Little sympathy for Letiecq from reader
Published: March 24, 2008
As the husband of an immigrant (Chinese) wife, living in Prince William County, I read Greg Letiecq’s column “Letiecq fights back” of March 18 with great interest but little sympathy.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines “nativism” as: “A sociopolitical policy, especially in the United States in the 19th century, favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants.”
A search on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Web site (http://www.splcenter.org) reveals what they actually published about Mr. Letiecq.
The SPLC’s 410 word entry credits Mr. Letiecq as operator of one of the most popular local anti-immigration blogs “Black Velvet Bruce Li.”
The SPLC states that on his blog, Mr. Letiecq refers to day-labor centers as “open-air toilets” and describes Latino pro-immigrant activists as “mobs of machete-wielding radicals wearing ski masks” who are part of a global “Zapatista” conspiracy that also includes “burning cars in the suburbs of Paris.”
The SPLC entry states Mr. Letiecq formed “Help Save Manassas” in April 2007, and credits Mr. Letiecq as co-author of the Prince William County ordinance which severely limits the access of immigrants to public benefits.
The SPLC also credits Mr. Letiecq for branding the “Help Save” moniker and helping to establish six spin-off groups in Virginia (“Help Save” Fairfax, Hampton Roads, Herndon, Loudon, Stafford and Old Dominion) and one in Maryland.
I guess it is to Mr. Letiecq’s credit that he is unhappy with being listed as a nativist by a group internationally recognized for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups.
Perhaps, instead of threatening lawsuits against those who publish the facts about him, Mr. Letiecq should use his influence to promote the Christian values of tolerance and American values of equal opportunity for all. Then the SPLC would not have a reason to list him.
RON CHAREST
Dale City
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Reader Reactions
I applaud you and your wife for doing immigration legally. I have no sympathy for your lack of sympathy for Letieq who also is a legal immigrant from Canada. The real reason immigration is difficult is because of lack of enforcement of the borders and lack of enforcement of employers that hire, exploit and otherwise take advantage of illegals. Ray the majority of the legal immigrants in the USA are against illegal immigrants being here and want tougher enforcement. We let 1 million come here legally every year. How hard can it be to come here. 1 million a year is a lot. We need to cut that to a quarter so we can better assimilate the legal immigrants we have not counting of course the problems created by the ones coming in illegally. Watch the video by Roy Beck, then you will understand the problem more clearly. Chris Cummings.
Chris Cummings,
As a matter of fact, my wife is a “legal” immigrant, and our ordeal in getting her visa/residency is part of the reason why I am unsympathetic to people such as Letiecq. To gain my wife’s K-3 visa, which is currently considered by the CSIS to be the quickest family visa to obtain, took 20 months, thousands of dollars, and the intervention of a senator from the state I was living in at the time. To gain her permanent residency as spouse of a citizen by birth (me) took a total 39 months and several thousand dollars more.
The reality is that there is no good way for people without family already in the US to have even a prayer for a US green card, and if they do have a sponsor will still take years and thousands of dollars in fees and indirect costs.
The H-1B (unskilled labor work permit) is the only type of work visa for unskilled labor; it is only good for seasonal work and does not offer any avenue for the visa-holder to gain permanent residency or sponsor in their families as does the H-2B visa.
My opinion is that nativists such as Letiecq are a large part of the reason our immigration system has become so broken, and has become so difficult for people to come to the US “legally.“
Bottom line is that as long as people such as Letiecq (and perhaps even Letiecq himself) are willing to pay “illegal immigrants” to work here, then immigrants are going to come here.
a good portion of the illegals are part of a Zapatista conspiracy.if you don’t believe that please see their website at mexicanos sin fronteras.
Ray, going home is the only solution for illegals, especially ones who cheat the system, last time i checked that was 50% of illegals in Va. I applaud Gregfor my mother came from Canada in the 1960’s also and paid her fees and is currently a resident legal alien. he should be proud to be a nativist and the term has been around much longer then 19th Century America. LOL. Ron was your wife illegal or legal when she came to this country. Chris Cummings
If Mr. Letiecq is unhappy with our admittedly less-than-perfect system of government perhaps he should head north and return to first country he was unhappy with. He most likely left Canada because they allowed Vietnam-era anti-war supporters to cross the border, live and work without proper documentation. Dude, when you come to America, you accept our great country as is, flaws and all. You don’t like it, go back where you came from and complain to YOUR government.
Before you go praising the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center, go check out what is written about that organization. They are money grabbing civil rights organization that spends as much money on fund raising as they do defending the rights of those they claim to represent. There are many articles on the founder Morris Dees. Below is an excerpt from an article written in 2000 in Harpers Magazine?
“You are a fraud and a conman,“ the Southern Center’s director, Stephen Bright, wrote in a 1996 letter to Dees, and proceeded to list his many reasons for thinking so, which included “your failure to respond to the most desperate needs of the poor and powerless despite your millions upon millions, your fund-raising techniques, the fact that you spend so much, accomplish so little, and promote yourself so shamelessly.“ Soon the SPLC win move into a new six-story headquarters in downtown Montgomery, just across the street from its current headquarters, a building known locally as the Poverty Palace.
There you go a statement from one of their own Directors. The race baiters such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are virtually no where to be seen this election cycle. Obama and Clinton want nothing to do with their kind. They stand in front of audiences in $1000 suits talking about racial injustice. When those black students in NJ were gunned down by illegal immigrants, they were no where to be found. If the killers were white, they would have been up there on the first flight.
Mr. Williams, did you check out the website that I referred you to? I would like you to look into the eyes of just one family who’s loved ones were killed by an illegal immigrant, many of whom had contact with Law Enforcement only to be let go due to Sanctuary Laws. The list grows each and every day.
interesting that an immigrant. YES an immigrant should be branded a nativist. Mr. Letiecq is orginally from Canada. Kinda blows that theory out of the water don’t you think? He only wants orderly controlled immigration, the kind he had to go through. Is that too much to ask?
Letiecq and other HSM members and supporters have been very careful lately to downplay their racist and bigotry ideals and now focus on only two issues - the fact that illegal is illegal and the fact that those unable to pay into a tax system become a burden to that tax system. Do they offer any solutions - other than “go home” - to fix these issues? No, because to recognize there are solutions would undermine their position of hatred of those who look and sound different from themselves. While I don’t agree with their position, I understand their right to voice it in a peaceful manner and support political candidates that share their views. But their ongoing drum beating is starting to just make noise rather than music others can enjoy.
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