Prince William County: Standing on the Outside

[demnan]

Today I went to speak, as did more than one hundred other people, before the Board of Supervisors in Prince William County regarding a tough immigration ordinance. This ordinance would allow and encourage search and seizure of illegal immigrants for items such as traffic violations. It was plain to me from the sarcastic remarks by an organization known as "Citizens to Save Manassas", that their obsession with immigrants didn't stop with who was legal and who was illegal. They plainly were pissed at the prospect of "pressing 1 for English", as one man stated.

But the crowd inside paled (not only in complexion for the most part, but also in numbers) with those standing on the outside. Hundreds of Hispanics gathered to hear basically what their fate would be. Many did not speak English well enough to speak before the Board.
It's tough for me to see these racial battlelines drawn. I've lived most of my life in Prince William County, and for the most part, racial relations have been good. It's obvious that relations have deterioriated since NAFTA drove many thousands of Mexican and others from Latin America north out of starvation to work on our construction crews and maid services.

If the vote is not put off tonight, who will the Board listen to, I wonder, the roughly 65% on the inside who favored the ordinance, or the other 35% of us and the masses outside who believe promoting racism and harassment is bad for our county.

WoPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070502151.html?nav=rss_nation