CBSAtlanta.com

A Note From The News Director

Occasionally there are stories we may cover that that prompt reaction, emotion and controversy and a strong viewer response.

During my career I have seen it with stories about abortion and gun issues.

But clearly the new hot button issue is immigration, especially the issue of folks who have entered this country without the proper paperwork and maybe residing here illegally.

During the past few days we’ve been covering a march through our viewing area about people protesting for greater rights for those who may not be living in the United States legally. For the first few days we were inundated with viewers asking why we were “sympathetic” to those who did not have the proper paperwork and trying to live “under the radar screen.”

Viewers asked some very direct questions. Yesterday in our coverage we decided to take some of those questions and put them to the marchers. They were fairly direct and tough questions including asking whether some of the folks marching were citizens or in the United States with legal papers. We also heard that some of the workers and marchers do pay taxes but have been doing so by using fraudulent social security numbers.

As you can imagine we got a series of emails yesterday complaining that we were unfair to those marching and not fully explaining all sides of the issue.

We are clearly sensitive to this story and it’s a story we will continue to cover. It is also one of those stories that evokes and will continue to evoke strong opinions.

Part of our role at CBS Atlanta News is to ask the tough questions, look into controversial issues and explore topics raised by our viewers. Our goal is to stay on continuing stories like the immigration issue and present all sides during our continuing coverage. Some have complained that we haven’t presented all sides. Honestly this is a story that has more than two sides. It’s extremely complex. There are huge emotional, economic and patriotic issues at play… read the rest

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HERE

em>Andrew G. Marshall — Centre for Research on Globalization — Montreal s

G 20: Towards a global currency and world government

Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation…”

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“Illegal immigration activist Inger Eberhart of Acworth – who observed the pilgrimage – said it was outrageous that “illegals could walk in the middle of Marietta Square and complain about something that doesn’t belong to them.”

“They are lawbreakers. They broke the law as soon as they came over here,” said Eberhart, an advisory board member of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for immigration law enforcement. “All we’re asking for is the equal application of the law.”

Pilgrimage for immigrants passes through Cobb

By Marcus E. Howard
mhoward@mdjonline.com

MARIETTA – A crowd of 500 or more could have been seen heading north Thursday on South Cobb Drive from Smyrna to the Marietta Square while participating in the six-day Holy Week Interfaith Pilgrimage for Immigrants.

Participants began with a prayer service Thursday morning at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church on King Springs Road in Smyrna.

Carrying a cross and a banner that read “Pilgrimage For Immigrants” in both English and Spanish, they then walked 8 miles north on South Cobb Drive to Atlanta Road and arrived at the Marietta Square at about 2:45 p.m.

There, they sang songs, mostly in Spanish, prayed and conducted a foot washing ceremony.

“It is something that Jesus did to the disciples to show that I am your servant,” said lead organizer P.J. Edwards of Smyrna. “So we wanted to do it and make it symbolic, and have immigrant residents have their feet washed by American citizens.”

The pilgrimage is meant to be a show of solidarity with immigrants, said organizer Anton Flores of LaGrange.

“The story of migrants goes all the way back to the exodus story … It’s time for us to remind ourselves that first and foremost immigration is something that reaches deep back into our religious traditions,” he said.

Thursday was the largest gathering so far for the six-day pilgrimage that began Sunday in Gainesville and ends today in Atlanta. Edwards said participants did not run into any problems during their walk.

The various faith group organizers are calling for the end of law enforcement raids that they say separate families, passage of humane immigration reform legislation, and the revision of trade policies that increase unauthorized immigration.

“I think the Hispanic population is politically correct to kick, as opposed to African-Americans now. It’s the same people that are now venting their anger on the Hispanics. Their trump card is illegal,” said participant Pat Burns, a retired nurse from Smyrna. “But, they’re human. Who is your brother and who is your sister, if not the people who live beside you?”

Illegal immigration activist Inger Eberhart of Acworth – who observed the pilgrimage – said it was outrageous that “illegals could walk in the middle of Marietta Square and complain about something that doesn’t belong to them.”

“They are lawbreakers. They broke the law as soon as they came over here,” said Eberhart, an advisory board member of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for immigration law enforcement. “All we’re asking for is the equal application of the law.”

HERE

Inger Eberhart/Letter to the Editor: Substitute for style vs. substance

Published: 04/11/2009
Marietta Daily Journal

If only being “Mr. Cool” were the only relevant experience needed to become the President (Susan Estrich: Despite initial bumps and bruises, Obama still Mr. Cool, 4/3/09). Unfortunately, Susan Estrich is still bedazzled by the style and eloquence of President Barack Obama.

