"And then there's this..."
In Providence, immigrants begin national rally
for family unity
Saturday, February 28, 2009
By
Karen Lee Ziner
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Close to a thousand people packed a Providence church
last night to launch a national “family unity” campaign designed to
draw attention to the disruptive effects of the country’s immigration
policies. Organizers said their goal is President Obama’s signature on
comprehensive immigration reform.
The 17-city “listening tour” is being led by Rep. Luis
Gutierrez, D-Ill., of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Conducted through
faith-based organizations, the tour will gather “the human stories of the
impact of immigration policies” on “mixed-status” families,
including U.S. citizens, and bring them to Washington, D.C., in April.
“We have five million citizen children wondering whether their parents
will be there when they get home from school” each day, Gutierrez told an
overflow crowd at Trinity Methodist Church on Broad Street.
The congressman and other speakers said mass raids and deportations are
tearing apart families whose members include a mix of citizens or legal
residents, and undocumented immigrants. Gutierrez asked, “Which half [of
the mixed family] are we going to deport? Which half isn’t really our
concern? I think both are our responsibility.”
“We want President Obama to keep his promise … to bring people
out of the shadows,” he said.
Eight-year-old Jeidi Par — one of three U.S. citizen children affected
by parent deportations who spoke to the crowd last night — recounted how
immigration agents “seized my father when he was taking out the
trash” last September.
Her father, who had applied for asylum years ago but was rejected, has now
been deported. The girl said she worries that her mother — who is also in
the country illegally — could be deported.
“I beg that you ask President Obama to stop deportation of my mom, and
bring my dad back,” Jeidi Par said.
Melissa Arias, 9, also spoke. Her father is facing orders to leave the
country by June 12, after entering the country illegally years ago.
In a letter to Mr. Obama, Arias said, “We were a really happy family
… why do they take him away if he is not a criminal? I am afraid
immigration will go to his work and take him away. The only thing I wish is not
to get separated from him.”
Gutierrez said he started the campaign in Rhode Island “because I kept
getting told about the city’s large, faith-based immigrant
community.”
The congressman said immigration reform should put people on a path to
legality.
“That means if you are working hard and paying taxes, and have
committed no crimes and you’ve never had any criminal contact with the
law — other than your immigration status, we’re going to give you
the opportunity to earn your legalization,” he said.
“We want people to take English classes, take civics lessons, get a
good Social Security number and pay taxes. And after seven or eight years, if
you do it right, then we will say, ‘Welcome.’ ”
The “family unity” campaign got under way amid national
developments on the immigration front.
This week, Rep. Lucille Royball-Allard, D-Calif., introduced legislation to
adopt “humane and legally enforceable standards” for immigration
detention facilities. The American Civil Liberties Union cited the death of Hiu
Lui Ng, a former immigration detainee at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility
in Central Falls, as one of three recent detainee deaths underscoring urgency
for the bill
Gutierrez told the audience he spoke with new U.S. Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano after a raid in Bellingham, Wash., this week.
“She was a breath of fresh air,” Gutierrez said of Napolitano.
“And you know what? She told me that raid was done with out her
knowledge, and she was deeply disturbed because of that action. She’s
going to take a complete review.” He said her response marked “a
new time, and a new day.”
After last night’s program, volunteers took further
“testimony” from families who may be at risk of deportation, and
people signed a petition calling for comprehensive immigration reform.
“We are going to take these testimonies, and when they reach
Washington, this is going to move a mountain,” said the Rev. Eliseo
Nogueras, president of the Hispanic Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island.
kziner@projo.com
http://www.projo.com/news/content/IMMIGRATION_CAMPAIGN_02-28-09_TBDG198_v14.378892c.html
PatriotWatchdog response:
This article and the conspiratory actions of Rep. Gutierrez to further undermine the Constitution of the United States are perfect examples of "give an inch, lose a mile."
The 14th Amendment never intended for the simple birthing of a child on American soil to garner automatic citizenship. Regretabbly, over the course of time the men and women entrusted with upholding the letter and spirit of the Constitution have failed to give due diligence to the requirements of the job they were hired to do. According to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Amendments to it are supposed to be interpretted in the context of the dialog in which they were written and lawfully ratified.
The drafters of the 14th Amendment never intended to give citizenship to children born of illegal aliens. If the Ambassador of Spain has a child here, according to the Constitution, that child is a citizen of Spain, not the United States. If We the People didn't want to give that Ambassador's child U.S. Citizenship, do you think We the People would give citizenship to the child born of illegal alien foreign nationals?
The Ambassador is a guest in our country and we don't automatically give his child U.S. Citizenship.
Who in their right mind thinks we should give citizenship to the child of someone who is NOT a guest in our country?
Rep. Gutierrez would have you believe that the child of illegal alien invaders is special, privileged. He is not. Rep. Gutierrez is wrong.
American citizens whose state legislators voted to ratify an amendment that prohibited the Ambassodor's son from being a citizen, also prohibited the child of illegal aliens from being born a U.S. citizen.
