When Mexico defeated Ireland in the July World Cup soccer tournament, some 5,000 “fans” turned Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park, California, into a riot zone. Radical politics, not sports, lay at the heart of the riot. Some 300 police officers were called to the scene, and according to one news account, when the “fans” reached the “barricades at Pacific and Florence, they stopped, many walked out to the intersection and began shouting ‘Viva Mexico,’ as well as some anti-U.S. and antipolice slogans. One group burned a U.S. flag.” Gunfire erupted from some of the “fans,” and as police officers scrambled, other “fans” were heard shouting, “Down with Pete Wilson and you stupid cops!”

My outrage at witnessing an American city being terrorized by a mob of screaming, rampaging Latinos is equaled only by the contempt I feel for the public officials and media who continue to call such barbarity a “celebration.” A celebration of what? The outcome of a sports event? Or the knowledge that American citizens have become so intimidated by ethnic groups that the only weapon law enforcement officers are permitted to use to stop the destruction of a city is pepper spray? Or that the “only” recourse left to law-abiding American citizens is to fork over more of their hard-earned money to pay for extra police and to repair the damage left in the wake of the “celebrants,” while making plans for the next “celebration”?

One need not be Nostradamus to predict that there will be another incident of mindless vandalism by ethnic groups who are all too aware that in America we don’t punish acts of violence, looting, or desecration of our flag but instead express our understanding of their “exuberance” and then pray that the next time it won’t be our home or business that they consider their “spoils of victory.”

But such ethnic violence is the norm in California. When an anti-illegal alien rights organization in Marin County attempted to attend in May what had been advertised as a public meeting of illegalalien activists, the group must have felt much like the defenders of the Alamo, because they certainly were outnumbered. They were there to protest the establishment of a tax-funded hiring hall that would be used to find employment for illegal aliens. But when they attempted to enter the community center (also tax-funded), they were greeted by 300 hostile Latinos yelling their version of “Yankee, Go Home,” followed by a punch thrown at one of the citizens. Justifiably, the recipient of the punch retaliated, after which police in “riot gear” were called in to quell what one news report called a “clash.” “This is a crime, this is an outrage,” shouted one of the scheduled Latino speakers when the meeting was canceled.

I agree, but it wasn’t the cancellation of a gathering of anarchists hell-bent on aiding illegal aliens and violating the immigration laws of our country that was the crime. Indeed, the crime lies in the shameful apathy of American citizens and their elected representatives that allows such treasonous activity to occur.

If what happened in Marin County, California, was an isolated incident, it would be reason enough for American citizens in every area of the country to start straightening their backbones and fighting the immigration invasion of our country. But this is by no means a unique case. For instance, residents and business owners in Silver Spring, Maryland, have already spent $40,000 of their own money attempting to block a “HUD-funded” hiring hall for illegal aliens that was purchased, furnished, and managed with federal tax dollars. This occurred after officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, decided to spend a $300,000 block grant from HUD on improving the lives not of poor Americans in need of low-cost housing but of illegal aliens. These same officials spent $20,000 to hire county workers to assist these illegal aliens with assorted other problems and awarded an additional $57,000 to Takoma Park, Maryland, for the same purpose. Takoma Park, some may remember, passed a referendum less than two years ago that allowed “illegal aliens” not only to vote but to hold political office.

The next time you see a newspaper report of a “hiring hall” being erected to get hundreds of illegal aliens off the streets of your cities (as the answer to the immigration problem), you might ask yourself what will happen when the aliens so outnumber the citizens of this country that when the former scream “Yankee, Go Home,” you realize you no longer have a home to return to.

Of course, this is exactly the goal for many of our political elite, as LN.S. Commissioner Doris Meissner’s speech to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security last May made perfectly clear. It was captioned: “We Are Transforming Ourselves.” The fact that she used the royal “we” to imply that all American citizens are responsible for this “cultural transformation” is not only arrogant but an insult to our intelligence. To the contrary, the public has no control over presidential appointees to the I.N.S., and its only “voice” in matters of immigration is through their elected representatives in Congress. So when Meissner declares, “I do believe that the Immigration Service should be more than a vassal for Congress,” she exhibits a complete disregard for the wishes of American citizens and utter contempt for their justified outrage at seeing their country “transformed.” It is eminently clear that Meissner and others of her ilk would far rather be a “vassal” for the millions of Third World immigrants and illegal aliens that annually enter our country than be a servant of American law and public opinion. According to her, “Immigrants believe more fervently in American values than those that have been here for generations.” I, for one, would like to see Meissner explain these values to the husband of the German tourist who was viciously murdered by “Asian immigrants.”

We do not need a degree in political science to know that any government official who maintains that “it is extraordinary how smoothly we are transforming ourselves into an even more diverse nation,” while race riots are a daily occurrence and states are going bankrupt paying the costs of that “diversity,” should be removed from office—immediately. Not only has Doris Meissner demonstrated her inability to deal with the daily invasion of our country, she has callously ignored the will of the people for a moratorium on all immigration for an extended period of time. She deafly has more interest in “making citizens out of amnestied illegal aliens” than in safeguarding the sovereignty of our country. —Ruth Coffey