When the effects wear off, hopefully she will see that the tax bill for every man woman and child has just increased by $43,000. Maybe she will show disdain his apologist attitude for America’s “arrogance” although we are the first to put ourselves in harms way to free others. Perhaps she will see that government interference in established contracts puts every worker and business owner in jeopardy.

When the last dose of kool-aid wears off I question if she will understand that there is a thin line between confidence and arrogance. Possibly she will see that Obama’s arrogance is masquerading as confidence because he is woefully incompetent.

Ms. Estrich, take this advice from an unimpressed African-American conservative, being “Mr. Cool” is a substitute for style not substance.

Inger Eberhart

Acworth

HERE

(Note from D.A. – We are very proud that Inger is a member of the DIS Board)

Cherokee Tribune
April 10, 2008

Well, the pro-illegal immigrants are at it again, looks like.

They’re marching again from Gainesville to Atlanta trying to have our government stop enforcing and using the law 287g , because of Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway and a few others are using it.

Here is what he found on folks already in his jail: In a 26-day trial run ending in February, 917 illegals “looking for a better life” were found in his jail, including 13 charged with murder, 154 with felony drug charges and 23 charged with child molestation.

My hat is off to all who use the tools to curb the problem of illegal immigration. The pro-illegals should be happy for a safer place to live instead of crying “racial profiling” and “they’re busting up families.”

What about the illegals busting up families? Like mine, when Gonzalo Harrell Gonzales, here illegally, in a car crash killed my son, Dustin, and Lucky, our family pet, and put my wife, Kathy, in a wheelchair with lots of medical issues. Nine years later, and, guess what, Gonzalo hasn’t been found yet.

I also want to thank all of you who contact our elected officials and write letters to editor because you know it’s a problem, too.

Billy Inman

Cherokee County

HERE

Tom Tancredo CNN

Immigration debate without true border security is a fraud

There are two main political obstacles to a new amnesty bill in this session of Congress. — First, the White House has other priorities despite the whining from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. If President Obama and Rahm Emanuel were all that committed to a new amnesty bill as a top priority…

HERE

Transcripts from CNN: (HERE)

DOBBS: Mexico’s leaders lack nothing in chutzpah. Mexico’s former

President Vicente Fox on a speaking tour here in the United States promoting globalization and the North American Union. And the former president of Mexico also criticizing U.S. efforts to improve border security, U.S. trade policy, and even criticized me. Casey Wian has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Former Mexican President Vicente Fox signed copies of his autobiography at the Milken Institute Thursday night, where he spoke in glowing terms of the more than 11 million Mexicans living in the United States.

VICENTE FOX, FORMER PRESIDENT OF MEXICO: I am extremely proud of each and every single one Mexican here in this nation, even if they are documented or undocumented.

WIAN: He sharply criticized U.S. border security efforts.

FOX: We should be building bridges instead of walls. We all know that walls don’t work.

WIAN: He warned the United States against isolationism while most of the world embraces globalization.

FOX: It’s not that we are seeing the decline of the leader, United States. We’re seeing the race of others. But we’re seeing the spirit of this nation abandoning its leadership. They are isolating itself.

WIAN: Instead, Fox says the United States should expand the North American Free Trade Agreement and embrace a European Union style partnership with Mexico and Canada. Surprisingly, he didn’t mention Mexico’s escalating drug war, once during his 35-minute speech. But he was asked about it by an audience member.

FOX: Reduced consumption in the states, drug consumption and things will improve in Mexico. Reduce free distribution and sale of arms, especially those that correspond to the military. But it’s a joint responsibility.

WIAN: Then he criticized CNN and Lou Dobbs for enflaming fears about drug cartel violence.

FOX: The Lou Dobbs are of no help to nobody, I mean the way he behaves, the way he uses media to criticize, to discriminate, to attack Mexicans in the United States and his position on this doesn’t help at all, even CNN is — I mean is putting this on such a high spot.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LOts more info HERE

Wednesday, April 08, 2009
NRO CORNER blog

No Surprise Here [Mark Krikorian]

So, the Atlanta paper has selected its new conservative editorial columnist, the result of a contest to fill the affirmative-action position. I’m sure Kyle Wingfield is a prince of a man and an engaging writer — but it’s no accident that he supports open borders: “I have seen the segregation and inhumanity that result from being unable to stop immigrants from coming to your country, but managing to stop them from working in your country and integrating into your society.” (And yes, he does write editorials for the Wall Street Journal, thanks for asking.) From his brief intro piece (his column won’t start til next month), he seems to be against cap and trade, Card Check, and the nanny state in general — all sound views the liberals at the AJC editorial page would recoil from. But he can get away with all that because, like I always say, open borders is the immutable value of the Left. HERE

It is with nearly indescribable glee that we report from Georgia that the Atlanta Regional office of the far left, open borders/illegal alien advocacy group, -the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is closing its office after seven years and leaving town.

