The Open Borders Lobby and the Nation's Security After 9/11
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THE FORD FOUNDATION CREATES A MOVEMENT
The Ford Foundation, which has assets of more than $11 billion, has focused on immigrants and refugees as a priority since the 1950’s. The two groups that have figured most prominently in Ford’s strategy to create a large, active pro-open borders movement are the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Virtually all the funding for MALDEF in its first three decades has come from the Ford Foundation, which has shaped its leadership and its agendas. Far from being the grassroots organization it pretends to be, it is more like a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford.
Hispanic political activity escalated in the turbulent 1960s as it did for blacks and college students. MALDEF, formed in 1967, was among the many new groups. The organization was the idea of attorney Peter Tijerina, an official with the League of United Latin American Citizens chapter in San Antonio. LULAC was a middle class organization of Hispanic professionals and businessman interested in civil rights within the context of American society. Membership was limited to American citizens and English was its official language, though LULAC's code encouraged the retention of Spanish as one of “the two most essential languages.” The LULAC code also stated: “Respect your citizenship; honor your country, maintain its traditions in the minds of your children; incorporate yourself in the culture and civilization.”
Looking for a more radical direction, Tijerina sent a member of LULAC to the Chicago convention of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (NAACP-LDF) in 1966. Jack Greenberg, head of the NAACP-LDF, set up a meeting for Tijerina with the Ford Foundation. In February, 1968 Tijerina announced he was asking Ford for one million dollars. Ford doubled the request, giving MALDEF $2.2 million over a five year period to fund civil rights legal services for Mexican Americans...
At about the same time as MALDEF was relocating its headquarters under Ford pressure, the Foundation was also working to raise the profile of the illegal alien issue within the ACLU...
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the ACLU has redoubled its efforts to blur any distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and between legal and illegal immigrants. In Rhode Island, the ACLU protested the decision by the state government not to accept Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs) in place of Social Security Numbers when applying for a driver’s license. Anyone can get an ITIN, but only citizens have a Social Security card. The ACLU argument ran “As long as there is a substantial population of undocumented immigrants in the state, it makes little sense to deprive them of a license solely because of their immigration status.”[18] There is no mention that a state driver’s license is the most widely accepted identity document in America, and once gained becomes the method for completely blurring one’s alien status.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has urged officials to enact an ordinance opposing a Justice Department initiative that would give local and state police the power to enforce immigration laws. “While we expect local police to cooperate with federal authorities in apprehending anyone, including non-citizens, who is suspected of criminal activity,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, “local police should not be in the business of detaining or arresting law-abiding aliens based on their immigration status.”[19] Apparently entering the United States illegally is not breaking a law that the ACLU cares about, as an alien can still be considered “law abiding” having done so.
The ACLU has opposed any Department of Justice plan to fingerprint and track immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States. “The ACLU has long opposed immigrant registration laws, saying that they treat immigrant populations as a separate and quasi-criminal element of society and that they create an easy avenue for surveillance of those who may hold unpopular beliefs,” read a press release, “The fingerprinting and tracking proposal is only the latest Bush Administration action targeted at Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent since September 11. Other discriminatory measures have included round-ups, dragnet questioning, the detention of more than a thousand young men and the targeting of Middle Eastern communities for heightened enforcement of minor immigration law violations.”[20] The ACLU also opposes the use of immigration law violations as the means for holding or deporting suspects with ties to terrorism, and the use of secret or classified evidence in deportation hearings...
MALDEF: MAINSTREAMING THE RADICAL AGENDA
MALDEF today boasts it is the leading Hispanic civil rights organization with regional offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., with a satellite office in Sacramento and program offices in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Houston. MALDEF has a budget of $6.2 million annually and a staff of 75 employees which includes 22 attorneys. MALDEF has been headed by Antonia Hernández since 1985. She came to the group after serving on the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and sits on the Senior Advisory Committee of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University, the Pacific Council for International Policy, and the Commission on Presidential Debates.
After its Ford-induced transformation into a radical vanguard, MALDEF no longer draws a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants...
NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM
The Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Forum (NIF) claims that its objective is “to embrace and uphold America's tradition as a nation of immigrants. The Forum advocates and builds public support for public policies that welcome immigrants and refugees and that are fair and supportive to newcomers in our country.”... The NIF website is festooned with American flags and the Statue of Liberty. However, its political agenda and funding run parallel to those left-wing “open borders” groups whose ideology is hostile to the flag and the nation for which it stands. Frank Sharry is the current Executive Director of the NIF...
AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of over 8,000 attorneys and law professors that provides its members with continuing legal education, information, professional services, and expertise through its 35 chapters and over 75 national committees. It was founded in 1946 and is an “affiliated organization” of the American Bar Association and is represented in the ABA House of Delegates. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
AILA has joined with other left-wing groups to denounce in its entirety the security measures taken in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which killed some 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, claiming that the measures “have infringed on the civil liberties of immigrants and have created a climate of fear and distrust in immigrant communities around the country.”[64] AILA likes to claim that the new security procedures “fail to enhance our security” but in the absence of any more terrorist attacks, it is impossible to substantiate such a claim...
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