christian Ministers, announced this week that they are filing a lawsuit against the state of Georgia for “treating their faithful without dignity,” according to Atlanta Latino newspaper.

State law 529 is unconstitutional, they argue, and encourages police to make arrests based on racial profiling. Pastors and congregational leaders are creating a database of reported cases of incidents involving their members.

On Sept. 16, 172 local churches canceled their services to participate in a protest with 8,000 Christians in Atlanta, who sang and carried Bibles, calling on local politicians to “stop their racist attacks” against honest people who only want to work to make a better life for their children.

Reverend Miguel Rivera, president of the coalition, said laws like 529 “revive racist rhetoric" and "manipulate the conscience of Americans in Georgia so that they see our brothers as invaders who have come to steal their jobs, when this is a fallacy." Immigrants come because there are jobs that Americans simply don’t want to do, he said.

WSJ -- The GOP's Anti-Latino Tone is a Loser

The WSJ joins a small but growing list cautioning the GOP to stop marching to the beat (or the screeches) of its anti-immigrant/Latino racists. I've posted the full article. Whether you're Republican, Democrat or Independent, conservative, liberal, Latino or other, read it. It's a wise piece.

Hispanics and the GOP
How to lose elections in one Lou Dobbs lesson.

Saturday, September 15, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Between 1996 and 2004, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote doubled to more than 40%, only to fall in last year's midterm election to less than 30%. The most recent polls show Hispanics breaking for Democrats over Republicans by 51% to 21%. What gives?

To understand this remarkable erosion of Latino support for Republicans, look no further than the most recent Presidential debates. While GOP candidates debated the urgency of erecting a fence from California to Texas along the Mexican border, Democrats debated in Spanish on Univision.

To reverse current trends, the GOP need not resort to ethnic pandering, which is the left's métier. But Republicans would help their cause tremendously if the party at the very least adopted a welcoming stance toward Latino newcomers. People aren't going to listen to your message unless they believe you care about them. Ronald Reagan didn't regularly receive a third of the Hispanic vote by sounding like Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson on immigration.

Tone matters in politics, and getting people to vote for you is easier when you're not likening them to Islamic terrorists, or implying that Latino men are hard-wired for gang-banging. Unlike blacks, who have hewed to Democrats in large majorities for decades, Latinos are proven swing voters, and Republican energies would be better employed trying to win them over instead of trying to capitalize on ethnic polarization to win GOP primaries.

There's precedent here. In the mid-1990s after California Governor Pete Wilson embraced Proposition 187, which denied education and health-care benefits to the children of illegal aliens, Latino support for Republicans fell to 25% from 53%, and GOP support among Asians and women declined as well.

Some conservatives insist that it's only the illegal aliens who have earned their wrath, but when the target of scorn is the mother or brother or cousin of someone here lawfully, that becomes a difference without much of a distinction politically. Moreover, Tom Tancredo, the pied piper of restrictionists in Congress, wants a "time out" on all legal immigration, and Hispanic voters are wise to the fact that it's not because he thinks there are too many Italians in the U.S. Republican pols may decide to follow Mr. Tancredo, Lou Dobbs, Fox News populists and obsessive bloggers down this path, but it's likely to lead to political defeat.

Hispanics are now about 8% of the electorate, but they're projected to become 20% by 2020 and one-quarter of the total U.S. population by 2050. The political reality is that going forward Hispanics will have to play a bigger and bigger role in keeping the GOP competitive nationally. It's hard to see how Republicans have any hope of building a permanent majority if Hispanics start voting for Democrats in the percentages that blacks already do.

Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona all boast heavy Latino populations and are states that a GOP Presidential candidate probably has to carry unless he can pick up states on the West coast or in the Northeast that Republicans haven't won since the 1980s. President Bush won Nevada, Colorado and Arizona twice. Al Gore won New Mexico in 2000, but it switched to Mr. Bush in 2004 in part because the President did well among the state's large Hispanic population.

Which brings us to a final, somewhat ironic, point about these political and demographic trends. Republican strategists, led by Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman and Matthew Dowd, took note of what was happening long before their Democratic counterparts. As recently as 2004, Democrats still viewed Latinos as voters they could take for granted. The assumption was that, as with blacks, perfunctory appeals to past discrimination would suffice to win them over. John Kerry ran no significant campaign in Hispanic communities and rarely traveled to the Southwest.

