Immigration law sparks Reno reaction
Jul 29, 2010 | 1769 views | 11 
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Tribune file/Debra Reid - Sparks resident Elvira Diaz, now a volunteer for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, fired up protesters during an Immigration Reform for America Rally in Reno, on May 1, 2010. Diaz and other PLAN volunteers said they'll canvas Reno neighborhoods to register voters next week.
“I am a fifth generation Nevadan and I can tell you that immigrants have made our state and community a better place to live,” said Bob Fulkerson, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, or PLAN.
Fulkerson and about 30 other people gathered at a restaurant called Así es mi Tierra — which roughly translates to “this is my land” — to both celebrate the court decision against the Arizona law and to kick off a voter registration effort focusing on Latinos in Wells Avenue neighborhoods.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that portions of an Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants were unconstitutional. In her temporary injunction, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton delayed the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws. She also barred enforcement of parts requiring immigrants to carry their papers and banned illegal immigrants from soliciting employment in public places — a move aimed at day laborers who congregate in large numbers in parking lots across Arizona. The judge also blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants. The law was scheduled to take effect Thursday.
Protesters across the nation said the ruling laid waste to the law. Those on Wells Avenue Thursday had a different opinion.
“Look at this,” said Don Diego de Martin as he held out his veteran’s registration card and driver’s license. “There is no piece of paper in my wallet that identifies me as a citizen. People who are born here don’t carry around their birth certificates.”
The two-tour Vietnam veteran was born in Salinas, Calif. and was raised in the fields picking lettuce. A job with the Lucy Grey mine brought de Martin to Nevada.
Volunteer Elvira Diaz was just as passionate about the immigration issue.
“The law that was stopped in Arizona was a victory,” Diaz said, “but it was only a beginning, a beginning to push for immigration reform.”
The handful of Latinos who gathered Thursday was not only interested in Bolton’s last-minute decision. They also wanted to register Hispanics to vote. The voter registration effort is expected to start sometime next week.
Fulkerson and his staff claim the group, and their voter registration effort, is nonpartisan.
“We don’t care who you vote for,” said Xiomara Rodriguez, a PLAN volunteer and chair for the Democratic Party Latino Coalition.“It is a reaction to Arizona but also a creation of awareness in the Latino community. … We want to talk to people and tell them that their vote is important, their vote is their voice.”
According to Fulkerson, 21 percent of Washoe County’s population is Latino but 5 percent are registered to vote. He said his research came from Washoe County Registrar of Voters statistics.
The effort aims to target the roughly 25,000 Latinos who are not registered to vote.
“We are very grateful that we have temporarily stopped this law,” Rodriguez said. “But please go and register to vote.”
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Actually,they are not using false numbers, they just are using the more politically correct numbers which are the "LOW ESTIMATE" for ILLEGAL immigrants.
But you are still correct in principle.
I agree with the laws.The only people that are against it are the people that support criminals.After all they broke laws to be here the way they are anyway,not to mention other laws not reported like not paying taxes,having fake driver's license,etc.
I say pack them up ship them out.Then shore up the border.
It is ironic that most of the people who support illegal immigration would be against slavery, but the very thing they support is creating a slave economy in our country! All of you middle class citizens out there are subsidizing the cost of illegal slaves while their exploiters are laughing all the way to the bank! Perhaps you do not work in construction or another industry that is loaded with illegal immigrants, but it is only a matter of time before YOUR livelihood is at risk too. Do not think you will be safe forever because your occupation requires a degree. Many standards are being lowered and diploma mills are popping up everywhere. All of you illegal immigration supporters and pacifists will only have the person in the mirror to blame when this phenomena starts impacting YOU.
Eventually, there will be no middle class; there will only be a small population of elites overseeing a kingdom of poverty. Obviously, there are powerful people who want this to occur and it is happening at a nice, steady rate. We cannot turn a blind eye to this anymore! We must make our representatives listen to their constituents instead of listening to corrupt bureaucrats or trying to please the exploiters who are going to finance their next campaign!
now our children are not educated; our parks and streets are the sites of gang wars; drugs riddle our children's lives, and mexicans think they have the right to harangue us because we want our country to be...our country.
so just think...if the mexicans are this way now, how will things be if you legalize the illegals and there are more and more of them? of course, they will have dual citizenship, be special and every single thing will be an act of discrimination until white people are pushed from the face of the earth.
Poor editorializing... The federal judge did not rule the more contentious provisions of the AZ law as "unconstitutional". The decision by the judge only "blocked" the implementation of the most controversial provisions of Arizona's immigration law. Which by the way is only a state law mandating enforcement of federal law, which the federal government has not done or cannot do.
