Posted: 8/12/2005 10:36:46 PM EDT
[#16]
Activists pack Carlsbad town-hall meetingBy: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer August 11, 2005 www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/08/12/news/top_stories/20_43_248_11_05.txtCARLSBAD ---- Thursday night's town-hall meeting on illegal immigration at Carlsbad High School was a decidedly lopsided affair.
Those who showed up after about 4 p.m. for the 7 p.m. meeting didn't get one of the coveted tickets to attend the forum, titled "The Illegal Immigration Crisis."
One anti-illegal immigration advocate inside the school's 400-seat capacity Community Cultural Arts Center said he believed the reason that so few immigration-rights advocates made it inside was because radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock, who emceed the meeting, gave his listeners a heads-up on his Wednesday radio show.
"Roger told his listeners that we should arrive early, so we could fill up the auditorium," said Orange County resident Shain Sternod, 43. "There was no opposition, and he did not take any questions; so, it turned out not to be a town-hall meeting, just a series of speeches."
When the event's sponsor, state Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, asked who among the audience believed the country is in "an immigration crisis" to raise their hands, virtually everyone did so. When he asked for those who didn't believe there is a crisis, only four or five people timidly raised their hands.
The general theme of Thursday night's speakers was that the government and citizens must do something to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.
The more strident of the half-dozen or so speakers was author Madeleine Cosman, who rattled off a litany of problems she said are caused by illegal immigrants, including everything from a spike in the number of sexual predators in California and an increased homicide rate to an increase in the spread of infectious diseases.
The night's featured speaker was U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, who, like Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, received a standing ovation. Both have achieved nationwide conspicuousness in their push for immigration reform.
The controversial Minuteman Project fielded several hundred volunteers in April along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona to observe illegal immigrants and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol. The operation drew worldwide media attention. Many of the volunteers were armed, and over the 30 days of the vigil, they succeeded in reporting 300 illegal immigrants who were then apprehended by Border Patrol agents.
Tancredo has become one of the leading figures in the fight for stronger enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and protecting the nation's borders.
In his speech, Tancredo charmed the like-minded audience with his sense of humor. Talking about a piece of immigration legislation now working its way through Congress, and sponsored by Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and John McCain, R-Arizona, Tancredo said: "I call it the McKennedy bill. I don't have to say anything else, but that it is sponsored by Kennedy and McCain."
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