March 29, 2008

Dolores Huerta says we can't enforce immigration laws, promotes demographic hegemony (ask Hillary Clinton)

United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta - also a co-chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign (link) - gave a speech straight out of the Balkans (or other places) on Thursday at San Bernardino Valley College in Southern California (link).

It'd be great if someone somewhere could go to a Hillary Clinton appearance and ask her to denounce the following statements. I'm not expecting anyone to do that, but it'd be great if someone could prove me wrong.

"We didn't cross the border," the revered immigrant and farm worker advocate told an enthusiastic crowd of mostly college students. "The border crossed us."

...In her wide-ranging speech, which was sponsored by Arts and Lecture Series Committee and MECHA Latino faculty and staff, Huerta railed against anti-immigrant groups, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed state budget cuts to education, and U.S. government inaction on immigration reform.

...She said illegal workers were a critical bulwark of the national economy, yet were faced with virulent anti-illegal-immigrant groups such as the Minuteman Project that she said were "linked" to the United States government.

She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns had deported 290,000 people to Latin American countries in what she characterized as an "ethnic cleansing."

But anti-illegal-immigration efforts were doomed to failure, Huerta said, as illegal immigrants and naturalized Latinos had gained a foothold in the country.

"It's really too late," Huerta said of anti-illegal-immigration movements. "If 47 million (Latinos) have one baby each ... it's already won."

...Huerta's reception at the community college was overwhelmingly positive.

..."I liked how she said 75 percent of the world was people of color," said SBVC student Randy Dale, 23. "We are the majority, and we should be in charge more, especially in the U.S."

Posted to Immigration2008a at March 29, 2008 01:53 PM