But it turns out that 50% of Hispanic voters are foreign-born and grew up speaking Spanish, not nursing racial grievances. That's an increase from 20% in 1988, and most of Mr. Bush's gains among Hispanics in 2004 came from this cohort. The point is that Republican principles--economic or cultural--are not lost on Hispanics, who are hardly wedded to one party, even if some conservatives insist this vote is lost to them. And it's no coincidence the 2008 Democratic convention will be in Colorado, where Hispanics are 19% of the population.

President Bush proved that the GOP could make significant inroads with Latinos, and smart Governors like Rick Perry in Texas and Jeb Bush in Florida have also shown the political wisdom of avoiding anti-immigration appeals. It's unfortunate that other Republicans, including most of Mr. Bush's would-be successors, seem so eager to help the Democrats make up lost ground.

Copyright © 2007 Dow

The Mexicans Are Coming! The Mexicans Are Coming!

The Mexicans Are Coming! The Mexicans Are Coming! by Kerry Howley, Reason Magazine (9/07), raises questions about the motives of many of the politicians at the forefront of the war against Latino immigration.

Hyping the immigration crisis in America's whitest states

She cites the case of Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. He's damn tired of this “unnatural influx” of people “who openly flout the laws.” Problem is that Missouri has few Latinos and the recent Latino immigrant surge has largely bypassed his state.

Howley notes that San Diego State University Sociologist Jill Esbenshade found that almost 80 percent of the localities where ordinances have been discussed had below the national average of Latino population share in 2000.

So what's the motivation?

Pure racism. That is, these politicians are using thinly veiled racist appeals for political gain.

In the 1800's it was under the banner of fighting the Yellow Menace that propelled many political careers. Today, nativists such as Blunt, Tancredo and Buchanan are riding a racist wave as they profit from their fight against the Brown Menace.

Fight for Immigrants: A Long Island Update

Dr. Luis Valenzuela, leading immigrant advocate and executive director of the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, spoke recently at a Babylon Green Party Forum on Immigration. He gave a seminar on the local and national battle for immigrant justice.

Click here for a video of the the 29 minute presentation.

Among Dr. Valenzuela's successes is the defeat last spring of a proposed Suffolk County ordinance dubbed the "Standing While Latino" code.

An especially vile and discriminatory proposal, the bill sought to make illegal the gathering of two or more persons on public walkways. Enforcement of the ban would be targeted at Latino men.

Click here for Dr. Valenzuela's compelling testimony against the offensive bill.

BTW: Of all the local political parties, the Babylon Green Party stands alone in its commitment to ending racism and anti-immigrant bigotry on Long Island.

Thanks to the Wilders for their vision, commitment and leadership.

Unauthorized Immigration is NOT a Criminal Offense

Rudy Giuliani has just deep-sixed his presidential bid as a Republican, demonstrated yet again that he's a genuine leader, added much needed expertise to the national discussion around "illegal" immigration--or, all of the above.

Check out this ground-breaking exchange between radio/cable personality Glenn Beck and Rudy:

GIULIANI: The context of that was for people to come forward to report crimes because we needed their help and we didn't want them to be afraid of coming forward. The context of that was we wanted them to put their children in school not to be afraid to do that. Even with the policy that I pointed, I continued it was probably seven, eight years old, there were still people, illegal immigrants, who would not report crimes. But we wanted them to.

GLENN: Right. But isn't illegal immigration a crime in and of itself?

GIULIANI: No.

GLENN: Aren't you saying --

GIULIANI: Glenn --

GLENN: You're protecting criminals by saying that being treated as a criminal is unfair.

GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.

GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime. If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.

GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be. I was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. So believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding.
GLENN: Is it --

GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago is to make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.

GLENN: Should it be?

GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words, you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many police we would have to have.

Hallelujah!!!

Rudy is a former federal prosecutor and a Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. It seems to me that Rudy probably knows what he's talking about. But if his view stands up, doesn't that blow the cover off of all of those closeted racists hiding behind the it's "illegal" banner?

Sweet.

Click here for the full transcript.
Click here for Glenn Beck's website.

Herndon's Backwards Step

In 2005, Mayor Michael L. O'Reilly of Herndon, a small municipality in Fairfax County Virginia, established a day-laborer center to allow workers and employers a central gathering and employment site. It was a sensible and forward-looking measure that bolstered the local economy and aided public safety.

Herndon was a model for enacting local solutions to a complex economic, political and humanitarian issue.

So how did voters of Herndon thank Mayor O'Reilly for his courage and leadership?

They voted out him and his two town council allies out of office and installed an anti-Latino immigrant mayor and council majority.

