Limited information

People commmenting on this blog and in general conversation make claims that they know who is illegal and who is not. In most cases such statements are without fact. The problem isn’t just limited to people interested in this topic. It involves others as well.

For example, when you look at a story in the news you might hazard a guess about the immigration status of the suspect in custody. Some folks will look at a Hispanic name and decide for themselves that he is illegal. Others would say the way to tell is a hyphenated Hispanic name, indicating the suspect still carried on the tradition of the old country.

Some people would look at the situation and simply say it is racist to even consider the immigration status. Why do we blame these undocumented people for all the crime? They are better citizens than citizens. And there are illegal aliens from England and Canada. It isn’t strictly a Hispanic problem.

Now, let’s look at the chain of information. First of all, the police department has to check for us to know if the suspect is here illegally.

Next, they have to release that information to the press.

Then the reporter needs to pick up on it and write about it.

Then the editor of the paper has to allow it to go into print.

See how fragile that chain is? Anywhere along the way that little bit of information can be lost.

Now, as a side note to all of this we should be aware that when we read the police blotter or police reports section in the newspaper it is an incorrect assumption to think you are looking at all the crime in town. Far from it.

It works like this: The newspaper assigns a reporter to cover the police department. Every day the reporter will walk into the police station and take a look at the list of arrests. There will be car accidents and traffic tickets and shoplifting and noise complaints and dozens of other items large and small.

What gets printed in the paper is all at the whim of the reporter, or perhaps guided by his boss. The paper might be focusing on teens and alcohol so the reporter will be keen on crimes involving drinking parties. Or they might be interested in hit-and-run car accidents.

Of course, violent crimes will get more attention. So will crimes involving family members of local notables.

My point is, you are not seeing all the crimes. The information is well-filtered. There is nothing nefarious about it; the newspaper has limited space for such things and the readers have limited interest in them.

County jails and other law enforcement agencies do keep information on line about who is incarcerated. There is a fair amount of information available in some cases. Here’s Kane County Jail’s roster: http://www.kanecountyjail.org/roster/roster_search.aspx
Note that they do not show immigration status about the inmates.

I’m not sure what would happen if I walked into the Elgin City Jail and asked to see the arrest log for the last 24 hours. I’m guessing I wouldn’t be allowed to see it. They would tell me to fill out a Freedom of Information request, wait seven days, and have a high probability of being denied. In one city jail in southern California I could. And the immigration status would be listed. But I think that is the exception of transparency.

Why do we even care? Because 30% of the foreign-born are illegal aliens. Make no mistake here, it is the role of government to know who is here illegally and do something about it. They have failed on both counts.

Such failure has led to false assumptions about the immigration status of all sorts of people. The greatest impact the city can have in the areas of discrimination and assimilation is to clean up this town. If we had trust that the city was in control of the situation we could go back to the way we were five years ago. We would assume that everyone living here was legal and that would be a non-issue.

The truth is that illegal aliens have been living here for 40 years. We had an active “Centro do Informacion” during the 1986 amnesty because we had illegal aliens here.

What has changed since 9/11 is that the public has come to realize how bad the situation has become. And we now know that the government has done nothing about it.

Someone has to ask the questions and take action. As much as Schock would like to think only the Feds can do it, that is incorrect. Doing nothing is not an option. It is the role of government to police this problem. Otherwise, people will think what they will. And too often they will be wrong.

Elgin Art Festival

To serve and protect

It was quite an eye-opener for us to hear the mayor on the radio October 2nd. He was quite critical of the 287g program and made this comment:

“When we adopt measures like that that are more symbolic than substantive, we do put fear unnecessarily in segments of the community that we serve. On almost every police car in every municipality it says two things on the door; 'To serve and protect.' Well, we can’t serve a segment of the population that’s afraid of us because they question the motives of certain actions that we take. So I think measures like 287g do more harm than good for our law enforcement officials. That’s why our police department recommended against its adoption.”

