Making "cheap political points"

The Daily Herald coverage of our display “Empty Shoes – Empty Hearts” included this comment: "The display is taking advantage of families' grief to make cheap political points," said Joshua Hoyt, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Here’s a link to what his organization is all about. (You’ll need Acrobat Reader to open it):
http://www.icirr.org/outreach_files/factsheets/undocumented%20fact.pdf

The ICIRR not only has no problem with illegal aliens, they are paving the way for them! The frightening part of it all is that this group wrote Governor Blagojevich’s policy on immigration. He used them to create his New Americans program.

And, lest we forget, it is Hoyt’s group in the yellow t-shirts at all the pro-amnesty marches. It is the ICIRR that bused in people from Chicago, Waukegan, and Aurora to protest in Carpentersville in October of 2006. It is Hoyt and company who are setting up organizers in towns throughout Illinois to continue to march for amnesty.

Now, as to his allegations that we are using these tragedies to make “cheap political points”, I disagree. These families have suffered a great loss. In many cases the perpetrator of the crime had a previous criminal record, but NO ONE BOTHERED TO CHECK THEIR IMMIGRATION STATUS! If they had, these victims would not have died.

Our whole point is to shed light on the fact that our government has failed to enforce immigration laws and people are now dead as a result!

I find Hoyt’s flippant comment offensive.

Some say we are sending a false message that illegal aliens commit more crime than other people. Hoyt even quoted a study saying that immigrants are less likely to commit crime. (Notice he said “immigrants”, not illegal aliens. We don’t have data about the illegals because few agencies bother to check and even fewer report their data.)

But, let’s examine Hoyt’s complaint on the face of it. People die every day. It is not an illegal alien problem. More citizens commit those crimes than anyone else. And he’s right about that.

Now, let’s talk about the breast cancer campaign in this country. There are walks and ribbons and pink soup cans. Breast cancer is NOT the #1 killer of women. It isn’t even in the top five. Using Hoyt’s logic, is the breast cancer campaign a “cheap” trick?

Of course it isn’t. Breast cancer is a terrible disease that touches thousands of lives each day. It deserves to be addressed so more can be done about it.

We are saying the same thing about criminal illegal aliens. They are not causing all violent deaths but they are causing death and heartache every day in America and we want government to protect us by enforcing the law.

USC Professor Paul Gray observed, “Nothing gets done in America until somebody dies.” We’ve seen it with OSHA laws, seat belts, child-proof medicine caps, 9/11, disaster planning…All we are doing with this exhibit is demonstrating to government that dozens of people are dying each week and they have an obligation to fix the problem of unlawful presence.