San Antonio to Assist Families after Undocumented Worker Raids

[Avalux]

I posted this in GD, but they're all worked up over Rove and it's sinking like a rock, lol -----

San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger wants to help those who were left behind after their loved ones were deported - mainly wives and children. The April 19 raids on IFCO Systems locally resulted in the arrest and deportation of 27 undocumented workers. Hardberger recalled how the city helped Katrina victims after that disaster and sees this situation as similar; saying he's neutral on the issue of immigration. I applaud his efforts to help these people for humanitarian reasons, even if others disagree:

Hardberger said he will meet with City Manager Sheryl Sculley "to see if our existing institutions to help the needy are enough to take care of the needs of these people or whether we should have some sort of special effort in the same sort of sense that we helped the evacuees."

"Right now, some of them are very torn up and have very bad circumstances," he said.

Mark Krikorian, head of a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls, criticized the mayor for comparing lawbreakers to U.S. citizens fleeing a natural disaster. Krikorian said the city likely wouldn't do the same for families of U.S. citizens who have been sent to prison for committing state crimes.

"He's saying the city is neutral, (that) immigration policy isn't its business, and then he's assisting illegal immigrant families," said Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "He clearly is getting involved in immigration policies. To say that a city can be neutral on immigration matters is false because anything that a state or local government does is its immigration policy. What he's clearly doing here is subverting federal immigration enforcement.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA042606.03B.immigrant_help.9abe2dd.html

[sonias]

1. Good for Hardberger

Oh and let me add a F**K you to Mark Krikorian.

Sonia