Talk from Mucci at meeting is ‘hate speak’

John L. Kyff Jr.
Published: February 29, 2008

I am writing in response to the Feb. 27 article in the Star Exponent titled "Enforce the law and illegals will go home."

     Contrary to what Ms. Mucci, southern field representative for the group FAIR, said to the 40-member HPC crowd, illegal aliens won't simply go home even if U.S. immigration laws were enforced.

     As we spiral down into recession, our living costs rising alarmingly, the value of our homes and dollar plummeting, our labor force retiring in droves and our national debt skyrocketing, she advocates targeting employers and contributing, hard-working immigrants. But then her background is cruise industry public relations, not economics, sociology, law, government or history.

     Until 2001, Ms. Mucci's claim to fame was selling sunshine vacation cruises. She made a number of slick misrepresentations of the truth.

     She claimed that "federal judges in Missouri and Arizona recently ruled in favor of states being able to regulate the hiring of illegal aliens and to penalize employers who do."

     That's simply not true. The Arizona court didn' rule on the merits of the cases but "dismissed them without prejudice."  These cases are still active, having been both appealed and refiled.

     The Missouri ruling contradicts many other court rulings invalidating local ordinances and is clearly at odds with the U.S. Constitution and Congress's mandate of a uniform federal immigration enforcement system.

     Courts have struck down local anti-immigrant ordinances across the country.   

     Ms. Mucci encourages us "to adopt laws in favor of E-Verify" that she says is "free and voluntary." She would change that. Both the Arizona and Missouri laws she touts mandate that employers use the supposedly voluntary, free (but costly), E-Verify system.

     However, in Augugst 2007 a federal judge in California issued an order blocking even the federal government from implementing a DHS rule to use error-prone Social Security records as a tool for immigration enforcement.

     E-verify is so error prone that it doesn't "level the field," but rather devastates it.

     All the talk of "cheap labor, slavery, anchor babies" (all U.S. citizens) and their deportation along with their parents, etc., is the "hate speak"all hate groups use.

     It's sad that such talk is happening in Culpeper. But, I'm thankful for a free, responsible press that reports it and that FAIR's Mucci and only about 40 other people bantered it about at the HPC meeting.

     I'd say it differently, but as Town Council candidate Jerry Beckett said, if you don't vote, "shut your face."