Well, our first question has to do with fear. Who is afraid of 287g? No one who is in this country LEGALLY needs to be afraid of 287g. As for PROVING that you are here illegally, all green card holders are warned right from the start that they must have their documents on their person at all times. It is a requirement.

So, we don’t understand the fear part of his argument.

Later in the comment he talks about serving a protecting. Does Mayor Schock realize that in allowing the illegal aliens to live here without enforcement of the law he is serving and protecting them? And in doing so he is failing to serve and protect US, the Legal Americans. That’s the whole point.

We are not chopped liver, Mr. Schock. We deserve to be served and protected. We deserve peaceful enjoyment of our city free from loud parties, drunk drivers, people without insurance…we deserve to drive down our streets without having to take turns or pull over to the curb…we deserve to have morning Kindergarten rather than reschedule our lives to accommodate anchor babies…we deserve a hospital on the east side of town where we don’t have to wait three hours in the emergency room…

In short, we are looking for a little service and protection in exchange for our tax dollars.

A Chinese Menu

Doug sent this e-mail to the mayor and city council...
We’ve seen articles in the Courier News, Daily Herald and Chicago Tribune recently about ICE ACCESS. We are pleased to hear Elgin elected officials willing to do something, ANYTHING, about criminal illegal aliens in town.

But ICE ACESS is getting way more credit than it deserves. It is essentially a Chinese Menu of all the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) services local agencies might want to use. Nothing more. It is not a program at all; It is a list of the programs ICE has to offer.

Well, maybe it isn’t a menu really. With a menu, you get to order what you want. In contrast, with ICE ACCESS they tell you what you can have. “No soup for you!”

Try it yourself. When you sit down with them to discuss ICE ACCESS, point to the CAP officer option and tell them you want one of those. They will say, “That program is for state prisons and county jails. You can’t have a CAP.”

Here’s Elgin’s answer to that. Ask them, “What does Angel Garcia do at ICE?” They probably won’t know the answer. You can tell them, “Angel Garcia, a federal immigration enforcement officer, works full-time at the Costa Mesa city jail, checking the immigration status of each arrestee.” (from Orange County Register 12/17/07) Be sure to emphasize the word “CITY” so they understand you.

Maybe they’ll offer you support with your customs problem, or your border control, or maybe even intellectual property rights. Those would be useful here. NOT!

You could use some help training officers in spotting bogus documents.

As for two rather useful menu items, the Law Enforcement Support Center and Operation Community Shield, there is nothing new about them. Elgin is very familiar with them. We already know about them and are using them.

I guess the main question Marty Price can answer for you is, “So what is new about ICE ACCESS?”

And the real question ought to be, “Do you have 287g forms with you?”

It's a Federal Matter

It’s always a good idea to begin with the things we agree on. We agree with the city that Washington has allowed this problem to get out of hand. We agree that the feds don’t have the resources to handle the problem.

Lest we begin planning a pity party for Immigration, be it known that some members of congress have been sounding the alarm for years. For example, did you know that legislation was introduced five years ago to convert closed military bases into detention facilities? And that congress ignored the request?

So don’t feel bad when Bush and congress cry about not having enough beds for the deportation program.

And they just removed the funding for more border fence next year so that project won’t happen.

Now, our local contact with ICE is a man by the name of Marty Price. I’m sure he’s a delightful fellow. I’m also sure he’s trying hard to give Elgin some attention along with all the other local agencies he deals with. There are just not enough resources to go around.

But when all is said and done, Elgin needs to take a stand. We can’t just go along with the feds and what they are willing to give us. That isn’t enough.

We agree this is a problem caused by the federal government and AFLA's approach makes demands on them to fix it.

How so? As an employer Elgin needs to push the envelope and go for the IMAGE program. Our pressure will help resolve the problem between Immigration and Social Security.

Our 100% screening request shines the spotlight on the criminal aliens in town. We now have a number every month documenting who is illegal and how many. It also creates a paper trail back to Immigration if someone is released to commit more crime.

