| From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA | |
| Date: Monday 3MAR08 8 p.m. EST | |
"If you can't beat them, shut them up" seems to be the new motto of groups that have been continually losing in their attempts to pass an amnesty for illegal aliens.
(Here is an Associated Press story about this national censorship campaign.)
Led by the National Council of La Raza and the Anti-Defamation League, the open-borders groups have started a concerted campaign to persuade Cable TV executives to either bar me and our Director of Government Relations Rosemary Jenks from their shows, or to always introduce us as representing an "extremist" organization with ties to hate and racist groups.
Their characterization of NumbersUSA and our members is without any connection to reality, facts or even common decency. But if all of us remain silent in the face of this campaign of character assassination, we might indeed be silenced on TV and beyond.
Please consider sending an email to Cable TV executives urging them to resist the national censorship campaign.
So broad is the attempt at censorship that the open-borders groups suggest that virtually no spokesman or group fighting illegal immigration or asking for less overall immigration should be allowed on TV. And they want Lou Dobbs off CNN, and Pat Buchanan off MSNBC, and Sean Hannity off Fox.
LA RAZA SUGGESTS THAT NO PRO-ENFORCEMENT GROUP
HAS A LEGITIMATE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH
The total censorship advocacy of La Raza and its friends can be seen in the fact that their website lists NumbersUSA as "the most reasoned" of all groups on the restriction side of the immigration issue ... but then it says even NumbersUSA should not be allowed on TV, or quoted by the Washington Post.
In other words, no group that stands for enforcing immigration laws should be allowed on TV, because all of them are less reasonable than NumbersUSA, which La Raza describes as being an "extremist group targeting Latinos."
These comments from La Raza are so desperate and disconnected from reality that when they began last month I dismissed them and chose not to bring them to your attention.
NUMBERSUSA HAS ALWAYS CAUTIONED
AGAINST ANTI-IMMIGRANT EXPRESSIONS
Those of you who have used NumbersUSA's activist tools for our 11 years of existence know that, for instance, we have NEVER talked about the ethnicity or race of immigrants and illegal aliens. We have ALWAYS called for immigration policies that do NOT take race into consideration and that do NOT favor one ethnicity over another.
You also know that beginning with my 1996 video, "Immigration by the Numbers," and with the founding of our website in 1997, we have always admonished Americans to refrain from getting angry at immigrants. We have warned against "immigrant bashing." We have always rallied citizens to express their anger against the public officials who have created the immigration nightmare.