I also have often wondered why the media chooses to highlight only the total low estimates for ILLEGAL immigrants of all states (about 12 million), when all states also report a high estimate for ILLEGAL immigrants(about 33 million.
ILLEGAL is BREAKING the law. That is what should be taught be all who work hard and LEGALLY live in the US.
Today, I heard that US U.S. Sen. Grassley other Senators again asking the administration if plans are underway for large-scale de facto amnesty. Here is an excerpt from the letter.
7/27/2010
Dear Secretary Napolitano:
We remained concerned about potential plans for a large-scale effort to offer parole or to defer action on undocumented aliens in the United States. We realize that deferred action and parole are discretionary actions reserved for individual cases that present unusual, emergent or humanitarian circumstances. However, we do not believe that such actions should be used for a large population of illegal aliens or used to bypass Congress and the legislative process.
News articles report that your department has denied the charge, stating that grants of parole or deferred removal are based on the merits of individual cases. While we have not personally been assured that plans have not been drawn up, we are interested in data that will guarantee the American people that the Administration is not using these discretionary actions in cases that are not urgent or based on humanitarian reasons.
To me this is a very dangerous precedence and will certainly alienate the very government who swore allegiance en-mass of the American people to defend us. This administration will be seen as an enemy of “THE PEOPLE” if such a—executive order—undermining the Congress an ultimate outrage of “The Rule of Law.” If what Sen. Grassley surmises could be true, all of us are in series trouble. This would be a slap in the face of privileged legal immigrants, who have waited patiently for years.
Another Amnesty would give illegal alien workers. Access to our Social Security and devastate taxpayer’s pensions, especially to senior citizens who have worked all their lives. An agreement the Bush administration was reached with Mexico on Social Security benefits that would allow illegal aliens granted amnesty in the future to claim credit for the time they worked illegally.
Without the inception of the internet, we would never know of Arizona's financial hardship, an interoffice memo of a de facto AMNESTY. This abomination caused by the unceasing inroads of people slipping past the US border Patrol. National Newspapers have become the dark domain of Liberal articles and commentary, which is not feeding the whole story of the hardships, caused by the large neighborhoods of illegal immigrants. The criminal activities are specifically suppressed; because the truth is Liberal open border crowd doesn't want the truth to be known. Even if a De Facto—AMNESTY—was initiated, would the REAL DOUBLE FENCE BE BUILT, WOULD THE MILLIONS STOP TRYING SLIP INTO OUR NATION? Only the World Wide Web offers news articles that although not always known to be true, usually are?
This country is never been without sympathy, but FAIRS analysis of illegal aliens draining $113 billion dollars a year from public money reservoirs, so we must demand that our countryman comes first. It is a growing sore that the border state of Arizona by mandated law must give health care, education and for many illegal foreigners incarceration. And these laws are forced upon all taxpayers and never reimbursed accordingly by Washington. The only defense innocent Americans have against this apathy was for Governor Jan Brewer to sign into law SB 1070, so they can start removing--ALL--foreign nationals from the state. The conflict now that is absurd is the federal government, suing its own people. This is will be a huge cross to bear for the Obama presidency, the Democratic leadership in this November.
It seems he has surrendered to the open border lobbyists and turned a deaf ear to the US taxpayers, who must continuously furnish money for welfare programs for foreign nationals. A large chunk of this money is extorted under the 14th amendment that has resurfaced as ethically wrong. No illegal family should be allowed to have immediate citizenship for their infant, specifically if this was an intentional purpose to collect welfare benefits, low income housing, food stamps and other needs.
WE AS THE VOTERS OF AMERICA CAN DO THIS, RIDDING OURSELVES OF SENATORS LIKE REID, McCAIN, PELOSI, SCHUMER, GRAHAM, FEINSTEIN PUSHING FOR AMNESTY AND THE DREAM ACT. WHAT WE SHOULD DEMAND FROM THE LEGISLATORS IS IMMEDIATE REVITALIZATION OF THE “SAVE ACT & CLEAR ACT.” ALL INCUMBENTS INCLUDING GOVERNORS, MAYORS, POLICE CHIEFS AND CITY OFFICERS NEED TO JOIN THE JOBLESS. NO OPTIONS! LET’S REMOVE THE CORRUPTED TRASH. FIND FACTS AT NUMBERSUSA & GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AT JUDICIAL WATCH. Bombard the Washington switchboard at 202-224-3121
WATCH--FOR--ILLEGALS--VOTING--IN--FUTURE--STATE--ELECTIONS--WITH--THE--"HONOR SYSTEM."