The 287g program also points back to the federal government. The message is that we are willing to help them do the job of finding and processing the illegals in our community. Still, the feds are the ones who take care of hauling them away.

The CAP Officer request is the pinnacle of federal involvement. They have someone in our jail; they do the screening; they handle the paperwork. In short, the feds are enforcing immigration laws, just like they are supposed to.

Checking city contracts? Same thing. It opens the door for workplace raids and investigations by the IRS.

Indeed these are federal matters. AFLA wants city government to get more involved and make more demands that Washington clean up their mess.

Of course, if our city leaders don’t see illegal aliens as a problem we have a long way to go. If they think the presence of the "undocumented" in our community enhances our economy and provides diversity…well then we are miles apart on the issue.

Is ICE ACCESS as good as 287g?

The response from the mayor and city council to our request for 287g was a bait-and-switch. They said, we’ll do ICE ACCESS. Well, is it a good deal for the citizens of Elgin?

In a word, NO!

ICE ACCESS is a menu of programs available from Homeland Security. (In fact, 287g is in there.) Part two of ICE ACCESS consists of someone from ICE sitting down with the Elgin Police and offering parts of ACCESS that might work for us.

That sounds reasonable enough, but we still want the city to sign up for 287g! We don’t want ICE to sit down with Chief Womack and talk her out of applying for 287g. Time’s a wastin’, folks. If we applied today it is a two year waiting list. And it will only get longer.

The other thing about ICE ACCESS is that there isn’t much of anything new they have to offer. There is the CAP officer program which our elected officials already nixed. There are programs that really only apply at borders and ports (like BEST and Customs).

There are Fugitive Operations Teams. These guys go around and pick up those absconders who defied deportation orders. That’s old news. The Herald did a story on that team back in May.

There’s intellectual property rights. I met those guys at a business convention a year ago. Not much impact in Elgin.

The LESC is the database we’d use for 100% screening. The city has been using that for at least 18 months now. (They just don’t use it as much as we’d like and they aren’t accountable to anyone for their screening.)

Operation Community Shield was just in the news a couple of weeks ago when they did a gang sweep in the area. 21 bad guys were picked up by ICE. Carpentersville worked closely with them. Not a bad program; just no new substance.

When you go point-by-point with the ICE ACCESS program we either already know about it or it doesn’t apply to us. In other words, if we adopt ICE ACCESS it will be business as usual in Elgin. Nothing will change. And I’m sorry to say I feel that is exactly the way the city council likes it.

And on the face of it Homeland Security told the world that they created the ACCESS the package for one reason: “…in response to the widespread interest from local law enforcement agencies that have requested ICE partnerships through the 287(g) program.”

If you get the chance, let our elected leaders know that we still want 287g, and the sooner the better.

Here’s a link explaining ICE ACCESS: http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/070821dc.htm

The oath of office

“I am a firm believer of the United States Constitution, and I swore an oath to uphold that very Constitution upon my election.” ~ an Elgin City Councilman

Every member of the city council and everyone who wears a badge swears an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

But how far does that oath go?

For example, the mayor admitted that he knows of illegal aliens working in the city as well as employers who knowingly hired illegals. On the radio October 2, 2007 he said, “Of course there have been employee and employer abuses, but the key factor to remember is this; In the Chicago metropolitan area since 1970, 96% of the population growth in the entire six county Chicago metropolitan area has been as a result of Latino immigration. No immigration; no new workers. Our region would have lost jobs because of its inability to provide or find workers.”

And we have heard from council members that businessmen in town have approached them about this illegal alien issue and urged them not to get tough on illegals because they need them as employees.

And surely they know that contractors are hiring illegals for road crews and landscaping on city projects.

So how far does this oath of office go? We certainly hope that Schock notified Immigration when he became aware of those “employee and employer abuses”. And any business owner who even suggests to an elected official that he is hiring illegal aliens ought to be reported to ICE.

