I was in Paris last November reporting on the alarming immigrant riots and mass demonstrations. I hardly imagined that within a few months we would be witnessing illegal immigrants and their supporters staging the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. 500,000 marchers jammed the streets in Los Angeles, 350,000 to 500,000 in Dallas 3–500,000 in Chicago, just to name a few cities.
Frenchmen in Paris said they had been warning that the lid was going to explode off of the immigration problem that has been building up since the early 1960s when the Algerians, Moroccans, and other citizens of the former French colonies migrated in waves to France. The largest number of immigrants there, legal or illegal, are Muslims.
Americans with whom I spoke while researching an illegal immigration series, including several border patrol agents, were giving the same warnings– that there would be an inevitable uprising of the illegal immigration population if something was not done. Former Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado in an interview went as far as to warn of the destruction of America, largely due to unassimilated immigrants if the problem is not resolved. But I'm not sure anyone expected the eruption so soon, or on such a colossal scale.
Most of the country was stunned by the magnitude of the well–planned turnout. Who were the orchestrators? And how did the situation get so out of hand, that the protestors felt that they could bully U.S. politicians and citizens into getting their way?
Jerry Seper of the Washington Times reports that leaders of one of the key organizers of the protests, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) formed after 9–11, are tied to the hard core Workers World Party, a Marxist organization that "expressed support for dictators Kim Jong–il of North Korea and Saddam Hussein of Iraq."
Our former law enforcement source confirmed that Marxist literature was displayed openly and being sold during a demonstration in Utah.
The protests are "supported by all the major Mexican organizations including League of United American Citizens (LULAC), National Council of LaRaza (NCLR), and Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)," Team America.org reports. "These groups get funding from corporations and American taxpayers. Elected officials attend their events and accept their awards."
U.S. Patriots Outraged and Offended
The protestors here may not be torching hundreds of cars like they do in France, but protestors were desecrating the U.S. flag in the first cycle of the demonstrations. To many Americans, those were acts of equal violence.
"Flying OUR FLAG upside–down under the flag of another country is DEPLORABLE!" one outraged retired Lt. Colonel wrote on www.Newsmax.com
"I watched the ‘act of horror and disgust as illegal aliens victoriously waved tens of thousands of Mexican flags, shouted anti–American slogans," he wrote. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High."
Others were threatening to take the U.S. territory back "from the Europeans" or wearing tee shirts that said "Stolen Lands" and carrying signs that said, "You stole it and you know it!!" Some cursed the Alamo.
Outraged citizens bombarded their Senator's offices with faxes and letters demanding blocking amnesty to the illegal population. Grassroots Americans from Pennsylvania, in just one example, reported flooding state senators offices with hundred of faxes and Senate offices in Washington D.C. with more than 130,000 faxes, and countless phone calls before the Easter Recess.
U.S. citizens expressed outrage at the media clips of the brazen show of the Mexican Flag and the desecration of the U.S. Flag. Conservative talking heads broadcast their messages.
The organizers of the pro–illegal immigration protest felt the angry pulse of the American people after the first round of protests at the end of March.
"These guys had the demonstrations well planned," a retired Utah Law Enforcement agent who attended two rounds of protests a few days apart at the end of March told us.
"In the second phase of the demonstrations, I saw a truck handing out dozens of flags to the protestors, so we could see American flags that were waved outnumber the Mexican or other country flags."
"A few hours later, the trash cans were filled with discarded American flags," he said.
The volcano had been building up for years, as the streams of illegal migrants turned into a flood. They came by the hundreds of thousands until even official counts, if those mean much, exceeded 11 million. Non–official credible estimates reach 15–18 million.
1.2 million illegal immigrants were apprehended by the border patrol just in the last year and estimates are that the same number made it through.
The year before over one million were arrested, a 25% increase over the year before that.
The mass migration continued in spite of the fact that border patrol agents were increased to over 12,000 from 7,000 after 9–11 Over the last few decades, the problem magnified and took on such an enormous complexity that the immigrant issue may be impossible to fix.
A Tangled Web
One major complication is that thousands of pregnant women sneak across the border to give birth to children on U.S. territory. Therefore, the children automatically become U.S. citizens. Intermarriage with U.S. citizens became commonplace. In 2005, the Pew Center calculated that in 6.6 million families here, one of the parents was an illegal immigrant. Two thirds of their children, over 3 million, were born as U.S. citizens.
380,000 children are born to illegal parents per year, according to Numbers U.S.A.: "Thousands of pregnant women ready to deliver come to the United States each year from countries as far away as South Korea and as near as Mexico so that they can give birth on U.S. soil. Some come legally as temporary visitors; others enter illegally. Once the child is born, they get a U.S. birth certificate and passport for the child, and their future link to this country is established and irreversible."
Another snag is that countless reckless U.S. companies who have to account to no one really, rely on the cheap labor. Wages as low as $2 an hour, often paid in cash, enable businesses owners to fatten their own bank accounts.
"Your average illegal immigrant doesn't pay taxes or social security," one law enforcement agent told us. They get paid in cash and the employer doesn't have to pay taxes on their cash earnings. He just writes it off as casual labor. Federal law does not require reporting of income less than $600 so a lot of these guys get paid as day labor. They come in the next day with a difdifferent name or one guy will hire a bunch of other day laborers to help with the job he is hired for. The employer pays cash to the recruiter without knowing the identity of the laborers. No one recognizes these guys as they work the circuit. They also can go buy phony Social Security cards and other forms of ID. They don't pay taxes with those phony cards."
