Santa Ana : Forum on Immigration Sparks Lively Exchange

About 400 people packed a meeting hall at St. Anne’s Church to participate in a public forum on immigration policy.

After an introductory debate between Linda Wong, an attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, and Gil Wong (no relation) of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, moderators waded into the crowd and let audience members air their views, which ran the gamut from opening the borders to blaming immigrants for a myriad of social ills.

“Why is my insurance rate so high?” asked Thomas Ferrier, of Santa Ana. “It’s the illegal aliens. They drive without licenses, without insurance. . . . We’re being given a rosy picture of what they contribute.”

But Amin David, president of Los Amigos, a county Latino group, blasted back. “Now you are blaming us for leprosy and AIDS,” David said, referring to comments by Gil Wong during the debate. “What next? As for your insurance going up, don’t you read the newspapers?”

Cambodian refugee Chea Sok Lim said Americans who blame immigrants for their problems “should be ashamed.”

“I look at this country as a freedom country,” Lim said. “If you want to curtail the flow of immigration, you have to destroy the Statue of Liberty.”

Other audience members said immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, lowering educational standards and property values and draining public coffers through their use of public health care facilities.

The Monday night forum, sponsored by the county Human Relations Commission and Rancho Santiago College, is one of about 300 National Issues forums held around the country. Representatives from the forums will meet next year in Atlanta to discuss the conclusions reached at each local meeting and try to formulate a national citizens policy on immigration.

Commission Director Rusty Kennedy said the forum was different from anything the group had sponsored in the past because of the level of grass-roots involvement. “We didn’t just put (INS Regional Commissioner) Harold Ezell and a panel of experts up there. No one was given a platform. It was a very mixed group.”