Some of our leaders worked in the school system. They were under strict orders to report child abuse wherever they suspected it. They were “mandatory reporters.” One would think that people who took an oath of office would be mandatory reporters of immigration law abuses. Surely if they were aware of a kidnapping or a weapons violation, they would have a moral obligation (if not a legal one) to tell the authorities about it.

But in the last part of his radio quote above Schock explains why illegal aliens aren’t reported: Greed. Go back up five paragraphs and read it again. Cheap labor trumps ethics.

The restaurant owner who calls his councilman and requests that the city “go easy” on the illegals is part of the problem. The councilman ought to report that conversation to Immigration.

Schock blames Washington for turning a blind eye to the problem. We agree with him 100%. But it would appear that our local leaders are guilty of the same thing.

Wrapped around the flag

The mayor himself and at least one council member have talked about the Constitution and the issue of illegal aliens.

Mayor Schock’s comment: “As a final note, if one is permitted, I would add that emphasis on 'legal' begins with the United States Constitution, which establishes the powers and duties of the federal and state governments. Local governments are not dealt with and derive their powers from the state. The Constitution is clear about which branch of government has the authority to control our borders, and deal with citizenship. The forefathers foresaw how unwise it would be to delegate such powers to the states. If we are unhappy with the outcome, two avenues, under the law and in keeping with the Constitution, are available: Amend the Constitution or replace those in Congress and the White House. That is how a democratic republic works." (Courier News, 12/13/07)

Perhaps Schock fails to realize that we DO have laws on the books against illegal aliens. We have laws about their very presence in our communities. We have laws against hiring illegal aliens. And his talk about tolerating illegals who live and work here fly in the face of those laws.

Like when he was an apologist for them on the panel in October. There he said, “But, and I think this is an important point that gets lost in the debate, and again comes back to the failure of our federal government in Washington DC. For years the federal government has turned a blind eye, pretending not to see, as millions of people have streamed across the border. Now, there may be different reasons depending on different political persuasions but the fact of the matter is no one can claim ignorance of the fact that people were streaming across the border without appropriate documentation.”

“Then after having had, and almost invited, millions of people to enter our country, to come up with draconian measures that’s going to punish those people once they are here is to attack the problem from the wrong end. I think everyone wants an orderly process. Every country wants to know who enters and leaves its borders. But the fact of the matter is the economy of the United States is dependent upon and grown as a result of the immigration. The unfortunate thing is that this has had to occur too often in an illegal environment rather than a legal, orderly process.” (Chicago Matters Broadcast 10/2/07)

We ask you, where in that statement is Mayor’s Schock’s support of the existing laws in this country? He’s saying, “Too bad that they came here illegally. Let’s not require them to leave.”

Further, he and others on the council talk as though our proposals are somehow illegal (or at least they want you to think they are).

What is illegal about verifying Social Security numbers? Is 287g against federal law? How about the CAP officer program? Or 100% screening? All of those programs and functions were passed into law by “those in Congress and the White House, ” as Schock states.

Further, those same people in Washington have repeatedly averred that local police departments have inherent authority in immigration matters.

Please don’t hide behind the laws of the land, Mr. Schock; because those laws clearly state that you have far more authority in this matter than you are willing to exercise. And may we suggest that the reason you won’t exercise that authority is political correctness. You talk about serving and protecting the illegal alien population yet you ignore the needs of the citizens.

A Letter to the Editor - Never Published

(Doug sent this in on December 5th but it never was published. We thought you'd enjoy reading it.)
Key to the discussion of illegal aliens is the question of criminality. Some would call sneaking into the United States a “victimless crime” and suggest we should allow them to stay and give them legal status.

Others cry out to our elected officials, “What part of the word ILLEGAL don’t you understand?”