"Dependence on Cheap Labor"
These companies, as well as landlords and other businesses that profit from the illegal immigrants are unwilling to give up the cheap illegal immigrant labor. Ten million illegal aliens are on their payrolls in one form or another each year. The owners of the companies lobby and contribute to politicians who waffle when any crises to address the illegal immigrant problem arises.
The level of abuse of illegal immigration reaches the obscene. The complicity of public and law enforcement officials is often subtle.
Take the case that National Public Radio reported in April of a few Japanese restaurants owned by Chinese and Taiwanese U.S. citizens in Baltimore, for example. The owners drove Mercedes and lived in up scale houses in the suburbs. They could have hired U.S. citizens, but they imported poor Indonesians, Chinese, El Savadoreans, put them in small seedy rooms on dirty mattresses and paid them $2 an hour.
The illegal immigrants "weren't in a position to complain," according to prosecutors.
The Mayor of Baltimore, his wife and the former police commissioner frequented the restaurants. The problem according to the Prosecutor? U.S. dependence on cheap labor.
In Fear of the Activists
The Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 administrations as well as agencies and legislators under their guard didn't dare take action for fear of loosing financial and political backing.
Fed up, frustrated citizens on both sides of the debate have taken matters into their own hands.
The Minutemen who organized informal patrols at the border were splashed all over the news since they started operating.
Their opponents joined them to ‘monitor' obstruct or berate them.
As the illegal immigration debate got hotter and hotter, the Congress was finally forced to act. Their proposals were all over the place, do we give amnesty? Do we build a wall? Do we send all the illegal immigrants back? Of course all of those proposals had to be filtered through the poll barometers.
A former border patrol chief told us that the 1986 amnesty which legitimized three million illegals, had not only failed, it was an invitation for Illegal immigrants to come over and if they hung on long enough, some other administration would cave. The threats authorities made to prosecute those hiring illegal immigrants were hollow according to the agent.
Last year, the House passed a bill proposing a 700–mile fence along one third of the Southern border. Illegal aliens would be classified as felons and those smuggling them in or trafficking illegal immigrants could face felony charges. Non Mexican illegal immigrants would be automatically detained when entering the United States. Those who trafficked them in would be put in jail. Carried to an extreme, those who aided them would also face felony charges. Employers would have to access a Social Security database within six years or face prosecution
Opponents to the bill began to mobilize.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles joined the loud protestors. The Church leaders could be faced with felony charges.
Cash Cow Expats
A panicked Mexican President Fox called the proposal to build a fence everything from "stupid" "disgraceful" and "shameful," to a violation of human and labor rights. He made it clear that the illegal migrant ‘heroes' would find ways to cross the border. He had been helping them all along, allowing flyers guiding the migrants to circulate in Mexico.
In 2005, legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean sent home $45 billion in remittances, $17 billion of that to Mexico.
Interesting, coming from a president whose policy is to put Mexico's illegal immigrants into a detention center then fly them back home.
He invited officials from Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama as well as Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic to meet on three occasions to figure out how they could bully the United States if the House bill proposing a fence passed in the Senate.
They met in Mexico City, in Guatemala and Colombia From January to mid–March, trying to figure out which US politicians and senators they could pressure.
Loud, massive, relentless demonstrations were in the works.
In the meantime, politicians facing reelection noticed polls such as Zogby that showed over 60% of Americans want stricter immigration laws and enforcement.
A Bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee proposed granting work permits and a road to citizenship to the millions of illegal immigrants. Those who lived here for over five years would have a good chance at citizenship and supposedly those who have lived here for less than two years don't have much of a chance.
A guest worker program for a million and a half farm workers was proposed.
The Pro illegal immigration crowds cheered.
The convoluted Senate Judiciary Committee proposal included:
• 7–8 million illegal immigrants who have been here more than five years would receive a renewable work visa. They would have to pass a criminal background check, pay two $1,000 fines and be required to learn English before they could apply for citizenship.
• The approximately three million illegal immigrants who have been here for two to five years could go back across the border and apply for one of the 450,000 green cards issued yearly.
• The unskilled laborers are the lucky ones because they would get 300,000 of the green cards. The rest of the unlucky illegal immigrants, that number approximately two million who have been here for less than two years would have to leave.
"Right. As if anyone could figure how long an illegal immigrant had been here," a law enforcement agent in Georgia told us.
‘These guys get hotel receipts, rent receipts, and all sorts of other forged receipts proving they had been here for a long time," he said.
We Want It All
But the pro immigration folks didn't like the part of the proposal that calls for securing the border from future masses of illegal migrants.
They especially didn't like the proposal to hire 12, 000 more border patrol agents, doubling the current numbers and the proposition to build a "virtual fence" with high tech unmanned aerial vehicles, sensors and cameras. The requirement for foolproof identification that could not be forged or doctored up was also unacceptable.
Illegal immigrant employers especially didn't like the part of the plan that would require them to request legitimate documents or they would face penalties.
Critics, including outspoken Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo decried the "miserable", totally impractical, convoluted policy an administrative nightmare.
Throughout the Congressional and Senate drama and theatrics, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and their supporters who are not going to settle for anything less than citizenship, work permits, and open borders, were setting the stage for action.
At the end of March they took to the streets in hordes. They hit the pavements again in April.
The Congress is on recess at the time of this writing. Nothing has been resolved.
No telling how long the series of demonstrations is going to last, or how violent they will become. Gov. Lamm's warnings of how an uncontrolled illegal immigration policy with tens of millions of unassimilated, undocumented immigrants could lead to the destruction of America have taken on a sense of urgency.
Dr. Martin Brass is an international lawyer and longtime SOF contributor.
The opinions expressed above do not necessarily represent the views of Soldier of Fortune.