The new mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and council allies (with tactical support from anti-immigrant groups like the Minute Men) voted yesterday to close the day-laborer center. The workers, employers and residents will now be returned to the pre-laborer center chaos.

Is this leadership?

BTW: Who exactly does DeBenedittis represent? In a town of 28, 000 people--40% of whom are immigrants--DeBenedittis won election with just 1,363 votes, or less than 5% of Herndon's residents.

Is the solution to Herndon's mess not obvious?

Related articles:

Sending the Wrong Message on Immigrants

Herndon to Shut Down Center for Day Laborers

Herndon labor ordinance struck down by judge

Hypocrisy in Herndon

The Face of Local Counties Shifts With Surge in Minorities

Herndon Picked for ICE Program

All languages spoken here

All languages spoken here (by Ruth Kunstadter, NorthJersey.Com - 9.5.07)

THE CURRENT immigration debate is not only dividing our nation, it is also threatening one of the most valuable -- and already endangered -- resources for the future of this country: the linguistic and cultural expertise of our immigrant communities.

Anti-immigrant fever is growing at an alarming rate. U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo recently blamed the horrific murders in Newark on lax immigration policies, and hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan have gained new energy by retraining their sights on immigrants.

We won't get very far in the new global economy -- or in the democratic beliefs we seek to promote abroad -- as a monolingual and xenophobic nation.

According to Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, "We haven't had this kind of intensity and widespread, deep-seated anger for almost 100 years."

Not surprisingly, that anger is resulting in discrimination against all immigrants -- not just those who may be undocumented -- and, increasingly, against the languages they speak.

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Prince William County Boycott Update: Raising the Heat

Carrying American flags and chanting "Si, se puede" ("Yes, we can"), several thousand Latinos rallied at the seat of Prince William County government yesterday to denounce the Board of Supervisors' plan to curb services to illegal immigrants. The rally was part of a week-long economic boycott of immigrant unfriendly businesses in Prince William County, Virginia.

In response, Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart--and leading local anti-immigrant--urged residents to avoid pro-immigrant businesses.

Aiming to raise the heat on the county's anti-immigrant politicians, boycott organizers have announced plans for an Oct. 9 work stoppage in Prince William.

More

Immigrants become target for all of society's ills

Immigrants become target for all of society's ills (By Kirsten A. Powers, USAToday - 8.29.07)

What Ronald Reagan once referred to as the "illegal-alien fuss" has fulminated into a frenzy of demonizing where behind every social ill lurks a brown-skinned illegal immigrant.

Reagan famously provided amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in 1986, appreciating America's historical role as a beacon of hope — a "shining city upon a hill" — to people around the world. Contrast that with the always-simmering anti-illegal immigrant fury among many who call Reagan their godfather.

After the news of the murders in Newark, where three college students were gunned down execution-style, nearly a week passed with nary a peep from the "law and order" crowd. Then it was divulged that Jose Carranza, one of the alleged attackers, was an illegal alien.

But the nativists, energized by their success in derailing immigration reform legislation, will pounce on any anecdote that helps them vilify illegal immigrants.

The posse piled on. Incredibly, former House speaker Newt Gingrich declared that "the war here at home" against illegal immigrants is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., presidential candidate and anti-immigration demagogue, dropped into Newark to exploit the murders to further his nativist cause.

Many argue that Carranza — who had been arrested twice in the past year, including once on aggravated sexual assault of a child — should have been deported to Peru, where presumably he could have preyed on kids there instead.

A systemic failure

The failure here is with our criminal justice system, and that is where the outrage should be directed. If our system had been working, Carranza would have been in prison at the time of the attack. Considering the magnitude of the charge of child rape, his bail should have been prohibitively high. The judge declined that option, setting bail hundreds of thousands of dollars lower than the indictment allowed.

Furthermore, had Carranza been deported, he very well could have returned to the USA. A year-long Rocky Mountain News investigation published last year found that one in five Colorado inmates who had been deported returned to the USA to commit the same crimes for which they were imprisoned.

But the nativists, energized by their success in derailing immigration reform legislation, will pounce on any anecdote that helps them vilify illegal immigrants. Through local ordinances, they have worked to deny illegal immigrants basic rights, though a U.S. District Court found a Pennsylvania city's efforts to engage in immigration enforcement unconstitutional.