There was an interesting confluence of information in the Daily Herald on December 5th. First, you had a report about immigration enforcement and the fact that our government is getting better at finding and deporting those fugitives who have been ordered deported and failed to comply. Nationwide the government found and deported over 30,000 of those fugitives last year, up from 15,000 the year before.

But there is a seemingly endless supply of people who have been through the appeals process and ordered removed. How many? Over 600,000 people as of August 2006. It kind of makes the 30,000 number seem insignificant, doesn’t it?

The article quoted a spokesman from an organization called the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. They are an advocacy group with field organizers who help put together protest rallies. Those who remember the crowd on the lawn at village hall in Carpentersville last year know exactly what the group does.

Here’s what their director told the Herald: "There's no question there's a huge increase in deportations," Hoyt said. "And an overwhelming number of those they're deporting, their only crime is working."

But let’s take a careful look at that statement, “Their only crime is working.” The people spoken of in the article were fugitives. They had their day in court and they disappeared rather than report for deportation. That sounds like a crime to me.

But simply getting a job presents some unusual obstacles for someone who is here illegally. He can either use false documents or he can work for cash, “off the books” as they say. Either way, he has committed crimes in the process of working.

Which brings me to the second article in the Herald. It was an article about two Rolling Meadows residents who had stolen the identity of a Carpentersville man and run up delinquent accounts in addition to using the ID to get jobs. Immigration has placed a hold on one of the men, indicating to me that there is something amiss with his residency status.

Now, about those people paid under the table. Bear Stearns Asset Management reported that four to six million jobs have shifted to the underground market and “The United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.”

As for the criminality of document fraud committed by illegal aliens, the United States Congress had a research study done about the laws involved. You paid for the study. You might as well read it.
Here’s the link: http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/news/2006,1018-crs.pdf

Each of us must answer for ourselves if illegal aliens are breaking the law and what the penalty should be. It seems to be a complex question in Washington. It really shouldn’t be that difficult to answer.

Sincerely,
Doug Heaton

No Free Lunch

U46 serves thousands of free lunches each day. But your dad is still right. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody paid for those lunches. The money goes through a federal department, but I wonder if it would make a difference if each home in Elgin got an invoice every 90 days for free lunch expenditures. Maybe if we saw the money coming out of our pockets, we’d think differently about it.

But we consider ourselves lucky to get a $600 tax refund, not entirely realizing that we gave the feds $5,000 during the year.

When it comes to illegal aliens in the workplace all sorts of otherwise intelligent people say, “If they weren’t here working for so cheap, it’d cost us a lot more money.” City contracts would be more expensive if we enforced the clause about not hiring illegals.

A BLT would be astronomical because illegals slaughter the hogs and pick the lettuce and tomatoes. Or so they say.

We all received an education from Dr. Barry Chiswick, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois Chicago. He was a panelist at the Hemmens back in October when they held that immigration forum. He sat next to Mayor Schock as I recall.

First, Chiswick explains the attraction of cheap, illegal labor: “You know, when I hire a lawn care service I would rather pay a lower price than a higher price. When I go to a restaurant, I would rather pay a lower price than a higher price. But in fact, native workers would otherwise do those jobs.”

Then, Chiswick tells us there is no free lunch, even in using illegal aliens for our labor. He says: “They’re paying the price and actually the rest of us are also paying the price through higher taxes because of the income transfers that go to low skilled immigrant workers and native workers whose earnings and incomes are lower because of the competition.”

Did you hear what he said? Native-born workers are paying the price, especially the low-skilled workers. Low-skilled workers are kids looking for their first job. Low-skilled workers are the poor citizens who otherwise turn to welfare or street crime to get by.

And did you hear that term “income transfers”? That’s a fancy way of saying we are subsidizing the illegal alien. He’s going to show up at the emergency room to be treated for a backache and we’ll pay $800 for it. How will we pay it? Through higher insurance rates and higher fee schedules at the hospital. And maybe we pay by losing our hospital on the east side of town.