Let me type that one again: MALDEF is migrating out of Atlanta and Georgia. They are leaving the Southeast. MALDEF release HERE

Today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution report:

Mexican American defense fund closing Atlanta offfice
By MARY LOU PICKEL

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, April 09, 2009

The Atlanta office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund will close this month after seven years, because of budget cuts, an agency lawyer said.
Elise Shore, Southeast regional counsel for MALDEF, will relocate to Washington, D.C., and continue to advocate on behalf of immigrants in the Southeast, she said. Four staffers will lose their jobs.
MALDEF’s Parent School Partnership program will continue to teach parents how to work with school officials to optimize their children’s education, Shore said.

(HERE)

Founded by the Ford Foundation, MALDEF represents one of the most well funded and aggressive proponents of illegal immigration and bilingualism in the U.S.A.

A quick look on the MALDEF Website reveals (added 6:45 PM: OOPS, looks like they are now keeping that info to themselves – older info on donors HERE) that it is mainly corporate America who funds these subversives. Maybe the near constant supply of taxpayer subsidized illegally-imported black-market labor that MALDEF enables and defends in the name of “civil rights” has something to do with the ongoing donations.

Good riddance.

Having been fighting for the rights of Americans to enjoy secure borders and an equal application of the law in our own country and spent considerable time lobbying in the Georgia Capitol for passage of state legislation that would advance cause of compliance with federal immigration and employment law, this notable and welcome retreat by the MALDEF mob comes as particularly satisfying news to this long time American.

In a word: YIPPEE!

Since 2004, I cannot recall any bill dealing with illegal immigration in the Georgia legislature that was not met with shrill and steadfast resistance in each stop on the legislative committee process. MALDEF lost here nearly every time time.

In 2006, Georgia passed into law the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (SB 529), which is a comprehensive effort to force aliens, employers and local governments in our state to obey federal law.

As several Americans and two ICE agents waited to testify on the bill in a state Senate committee hearing, the visibly shaken and frustrated MALDEF Regional Consul at the time – we have been through two or three – Tisha Tallman screeched into a microphone as a witness that SB 529 was “a scheme!”.

MALDEF not only lobbied furiously against its passage but promised legal action to prevent its implementation. Three years later, there has been no lawsuit.

Since then there have been numerous state laws passed here aimed at deterring the crime of illegal immigration. Each of them met with continuous lobbying against passage in every of the numerous committee stops along the way.

Most recently, in the state legislative session just ended, MALDEF unsuccessfully opposed several major bills aimed at insulating Georgians from the ravages of illegal immigration. They brought in a full time lobbyist (adios Peter Isbister!) who worked in addition to the Regional Consul ( bye-bye Elise Shore!) and several other staffers literally all day and sometimes until late at night in the Capitol struggling to convince Georgia legislators to vote no on bills which they (correctly) deemed detrimental to their agenda.

They spent a lot of money and effort to defeat their enemy: The rule of law.

For five years, this writer has been in nearly every committee hearing dealing with anti-illegal immigration bills in the Georgia Capitol and note that as often as not, MALDEF was joined by smug lobbyists from the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) in opposition to the bills being heard.

On another personal note, the news of MALDEFs welcome departure from Georgia comes with no small amount of satisfaction.

In an effort to educate the public, the media and elected officials in the Georgia General Assembly on the evils of these creatures, and with the help from many hard working Americans, we at the Dustin Inman Society have conducted several protest rallies at MALDEF fund raisers both here in Atlanta and in Washington D.C.

Each effort to expose and defeat these shameless well funded pack of leftist lawyers was a great pleasure.

We are proud of any part we may have played into MALDEF’s retreat from Georgia and celebrate with a trip down memory lane by posting photos of some of the rallies we conducted in MALDEFs (dis) honor.