Home-grown

The illegal-immigrant scapegoaters seem unaware that Americans are more than able to commit horrible crimes all on their own. In the high-profile murder of a Connecticut family last month, two of the alleged attackers, both U.S. citizens, were on parole. In the widely covered assault in March of a 101-year-old woman in New York, the attacker also was a parole violator. Rather than demonizing illegal immigrants, we should ask why violent offenders are allowed back on the streets to commit more crimes.

The nativists' anecdotal warfare is an old tactic that does not match up with reality.

During the 1990s, despite a steady stream of illegal immigrants, the U.S. crime rate plunged. Mr. Law and Order, Rudy Giuliani, praised illegal immigrants when he was mayor of New York and defended his sanctuary policies. It would be hard to argue that Giuliani would have defended illegal immigrants if they posed any criminal threat to the city he governed. According to a 2006 FBI report, New York — lambasted by nativists for harboring illegal immigrants — remains the safest large city.

Today's nativists claim that their only beef with illegal immigrants is that they are "illegal." This claim rings hollow when one considers how similarly the legal Irish and Italian immigrants were treated upon their arrival generations ago.

There is also an amazingly simple way to deal with the fact that they are illegal: Pass comprehensive immigration reform and provide them a path to citizenship.

Kirsten A. Powers is a Fox News analyst who served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998.

Boycott In Prince William County

Finally, Latinos are beginning to stand up to the bully racists and fighting back.

The latest example of this growing militancy in the face of officially sanctioned bigotry is what's is happening in Prince William County just outside of the nation's capitol.

Latinos and immigrant rights activists there have called for a week-long boycott of all businesses in Prince William County, Virginia in response to what they see as a wave of anti-Latino immigrant hostilities.

The official ring leader of the anti-immigrant faction and self-appointed harrasser of immigrants is Republican Jeff Frederick.

Click here for a news video account of the boycott.

It's an economic boycott. Boycotters are shopping only in establishments that post green "pro-immigrant" signs or in places outside of the county. The one thing that America and Americans understand above all else is that money talks. And now activists in Prince William are aiming to leverage the purchasing power of some 70,000+ Latinos and their supporters for social justice.

Communities across the nation are watching the Prince William action for lessons that can inform other actions in locailities as well as campaigns at a larger scale.

As rightwing radio has been used to mobilize against Latinos, I suspect that Spanish language radio is being used to help in mobilizing the boycotters. It's the one area in which Latinos are not totally overmatched.

The one thing I wonder about is whether there is an effort to nationalize the boycott--either now or later. That is, are Latinos and other pro-immigrant Americans across the nation being asked to support the action by also boycotting services and products with direct connection to Prince William County racists?

I'm sure that many Americans would gladly join the cause.

A Nativist War at Home

Immigration debate gets angrier: Groups loudly press for state, local crackdowns.
(by Dave Montgomery - SacramentoBee - 8.19.07)

1) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and stealth Republican presidential candidate recently declared "a war here at home" against illegal immigration, which he says is as important as the US-Iraq War.

2) "Even though immigration is always unsettling and somewhat controversial, we haven't had this kind of intensity and widespread, deep-seated anger for almost 100 years," said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

3) The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said the number of "nativist extremist" organizations advocating against illegal immigration has grown from virtually zero just over five years ago to 144, including groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan supremacists.

4) Eighty-three percent of immigrants from Mexico and 79 percent of immigrants from Central America believe there is growing discrimination against Latin American immigrants in the United States, according to a poll conducted by Miami-based Bendixen & Associates.

5) As prospects for congressional action appeared increasingly in doubt this year, all 50 states and more than 75 towns and cities considered -- and in many cases enacted -- immigration restrictions, even though initial court rulings have declared such actions unconstitutional intrusions on federal responsibilities.

Running Latinos Out of Town in Carpentersville, Illinois

Our Town: All Immigration Politics Is Local (by Alex Kotlowitz, NYTimes Magazine - 8.5.07)

Even though 40% of Carpentersville, Illinois' 37,000 residents are Latino, it has not stopped local politicians from running on anti-Latino platforms and winning.

Gaining power by pitting Whites against Latinos, village trustees have enacted a series of employment and housing codes aimed at beating back the rising Latino population.

Residents of Latino heritage--many which are long-time residents--are shocked and dismayed by the anti-Latino animus of the new village trustees and their supporters.

Unfortunately, the racists appear to have won a short-term victory: American Latinos are leaving town.

Sign the ¡Ya basta! Petition.

Also see PORTRAIT OF A SMALL TOWN'S WAR ON IMMIGRANTS by immigration attorney and blogger Greg Siskind.