Rosanna Pulido State Director of Illinois Minuteman Project

Testimony

May 22nd, 2007
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today and to discuss the critical importance of Immigration Law Enforcement.
 

I am Rosanna Pulido, an active member of You Don't Speak For Me. We are
American Hispanics speaking out on illegal immigration because, contrary to
popular belief, a sizable number of Latinos oppose the recent protest marches and strongly objects to illegal immigration.

But our voices have largely been muffled by the protests in Chicago , Los Angeles and other cities nationwide and by journalists and the mass media that absolutely refuses to report the story of law abiding American Hispanics. Instead, the media would rather focus on the Latinos who are breaking our laws and paint them as helpless victims.

Members of You Don’t Speak for Me American Hispanics against illegal
immigration do not want comprehensive immigration reform, but we do want
immigration law enforcement. Americans have learned that "comprehensive"
means unlimited amnesty, a greater flow of immigrants into the country and the
displacement of American workers. Anybody who can sneak into our country gets to stay in. This is not sound immigration policy. Our open borders are a surrender of the United States to anarchy and the bill that the senate purposes is selling out the American public and the rule of law. This proposed legislation gives illegal aliens exactly what they want, legal status and permission stay in the United States . We have witnessed in the past 18 months hundreds of thousands of Latinos marching across the country in support of immigration reform. Many of these marchers are here illegally. They do not live in the shadows, but flagrantly boast about violating our laws in broad daylight. One of the objectives of these marches is to give the impression that ALL Latinos want illegal aliens to become citizens. It simply is not true!

Let me tell you about a legal Mexican immigrant named Daniel. Daniel calls me on a regular basis. Daniel sees the injustice his fellow legal immigrants are going through. He tells me when an American or legal immigrant comes to look for a job at his place of employment, they never get called for an interview, but if an illegal alien comes and fills out an application, they will be working with a couple of days.

He is beside himself and is seeking justice, who will right these wrongs?
And Jose, a legal Mexican immigrant who approached me and said, "You have got to help me! I am here in the United States legally. Look here are my papers. I cannot get a job. I go to the day labor center on a daily basis and they ignore me and they give all the jobs to illegal aliens. I can't get work to support my family."  I am aware that there are many of my fellow Hispanics like this who are suffering, those who followed the rules and respect our laws and come to this country the right way. It is for these people and others like them that I implore you to give them a chance at building the American dream they patiently waited for in line. That can be done only by our government enforcing immigration laws on the books! In Chicago , Illinois where I live, the city is under siege by illegal aliens who speak Spanish, use public services and take jobs away from citizens, especially African- Americans, and legal immigrants.
Our city and county officials ignore federal immigration law and want to ignore
Congress and make their own laws. They are attempting to make Cook County the first sanctuary county in the United States . If this happens, then Cook County will be a haven for illegal aliens and other criminal elements.
We have seen property taxes rise in Cook County by 60 to 90 percent this past year.
This rise is directly related to bilingual education, free health care and other social services for illegal aliens. What illegal immigration has done is force our senior citizens, (yes, those folks who built our country and are known as the greatest generation) out of their homes. They cannot keep up with the rising property taxes on their fixed incomes.  While these seniors look to us to assist them in their retirement years, we are letting law breakers completely drain tax base, a tax base that should be rightfully going to our seniors and our veterans. One of those seniors is my 78 year old father. He is bewildered by what is happening to the city he settled in many years ago.  We have heard recently about the injustices at the Walter Reed Center and the poor treatment of our veterans. Well, our wounded veterans in Illinois are the lowest paid
in the nation. Some live like paupers, while illegal aliens get free health care,
education and may other social services. This abuse of our welfare programs is a modern day atrocity.  I am baffled because my government, who I trust to enforce the law no matter what the ethnicity or national origin of a person is, has been looking the other way while America is destroyed.
Some measures that need to be considered for Comprehensive Immigration
Enforcement are:

a. Putting Border Security and Enforcement First. How can we fight the War on Terror if our borders are not secure? 

b. Stop incarcerating our Border Patrol when they do their job like agents Ramos
and Campeon and support these agents in their job to stop illegal border crossings!  Pardoning these two admirable Mexican Americans would be a good start!
c. While you may think that an Employers program to verify the eligibility of the
workers they hire might be effective consider this. The Illinois House is passing a bill as we speak to prohibit Employers from using these tools to verify eligibility! ( Illinois House Bill # 1744)  We have 14 million under employed Americans? This bill proposed by the Senate displaces more American workers! Whose interests are the senators looking out for?

Finally, we do not want amnesty for illegal immigrants. I ask you to remember that amnesty does not work. It just creates more of the criminal activity we want to prevent. We know this from past immigration amnesties, especially the one granted in 1986. If that amnesty worked as a solution to our immigration problem, why, then, are we here today? The definition of amnesty remains the same: "to pardon immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crime." It is not animosity to punish those who break our laws. It is simply justices, a justice law-abiding Americans hunger for.

Rosanna Pulido

State Director of Illinois Minuteman Project