Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
Could our country finally be taking some tough steps toward illegal immigrants?
Richard Olivo writes in today’s Chicago Tribune:
Breaking the silence in a middle-class enclave of tract homes and cul-de-sacs, federal immigration agents recently swooped in and grabbed Sara Munoz, carting away the illegal Mexican immigrant before her five crying U.S.-born children.
In nearby Minneapolis, community activist Juana Reyes was nabbed for her illegal status as she stepped out of her car, spurring a rapidly transforming neighborhood into action on behalf of her 9-year-old daughter, an American citizen.
And, 110 miles south in Austin, Minn., a divided community seethes after several recent deportation arrests. Latin American immigrants are afraid to open their doors, while longtime residents press the mayor to do more to stop the changes in a former union town built around the global headquarters of the Hormel Foods meatpacking operation.
Similar scenes nationwide are part of a ramping-up of federal arrests of illegal immigrants, activity that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently warned is "gonna get ugly" after immigration legislation failed in Washington last month.
Arrests from workplace raids have skyrocketed from about 845 in 2004 to nearly 4,000 already this year, federal records show. Arrests of illegal immigrants who have ignored court orders to leave the country have doubled since last year to a rate of about 685 per week.
And this is bad, how?
Olivo continues:
"We're gonna do more enforcement actions," Chertoff said during a recent Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting where he lamented Congress' failure to move immigration reform forward and predicted extensive grief. "And, if they have kids at home, even if we make arrangements with social services to take care of the kids, the kids are gonna be scared because Mommy or Daddy is not coming home that day."
Though the arrests will be "as humane as possible," Chertoff said, "We do have to get control over this general problem of illegal immigration."
That’s a good thing, a very good thing.
Now, read the way reporter Olivo describes this new wave of enforcement:
As state legislatures and cities nationwide consider their own local measures for enforcement, a menacing cloud has swelled over America's immigrant landscape, advocates say.
Did you catch that......enforcing the laws of our country is compared to “a menacing cloud.”
"We have a tsunami coming at us in terms of enforcement measures," said Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington. "That's pretty terrifying in terms of what it means for the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their families."
It should be terrifying, lady! Those millions of people are here ILLEGALLY!!
The next strategy that will be employed by illegal immigrants and their advocates will be a play on sympathy exploiting children.
Olivo writes about 36-year old Nixon Munoz who came to Minnesota from El Salvador and married Sara, a shy Mexican woman whom he met while she was visiting on a tourist visa to attend a wedding. They were very happy, Olivo reports, until last month. Cue the attempt at sympathy.
That changed last month. Arriving from the grocery store with his children, Munoz said he saw his terrified wife handcuffed in front of their two-story stucco home. With the family in tears, she was taken away and, eventually, deported to Mexico, where she tries to continue to parent her five children through long-distance calls.
The couple's eldest daughter, Joanna Munoz, who turned 14 the day before her mother left, has stepped in as a mother figure. The hazel-eyed teen cooks, cleans and tries to comfort Edwin when he calls for his mother at night, sometimes in uncontrollable tantrums during which he hurls himself against walls.
"He still thinks my mom is visiting family," she said of her brother, unsure how all this will affect her dream of attending college and becoming a marine biologist.
The impact that such arrests and deportation have on the estimated 5 million children of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is troubling, said Randy Capps, a researcher at the Washington-based Urban Institute who has been studying the aftermath of raids in several states.
Many of these children are likely to grow up harboring resentment against law enforcement. Others will have psychological problems that stem from seeing their parents ripped from their lives, he said.
"If they stay in the country, they've been through this traumatic experience and will continue to be separated from their parents for some time," Capps said. "These are people that didn't choose to come over."
Isn’t it true that American prisons are filled with inmates who have children on the outside? Do we still not lock these criminals up?
About 26,500 illegal immigrants (are) impri
