your embedded correspondent - part I
by Anthony Marenna
Published: April 29, 2008
For the past several years I have been a curious observer of the illegal immigration saga that is rocking the political babble as of late. Those were the days- regular sleeping hours, three meals a day, a structured schedule… never could I have imagined that I would end up at the center of the illegal immigration issue, nor that I would be able to offer a first-hand perspective. Allow me to explain:
Last May and June, our Congressmen were debating the outrageously unfair amnesty bill, which dominated the headlines for many months. The Mayor of New Haven, CT, John DeStefano, Jr., no doubt following the very same headlines, sat in city hall scheming. Fresh off of a colossal trouncing by Jodi Rell in the 2006 Gubernatorial Election, Mayor DeStefano went back to the drawing board, nursing a slightly bruised ego. How could he catapult his political career to the state or national level? How could he make the big time? And then it hit him like a truck: he could establish a sanctuary city, come up with something of a municipal amnesty program and wait until the federal amnesty bill was passed. He’d be a visionary, the future of the Democrat party, the (dare I say?) next U.S. Senator. Brilliant.
But where to start? In October of 2005, two pro-illegal immigration activist groups based in the New Haven area, Unidad Latina en Accion and Junta for Progressive Action, took the first step. They submitted a blueprint for the sanctuary city that New Haven would soon become. The title of the document was “A City to Model: Six Proposals for Protecting Public Safety and Improving Relationships Between Immigrant Communities and the City of New Haven.” Here’s what they wanted:
- Access to bank accounts for illegal aliens.
- A municipal ID card that would grant illegal aliens access to city services at the expense of taxpayers.
- A policy handcuffing New Haven Police from enforcing the law by barring officers from acting on administrative immigration warrants issued by federal agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.
Dubious programs like these are a pretty major risk for a lowly mayor to take for political grandeur alone. Placing the interests of illegal aliens above the interests of legal immigrants and other legal citizens not only has the potential to backfire, but to culminate in criminal investigations. But he put them into effect anyway. And on the eve of July 24, 2007, all was quiet. It was not the tranquil, peaceful kind of quiet, but a different breed of silence, the kind that exists when the air is full of energy, when a kind of intense pressure is building, as if something was about to burst.
Join us next week for the second installment from: your embedded correspondent.
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