6,000 people could rally on May 1, organizers say
April 28th, 2008, 6:06 pm · 20 Comments · posted by Amy Taxin
Immigrant rights groups say as many as 6,000 people could rally in Santa Ana to push for a legalization program for undocumented immigrants and a stop to workplace raids, according to police estimates.
Santa Ana police spokesman Corporal Jose Gonzalez said Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana and the Institute for Mexicans Abroad have estimated that as many as 6,000 people could attend the event, which is scheduled for 3 p.m. at the Civic Center. Gonzalez said traffic will be rerouted starting at 10 a.m. to prepare for the rallies and afternoon march.
Maria Rosa Ibarra, one of the directors at Hermandad, said she expects about 2,000 people to attend the march. Ibarra attributed the lesser attendance than in years past to concerns in the immigrant community about stepped up raids. “A lot of people are afraid about all the raids that have been going on and I don’t feel the same momentum this year,” she said.
- Amy Taxin
April 28th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
THE REAL IMPACTS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
April 28th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
… and ICE wil be in Santa Ana ready to deport ANY and ALL illegals who attend… 1-866-DHS-2ICE
April 28th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Bummer. I think all America would like to see large groups of Illegal Immigrants demanding rights while waving their Mexican flags. Other parts of the country need to see what’s coming their way if they don’t start supporting politicians that want to enforce our reasonable immigration laws.
I don’t blame the Illegal Immigrants for wanting a better life here and I truly wish them the best in their home country, but the unrestricted immigration of very needy people means there is much less resources for Americans that need them.
Case in point, we spend thousands of dollars more on education on Illegal Immigrant children the middle class American children. Of course the OCR would never print the facts. You need only look at the budget of schools in Anaheim and Santa Ana with high Illegal Immigrant populations compared with Irvine or Huntington Beach. The Illegal Immigrant schools get many grants for free preschool/headstart, free afterschool programs, ESL programs, Special grants for technology, special grants for extra teachers/aides, free breakfast, free lunch, smaller class sizes, increased special ed, etc. These same schools end up with the lowest test scores. So while the American taxpayers are paying more and more in taxes for education, their children get larger class sizes, fewer programs (music, art, sports) and lower compensated teachers. Of course with the government working against them, they still produce consistently higher test scores.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Every year, the taxpayers absorb significant expenses as these people march for “immigrant” issues.
Santa Ana was terrorized in past years, the downtown inundated, and even city hall was shut down and staff sent home because of safety concerns.
Any “protest” or rally that infringes on the rights of the residents and costs the taxpayers for extreme services like extra police and medical services, grafitti cleanup, street sweeping, and other damage related expenses should be an unlawful assembly. The right to protest includes those done in an orderly fashion, in a respectful way. The mob scenes of Santa Ana are nothing like that.
It’s not fair to the residents who are held hostage in their own homes as the city is shut down to accomodate the malcontents and protesters, and to suffer the resulting traffic and vandalism that these rallies have brought to the city. The police can’t control the rallies, so they should simply not issue permits allowing them.
All of this is done at the expense of the resident taxpayers of the city, and takes money away from essential services, and real police needs.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Yes! Please rally! Be sure to wave your Mexico flags and chant in Spanish! That will help your cause immensely.
Actually, I wish they would rally their way right back to Mexico and fix their own country instead of trying to exploit ours.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Lets take pictures of protesters and license plates. We can turn them over to ICE!
April 30th, 2008 at 8:25 am
These protests have undoubtedly changed my views on illegal immigration. I’m sure there are some illegal folks out there who only want a better life, which doesn’t make coming here right, but it makes it understandable. However, the vast majority of these people are angry and bitter, and they all seem to have a sense of entitlement. They are determined to convince the rest of us that they have “rights”, but I don’t think they’re entitled to any rights in this country. Come here legally and you EARN American citizen’s rights. Come here illegally, and you tick a lot of people off. Working hard is something we should all take pride in. But when much of your hard-earned money is going to fund services (education, healthcare, welfare, etc) for ILLEGALS, it’s a lot harder to possess that pride. My hard work should better the lives of my family, not millions of people who are here ILLEGALLY.