There are a few lessons to be learned here. Because We the People have failed to enforce the 14th Amendment in the context in which is was ratified, people like Rep. Gutierrez have siezed the inch, and now want us to not only give the children born of illegal alien foreign nationals citizenship, but also the foreign national parents, whether they are here legally or not.
The problem with that is the child of a foreign national falls under the "jurisdiction" of his/her home country. Their "equal protection" is served by the Ambassador and the consulate of his home country. That is true whether he or she is here legally or not. The reason the consulate is a good idea is so that the laws of both countries can be respected and upheld with due diligence to the humanitarian rights of individuals, and to protect the separate, but not always equal sovereign rights of their respective citizens.
This arrangement makes for good neighbors on the global scale. If all the countries of the world had the same laws, there would be no foreigners, anywhere you went.
Our elected officials' failure to honor the letter and intent of the 14th Amendment is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.
It is probably true that Rep. Gutierrez knows that already. If we won't let a murderer profit from his crime by not allowing him to reap the rewards of writing and selling a book about the murder, why should we give the illegal alien the reward of being allowed to stay in our country simply because they've mastered the art of timely breeding?!
It is absurd. Since, in my humble opinion Rep. Gutierrez is a very smart and shrewd man, I'm going to give him credit that he knows damned well what the Constitution says, and what it means, but that he is choosing to water down the facts and fertilize the fiction of "anchor-baby" citizenship.
By doing so, he knowingly is violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Luis Gutierrez is knowingly engaging in insurrection and rebellion against the Constitution, and is giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Constitution, and is by definition a traitor. If his colleagues on the Hill had a spine, he would be impeached, and rendered inelligible to ever hold public office again. That is what the Constitution says.
14th Amendment, Section 3 states:
"No person shall be a
Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice
President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or
under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress,
or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature,
or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution
of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against
the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by
a two-thirds vote of each House remove such disability."
Why is this man still in office, one might ask?
The families he is SWORN to protect are U.S. Citizens, not foreign nationals. If he wants to help foreign nationals become citizens, there are legal and lawful ways in which he might try to do that. He could have chosen to lobby for amending the Constitution, or he could choose to lobby for amnesty for the entire planet, so that anyone could live here regardless of where they were born, merely because they like it here.
He could have done many things within the restrictions and guidelines of HIS employee handbook, namely, that pesky U.S. Constitution. Instead, Rep. Gutierrez, and many others have chosen to ignore the handbook, distort its meaning, or plea to our humanitarian natures hoping we too will ignore the handbook,
If neither the employer (We the People) nor the employee (Rep. Gutierrez) are going to pay any attention to the employee handbook (the Constitution), then it isn't worth the paper its written on, and we'd just as well wipe our proverbial butts with it one last time before we flush it down the toilet.
Enforcing our laws only when they are convenient, or to satisfy special interests or agendas are how civilized nations become chaotic bastians of anarchy.
This sticky birthright citizenship issue keeps getting stickier by the minute the moment you buy into Rep. Gutierrez's misguided proclamation that the children born of parents illegally in our country are natural born citizens. No matter how many times he makes that claim, it will remain untrue.
If consenting adults whose citizenship is not of the same country have a child, how do they decide where the child lives? Should the child live in country A, or country B? The children born of illegal alien parents are not slaves. They are free to return to the sovereign country from which their parents came. Parents deported are free to take their children with them. In fact, they should.
If at some point in time, the citizens of the United States decide to alter the 14th Amendment to first allow children born of foreign nationals on our soil illegally to be automatic citzens, and to further allow their parents to stay here, then that would become the obligatory law of the land.
Currently, that is not the case.
If the only thing Melissa Arias wishes is, "...to not get separated from" her father, then the question she should be asking isn't can her dad stay, but "can she go with him?" Rep. Gutierrez is using this child, as is the church in the most shameful of ways in an attempt to usurp the law of the land, and the Constitution from which that law was derived.
Since President Obama is in such a budget-cutting mood that he's chosen to reduce or remove the tax-deductability of many charitable donations, then perhaps he should also remove the tax-exempt status of churches and other non-profits such as that of the Hispanic Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island. They, along with Rep. Gutierrez have conspired to undermine and subvert the Constitution. Any monies that Rep. Gutierrez, (or anyone else for that matter) "earmarked" in legislation to support the Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island, or groups like them, is a direct violation of the 14th Amendment's Section 4. You can not pick and choose which parts of the 14th Amendment you are going to enforce.
14th Amendment, Section 4 states:
“The
validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including
debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing
insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United
States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt incurred in aid of
insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss
or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall
be held illegal and void.”
The United States can not pay the bills for the usurpers and conspirators who seek to undermine the validity of the Constitution or the sovereignty of the United States. It says so in plain English. I didn't write it, but I READ IT.
