Speaker calls for humane approach to immigration
By Maurice O. Ndole
The Collegian
Undocumented immigrants should be given legal status, president of
Human Borders Rev. Robin Hoover said Wednesday.
“We want to see a legal status for the 12 million people already
here," Hoover said. "Law enforcement can never repatriate those
people and it is wrong to continue letting them live in the shadows.”
Speaking to an audience of about 100 people at the University Business
Center, Hoover said the government was not doing enough to solve the
immigration crisis and preventing illegal immigrants’ death in
the desert.
“If the immigrants that are dying in Arizona desert were Swedish
hookers, Congress would have done more about deaths in the desert,” Hoover
said.
According a report in the Human Borders Web site, more than 400 illegal
immigrants died while attempting to cross the border in Arizona.
He supported giving illegal immigrants jobs and said the current immigration
situation was favorable to America.
“We should hire those people,” he said. “They have skills
and they’re motivated.”
Humane Borders has more than 70 water stations in the Arizona desert,
which provide illegal immigrants with drinking water. The organization
also provides information posters to illegal immigrants giving them
information such as maps, distance to the nearest center and emergency
numbers.
He said his organization provides such assistance to illegal immigrants
because it believes people crossing the border deserved to know the
dangers involved in the undertaking.
He said there were misconceptions that immigrants were not assimilating
to the American culture while in reality today immigrants learned English
two generations earlier than in the past.
Hoover, however, said his organization does not support an open border
policy, but it wants the U.S. government to make it easier for Mexican
immigrants to acquire visas and start a more organized guest worker
program to prevent exploitation of the workers.
The Chicano and Latin American Studies Department, Department of Political
Science and The College of Social Sciences organized the event.
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