As a reminder, none of the current presidential candidates — including Democrats, support our immigration laws. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s a “what’s right and what’s wrong” issue. Regardless of your political party, they’re all failing us miserably. I’m including a link for contact info for about 50 state representatives, and I urge you to contact each and every one of them with your concerns. And I encourage you to continue faxing, calling, emailing, etc. them on a regular basis until they’re so sick of it, they finally decide to step up and do what’s right for the citizens of this great country.
While there are various other ethnicities here illegally, the vast majority of illegals are hispanic. And futhermore, the hispanics are the ones who insist on demanding rights that they claim to have. They are the ones waving Mexican (and other hispanic countries) flags in America. They are the ones undermining the American dream and values. They take advantage of every single one of us, and I’m tired of it. I’ve become so frustrated with the illegal immigration issue, that I now devote time every day to fight for what’s right.
Build the fence!
Deport illegals!
Focus on the remaining problems in this country!
Make this country a great place to live once again!
Anyone wanting to do their part in pushing Congress to reinstate work on building the REAL border fence (versus the virtual fence discussed in another OCR article), here’s a link to all of the target representatives and their phone and fax numbers. If we start inundating them with faxes and/or calls, things may change. I know, doubtful, but it’s worth a shot…
http://www.grassfire.org/28042/FaxFire-FNCTarget2a.htm
Please do your part! Tell them you’re an angry CITIZEN and that you will no longer tolerate our lack of enforcement of laws against illegal immigration anymore!
April 30th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Riverside and San Bernardino Counties are now heaven places for illegal immigrants, criminal illegal immigrants, and racist individual from Mexico as well as places for the greedy employers hiring them. We should have more citizens to speak out the true about problems of illegal immigrants regardless what country they came from. We are not racists, but human beings are all racists regardless skin colors.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Who’s paying for the extra law enforcement for that day? And are they going to be blocking the streets where the people drive.? Don’t let this march inconvenience drivers. Also immigrant rights is fine but not illegal immigrant rights. Stop with the lies and say what it is. It’s illegals marching for their rights in United States of America and what rights do they have to here really?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Oh no, I was expecting 500,000 or so illegal aliens to participate in this May Day 2008 rally. If they wish to have their rights heard, they should participate, so that our freeways would open up dramatically. Remember May Day 2006? I really enjoyed that day, as did most legal citizens and LEGAL immigrants. Traffic was light, our freeways were practically vacant. Why? Because the illegal aliens, all 500,000 + of them participated in the rally. They weren’t driving that day, clogging up traffic. Boy, I wished they took the rest of the week off or a month off.
These immigrant-rights activist groups just don’t realize that their beloved amnesty is dead, at least for this year, and the Republicans and Democrats are not gonna consider amnesty, because it would not look good to them, especially during this presidential race.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
anti-illegal immigration counter protest ? thing’s will get ugly im sure these mexicanes in santa ana are a bunch of degenerate low life racists. . . .
April 30th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Lets all dress in INS uniforms and show up at the rally….I’ll bet there number would be no where near the estimated 6000.
To add to the insult, Councilman Nunez of LA just drafted a bill demanding financial aid to all illegal students entering college….geez!, how ridiculous could it get!?
Build a LONG TALL ELECTRIC FENCE ASAP and RAID ALL EMPLOYERS HIRING ILLEGALS NOW !!!!!!
ENOUGH is ENOUGHT
April 30th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
It is funny how some people here are saying that Mexicans are racist, how funny because if you read the comments all they are doing is posting racist comments about Mexicans. And that comment of how we (Mexicans) are taking jobs away from all the White’s, the truth is yes we might stand on sidewalks selling oranges or flowers, but if you see,we are not asking for money we are working even if it doesn’t pay much but we try. Now the majority of the people who are asking for money are not mexicans they are people who have papers who have a working social security. But they refuse to work why that is my question dude you have all the oppurtunites they have all the oppurtunites in the world to get up and start doing something instead of asking for money. I work with alot of white people and they are nice and sweet unlike the ones that comment here. I would like to see more of that in the near future, and for the person who supplied us with the ICE phone number, please get a life and just because you are so miserable in your life doesn’t mean you have to make others miserable.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Someone has alot of time on their hands.”try to give ICE license plates and pictures of protesters yeah why don’t you , then ask them to get you a life” Try to do something else for a change, like help the people that are asking for MONEY in the streets by getting them a job instead on hating on the illegals that actually have a job. Just keep something in mind “who are the people that ASK for MONEY because they are too LAZY to work?” HIspanics , wrong!!