According to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the laws written from it are supposed to be written in a fashion such that the common man can understand it, and that we shouldn't need Constitutional lawyers to interpret it for us. All the Founding Fathers wanted us to need to have was common sense.
Does Rep. Gutierrez have any common sense at all? I think he does. I think he knows exactly what he is doing, as does the good Reverand Nogueres, president of Rep. Gutierrez's co-conspirator special interest group.
When the legal parents of a legal child find themselves unable to live with one another in this day and time, the child usually goes to one or the other parent, or they share joint custody. If they can't decide that amongst themselves, then, and only then, in the best interest of the child, the state steps in and ajudicates that decision.
If the parents happen to be citizens of different countries, then they, and they alone set themselves up for a problem about where the child might rest its head should the parents ever fall out of favor with one another. When those parents find themselves in a squabble over who gets custody of the child, and one or the other parents is illegally in the country in which they find themselves squabbling, or if the illegal parent is repatriated to the country he or she is actually a citizen of, then just as before, the parents, and the parents alone put themselves in that situation.
Why would any parent abandon his or her child and not take it with them when they left a country they have no right to be in?
If you went to France on vacation, and broke their laws while you were there, and they arrested you, and kicked you out, wouldn't you take your kids back home with you? Would not France make sure your kid was safe and delivered to the airport, sea port, or border crossing where they repatriated the parent being deported?
Of course they would. And so does the United States of America. All this pandering sympathy by Rep. Gutierrez is a ruse, and a lie. He wants us all to believe We the People are the bad guys because we want our laws enforced, and our rights protected. He is spitting on the Constitution and his oath of office.
Luis would have you cry a river for a parent who would threaten abandoning their child in a foreign country rather than take it back home with them. Perhaps they should just hold their breath until they turn blue, like a spoiled kid wanting another piece of candy, or dessert before he finished his vegetables.
I have a message for Rep. Gutierrez. He should stop, read the Constitution he swore to God and Country he would uphold and defend, and then do his job. His job is not to subvert, undermine, or conspire to cause "insurrection or rebellion" against that document. He should not "give aid or comfort" to those that do.
That is his job. That is the oath he took. If Rep. Gutierrez wants to start a "family unity" campaign under the restrictions of the office to which he is sworn, in the context of reuniting families, he might consider going to the hardware store and buying 9,000 shovels.
It would take roughly 9,000 shovels to "reunite" all the American families with their loved ones who are dead and buried because he failed to protect the citizens of Illinois and the United States against invasion. The United States does not deport immigrants! Rep. Gutierrez should stop calling illegal alien foreign insurgents immigrants. That too is a lie. The blood is on his hands.
The Constitution guarantees us protection against invasion.
Article IV, Section 4 states:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion."
Had Rep. Gutierrez simply focused his energies on upholding that part of the Constitution, we might not have found ourselves in the 14th Amendment arena at all.
Surely anyone with two brain cells swirling around in their head can see the slippery slope we encourage when we ignore one part of the Constitution, and then another, and then another. We end up with chaos, anarchy, and loss of life, liberty, and any hope of happiness.
Benjamin Franklin said, "A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."
While the Illinois Legislature is in an "impeaching" mood, they should consider sending Rep. Gutierrez packing like they did former Governor Blago.
There is no difference between these two men. They both usurped the offices they were entrusted with by the lawful citizenry of Illinois.
Oh, and let's not forget Rep. "Lucille Ball" Allard from the article above. Lucy has introduced legislation after conspiring with the ACLU because three illegal alien foreign national insurgents died while in custody. While the deaths are sad, Rep. Allard has got to be joking.
Three? She's whining and introducing legislation because of three deaths of illegal alien criminals in custody simply because they are illegal aliens and happened to die in custody? Wow! I wonder how much legislation she'll introduce to stop the horrific loss of 65,000 Americans killed by illegal aliens since 9/11/2001 when she finds out about them?
In all fairness, if those three deaths were a result of mistreatment, or violations of those individuals "human" rights, then those responsible should be brought to justice.Where is Rep. Allard's and the ACLU's outrage over the tens of thousands of Americans who died at the hands of the same demographic she is introducing legislation to protect?
I would suggest she too should be impeached.
The President and Members of the United States Congress do NOT have the authority to grant special protection to illegal aliens. They DO have the privilege of granting special protection to their employer, We the People. Since reading is apparently dificult for them, I would suggest strongly that Reps. Allard and Gutierrez visit http://operationbodycount.com and http://voiac.org, and look in the faces of the American citizens who paid for the that betrayal with their lives!
You can trust me on this one. They'll find more than three deaths they should be alarmed about. I know it says near the end of the oath of office "to the best of their ability," but if this is the best they can do, we should take the advice of North Carolina's favorite son.
Governor Zeb Vance stated in 1876,
"When you find you have scoundrels and scalawags in office, you need to turn them out, and keep turning them out until you send honorable men to Washington."
We must have elected officials who unwaveringly put AMERICA FIRST!