We pay because the illegal alien lives with three other families and sends his kids to our schools. The taxes from that one house aren’t going to cover all the kids coming out of it, so our taxes go up to compensate.

This “income transfer” takes place every time we send a check to the insurance company. My policy says it is about $80 a year for uninsured motorist coverage, not to mention my rate being higher because I live in zip code 60120.

Those “income transfers” are all over the place and they aren’t being paid by the employer. They are hidden charges that mask the true cost of illegal labor.

In our Classroom section of www.legalamericans.net we’ve included a congressional testimony but Cornell Professor Vernon Briggs on the subject. You might enjoy reading it.

It is a mistake to think that the city contractor who hires illegals is passing the savings on to the city. It is also a mistake to think that you are beneficiary of the roofer who hires illegals. In both cases they bid the job just low enough to get it and pocket more profit for themselves. There’s an “income transfer” going to the crooked contractor who hires illegals in the first place. And if he’s paying them in cash we’re not even getting FICA or taxes from him. Bear Stearns says that amounts to $35 BILLION a year in lost revenue!
(Link: http://www.firecoalition.com/docs/bear%20stearns%20study.pdf)


But no matter. Things are cheaper when illegal aliens do the work and far too many of us are willing to look the other way.

AFLA is NOT willing to look the other way. It’s costing us money and it is just plain WRONG!

Foot-in-mouth Awards

AFLA bestows its first ever Foot-in-mouth Awards for political foolishness.

Third Place goes to Henry Haupt of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office who confirmed that they use the Social Security Online Verification System to verify identification before issuing a drivers license.

So why is it illegal (according to state law) for employers to use that database, but it’s OK to use it for issuing a license? Oops!

Second Place is awarded to the city council as a whole. Their responses on the AFLA questions were so repetitive they must have been scripted. Some examples repeated over and over were:
“…not do business with anyone who hires illegal aliens for over one year.”
“The city fully complies with all Social Security number verification requirements.”
"The official language of the state of Illinois is English.”
“ICE would not be interested in assigning a CAP officer…”
“The city of Elgin already has an ordinance that allows…”
“…70 percent to 80 percent of people cited for not producing proof of insurance actually have the insurance.”
“…ICE developed a new program called ICE Agreements of Cooperation and Communities to Enhance Safety and Security (ICE ACCESS).”
“…Elgin Police Department intends to expand immigration screening…”
Fellas, when everybody is thinking the same, nobody is thinking. You looked foolish making all the same comments. You were elected because of your unique way of looking at things, not because we like 7-0 votes all the time.

First Place goes to John Steffen who replied: “Having been involved with mortgage companies by practicing real estate law for 17 years I can relate that mortgage companies have been imposing ever stricter verification procedures when loans close, up to and including photo identification, something now required by the Patriot Act. This requirement also applies when a person opens a bank account.”

This statement came out less than a week after Luis Uribe entered a guilty plea to charges he used the same ID and credit history multiple times to sell houses IN ELGIN to illegal aliens. We’re finding it hard to believe that having a secretary photocopy a Social Security Card, then toss it in a file folder, amounts to much scrutiny.

So there you have it folks. We salute bureaucrats everywhere for their effective and efficient methods.

Proponents of Diversity

A few people in town are surprised when we say AFLA is a proponent of diversity. And they are even more surprised when we show them the U46 data on Elgin schools revealing that our current demographic situation is NOT diversity.

Perhaps they have a different definition of diversity. Here’s ours: Diversity is variety, multiformity, difference, unlikeness, variegation, heterogeneity.

People accuse us of being xenophobes, nativists, even racists.

But where is the diversity in a school like Sheridan Elementary? Here’s what it looks like from the 2007 School Report Card:
460 Hispanic Students
37 Black Students
13 White Students
10 Mixed or Other
8 Asian Students

If you look at ALL Elgin schools in U46 combined, you get percentages like this:
Hispanic 59%
White 27%
Black 10%
Asian 4%

What did Elgin schools look like ten years ago? In 1998 it was like this:
Hispanic 33%
White 50%
Black 12%
Asian 5%

That leads me to conclude that we are not only experiencing “white flight” from Elgin, but also an exodus of Black and Asian students as well. I call that the opposite of diversity.