April 30th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS… PROTESTING FOR RIGHTS.
the issue is not WHO ASK FOR MONEY and WHO IS HARDWORKING.
POINT IS, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ASKING FOR RIGHTS, THEY ARE NOT ENTITLED TO. you can say a lot of things about people, they are lazy, hard working, blah blah blah, but are they here legally? that is the question…
JUST ASK YOURSELF: just because they are hard working, they don’t ask for money (food stamps & welfare & WIC, isn’t that asking for money, free lunch & free head start programs) supposedly they are law abiding (isn’t being here illegally, ALREADY breaking the law?), paying taxes (but sending most monies back to Mexico to support that country) DOES IT MAKE IT A WRONG RIGHT?
YOU CAN JUSTIFY IT ANYWAY YOU WANT, BUT, THEY ARE STILL HERE ILLEGALLY.
IT IS DIFFERENT IF THEY ARE HERE LEGALLY - THATS A DIFFERENT TOPIC.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
It’s amazing how much ignorance is perpetuated in these blogs. First, according to government statistics the vast majority of people who use public assistance program like welfare, medi-cal are U.S. born people. In fact, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive many public assistance programs and if they are many choose not to for various reasons (fear, lack of awareness about programs…etc.). Also, I don’t know what schools in Anaheim or Santa Ana Rick4us is talking about because they are not what you describe. Having gone to those schools, they are overpopulated, lack credentialed teachers, do not have many programs for students to advance or seek a college education. Look into Prop.13 which made it so local property taxes fund schools…which means if you go to school in Brea of course your school will look like a mall like Brea-o-Linda High. OH and when it comes to taxpayers, I would really ask how much money is being spent on ICE raids and what good it is doing. Think about the contributions immigrants make to the economy and think about how you like getting car washed, your fruit being picked, your house cleaned, or your kids taken care of for a very cheap price. Food for though.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
To edu…I have doubt if illegal immigrants were paid payroll and social security and medicare taxes, plus hospital costs for having babies.
Remember, ilegal immigrants do not have legimacy social security numbers and it hard to prove their contributions.
Immigrants are two type: illegal and legal. Legal immigrants do have legimacy papers to prove their contributions to the economy. Please do not take away the credits of the legal immigrants.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
To educateUrself:
1st: At this point Illegal Immigrants don’t make up a majority of the population so of course they don’t make up a majority of the costs for public assistance programs. Even if it’s 25%, that’s 25% too much for American Taxpayers.
2nd: Illegal immigrants do use the emergency rooms, commit crimes (e.g. gangs), and their children get very generous taxpayer funded education with free breakfast and lunch. Day laborers pay no federal or state income taxes, but do get government services.
3rd: I know many teachers in the Anaheim and Santa Ana districts and I can assure you that they get many more grants and special funding than the average school. Since you are so enlightened can you tell us the total costs per pupil in areas with large percentages of Illegal Immigrants. The dirty secret is that no one wants to share those costs. If poor people were getting less funding than affluent areas I assure you the OCR and people like you would be screaming with lots of statistics!
4th: The amount spent on ICE is nothing compared to the economic and quality of life costs of turning large portions of OC into a mirror image of third world countries.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am
You can go to the California state website under the department of education and see just how much schools & districts spend on ESL, food program, etc. It’s quite alarming, actually how much money is spent. SOME illegals do pay into SSN/SDI, etc. Put at the wages most make, it’s not more than they take out via education, WIC, hospitization etc. I’ve had X-rays taken lately at a radiology business, and can’t believe how many of the other patients were hispanic, and using california benefits. An argument some make is the illegals pay income tax, but don’t claim refunds. I would venture to say that they may claim a large amount of exemptions so not much is withheld and/or claim an EIC.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
To Greg: I disagree. I believe that is a bogus claim. Most employers pay cash to illegal immigrants because they were afraid to get caught. If illegal immigrants paid SSN/SDI, then under what names and SSN? Most illegal immigrants are hided and got paid under the table without paying taxes that why there was a proposal asking them to pay back taxes. The costs of illegal immigrants to the community and the state are much more than what you indicated. In my opinion, America is a land of laws; therefore, sanction all greedy employers and deport all illegal immigrants back to where they came from.