2004 rally against MALDEF at their 2004 fundraiser in Atlanta 2004 HERE

This was our first, and the MALDEF fundraising event was Chaired by the Atlanta Journal Constitution Newspaper. With news of our rally in front of the high-end hotel in which the MALDEF party was being held, the start time of black tie dinner was changed and the arriving crowd decided to park and enter in the rear of the Hotel.

While CNN covered our rally, for whatever reason, the AJC did not. That newspaper has not Chaired a MALDEF funder since. I know, I call them and ask each year.

The MALDEF fundraiser dinner protest in the same year in Washington D.C. HERE (Thank you Peter Gadiel!)

The 2005 Dustin Inman Society rally in protest of the MALDEF funder in Atlanta HERE.

The Dustin Inman Society counts MALDEF as being just one of the “right enemies” to have.

MALDEF remains a dangerous and relentless enemy of the American people and national security and will continue to oppose any effort to control immigration into the United States…but just for today: Here in Georgia, we are doing the HAPPY DANCE!

Marietta Daily JournalApril 9, 2009

D.A. King: Good news, bad news on illegal immigration

Some good news and bad news on the ongoing illegal immigration crisis.

Good news: The government has adopted a tougher new immigration policy and is going after not only the illegal aliens themselves, but the many people who illegally assist and encourage them. An official says the government has vowed to increase the number of illegal aliens sent home this year.

It seems that officials are concerned that illegals pilfer welfare benefits and jobs in a country where unemployment hovers around 9 percent.

The bad news: The above description of current events is happening in and describes the government of … France.

Back in what remains of the USA, some good news: Hilda Solis, a vocal opponent of work-place immigration law enforcement and whose most infamous quote to date is, “we are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not” is no longer a Congressional Representative from California.

The bad news: She has been confirmed as Labor Secretary in the Obama administration.

It is not clear if she will continue to speak at Democratic Socialists of America meetings as she did in 2005.

Obama has appointed Cecilia Munoz, former senior vice president at the National Council of La Raza, as his director of intergovernmental affairs. Because this long time American understands that La Raza (“The Race,” in English) is a radical far left separatist group, I regard it as very bad news.

It could be good news that Vice President Joe Biden went to Costa Rica last month and said that “the economic crisis and rising unemployment make 2009 an inopportune year for comprehensive immigration reform (he means amnesty). The bad news? Not many people put much stock in anything Biden says and his boss continually tells the impatient American leaders of the more than 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. that he will make citizens – and Democrat voters – out of the illegals “soon.”

Amazing, but old news: Despite the shameless betrayal of the beleaguered American worker and its likely fatal damage to their own party, many Republicans will agree to the Obama legalization process on orders from their corporate masters who prize the cheaper and more docile taxpayer subsidized replacement labor.

Good news for illegal aliens who are also Latino: John Trasvina, the former President of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) has been tapped by the White House to serve in HUD as the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Equal Opportunity.

The bad news for most of America?

Funded by the radical leftist Ford Foundation, MALDEF is known as one of the most aggressive proponents of separatism, illegal immigration and bilingualism in the nation. The mentality of Trasvina and the rest of the MALDEF thugs can be easily summed up with a quote from a MALDEF founder, Mario Obledo, regarding his home state. “California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave – they ought to go back to Europe.”

Welcome to the oh-so-inclusive “change you can believe in” we were all warned would come. Obledo didn’t say to where African-Americans who oppose illegal immigration and bilingualism should go.

Good news for Cobb County residents: Today a camera hungry group of invasion collaborators will offer brilliant illustration of the mindlessness connected to the concept that American borders are human rights violations and that American immigration laws should be ignored.

Along with the naifs in the clergy who serve as their insulation, subversives connected with the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), and the ACLU’s Georgia Detention Watch will begin a morning march in Smyrna with a 2:30 finish on Marietta Square. The demand is for (yawn) … amnesty and an end to immigration law enforcement.

GALEO, which counts Jane Fonda as a “founding friend,” is run by perpetually angry Jerry Gonzalez, a former MALDEF goon and well-known race-baiting advocate for amnesty again.

The ACLU founded Georgia Detention Watch stated goal is to defeat any further attempts by Georgia local law enforcement officials to access federal training and authority to assist the feds in locating illegal aliens who have landed in jail for additional crimes. Like they do it in Mexico.

Use of the 287 g program by sheriffs – like Cobb’s Neil Warren – to identify illegals charged with murder, child molestation and rape are deemed as threats to “community safety” in the demented world of the Georgia Detention Watch marchers.

Bad news: these crazies aren’t marching in France … or Mexico.

King is president of the Dustin Inman Society.

Original column and comments HERE