We once had quite a Laotian population. I’ve attended ten graduation ceremonies at Elgin High, my first in 1993, my last in 2007. I can tell you that there were very few Laotian names read at the Sears Centre ceremony last May. Khamsing doesn’t live here anymore.

And yet the Mayor, ELIPAC, and even a local immigration attorney continue to call our current dilemma “diversity”. I wonder how they define the word.

The irony of it all is that this whole mess started back in 1965, when our elected officials in Washingtion decided that we needed a more diverse population.
-Doug Heaton

Spanish 4, English 0

In case you are keeping score, there have been some recent developments regarding the battle for the language of the United States, and more specifically Elgin. Spanish is winning points right and left.

Point 1- A recent Pew Hispanic Center study reveals that 65% of Hispanics living in the United States speak English “just a little or not at all”. That percentage rises to 71% if their country of origin is Mexico

Point 2- At the public radio forum at the Hemmens in October, a question was asked from the audience that went like this: “Moderator: Let’s go to Veronica from Elgin. Veronica: Thank you. Our local LULAC Council supports the Latino literacy project through the Salvation Army, which teaches basic Spanish literacy. Since basic native literacy is a must before anyone can learn a second language such as English, how can we garner support from the community at large for more of these types of programs and get past the fear.” Did you catch that? They want to teach Spanish to the immigrants. And do you think “garner support from the community” means tax money? It was sort of comical that the panelists thought Veronica was talking about learning English and gave answers accordingly. By the way, those answers mean that when they learn English they assimilate more quickly and make more money.

Point 3- Professor Chris Orem at NIU in DeKalb got a $1.5 million grant from the federal government (our tax dollars at work) because the bilingual students are learning English too quickly. Here’s the quote from the Courier article: "Children of these immigrants are learning English at a faster rate and losing their native tongues at a faster rate. There's no reason to force them into an English-only world," said Orem. And U46 lined up for some of the money.

Point 4- By federal demand, Elgin’s polling places will be staffed with Spanish language interpreters to help voters who do not speak English. The ballots in Spanish are not enough, they say.

I wonder what people think when they drive through town and see businesses making no effort at all in English. All the signage is in Spanish. If you are coming into town to look at a row house or a condo downtown, I’m guessing you make a quick U-turn and look somewhere else.

But more importantly, these points are an indication of surrender to Spanish. Without asking us, they are surrendering English and pushing for a bilingual nation. Our elected officials had better do something besides nod their heads in agreement just because it is politically correct to behave multiculturally. Wake up, city council. We’re talking to you.

Doug on the radio - ugh!

I was on the radio yesterday, WRMN. I was hoping to get a chance to talk about what we are proposing and why.

But it didn't quite turn out that way. The time slot is a purchase program, not programming by the station. In this case, it was a weekly program by the Libertarian Party. Even the ads were all for the cause. Which is fine with me. After all, they are paying for it.

So I began to explain what we had in mind and the host immediately made the point that the problem of illegal aliens goes away if we don't have social programs, entitlements, public schools, and income tax.

His point was, we don't need borders or immigration laws in a free market.

But what he was really saying was that if all the world had the same free market economy and that economy was left to regulate itself, we would have no problem. He's right, of course, but the Second Coming of Christ has not yet occurred and we are left to deal with the realities of Elgin.

In short, I had hoped to make it a program about illegal aliens in Elgin and instead it turned into a monologue by the host on utopia. I'm sorry to disappoint.

But his view is not unique, and it is not limited to Libertarians. There were two letters to the editor in the Herald this morning innocently pleading, "Can't we all just get along," as though there were no byproducts to open borders and winking at the illegal alien problem.

Doug Heaton