Americans step up to save Maryland

They feel like people without a country. Often times they do not understand the language people speak around them. Their neighbors often cower behind locked doors. They are afraid to speak out. Welcome to America 2009. Welcome to affluent neighborhoods around Washington, D.C. Welcome to the fear and frustration voiced at a Help Save Maryland meeting earlier this week. These are stories of Americans.

“I’m not against Latinos,” Shakil Hamid said. But if another round of amnesty is approved the nationalized could “bring four relatives for every new citizen.

“The better life will be gone,” he added. “The pattern to citizenship I am for, but it comes through your country. Go home and apply.”

Hamid said he is a second-generation American. His parents emigrated from Asia. They were outraged by the 1986 amnesty having waited and come legally beforehand, he added.

Whether newly naturalized or from several generations, black-, brown- and, white-skinned two dozen or so folks shared experiences of:

• Day laborers gathering near their property and leaving trash or urine;
• Businesses hiring illegals to keep costs down;
• Government funds being squandered on non-citizens; and
• Increasing gang activity.

The group released copies of a flyer it is distributing to businesses in Montgomery County, A Business Owner’s Guide to Illegal Immigration. Among other things, it reminds employers they can be fined $2,200 per unauthorized alien for a first offense and that county-sponsored temporary work centers in Rockville, Silver Spring, and Wheaton do not check workers’ eligibility to work in the United States. The pamphlet suggests employers use temps from federally funded MontgomeryWorks! center in Gaithersburg or Wheaton.

HSM has taken a two-prong approach telling employers what they can do and what they can’t do, volunteer Paul Mendez said. Construction and landscaping sites have been targeted thus far, Bethesda restaurants are next on the list.

Billions of federal dollars are at stake in a construction project to build a highway, the Inter County Connector between Montgomery and Prince George’s. Some are concerned those dollars designed for Americans from the American Recovery Act will not go to Americans.

“Primes [contractors] hire illegal aliens then get them processed quickly for green cards,” said construction contractor Markus Marine. “These jobs are designed to put people laid off back to work. I don’t like the way the process is circumvented.”

A Prince George’s County group, People for Change, has allied with HSM. The group is becoming a political player and was credited with helping stop a proposed soccer stadium earlier in the year. “The seasonal $8 to $10 an hour jobs that would have been created we’re not for us, they were for illegal aliens,” said POC member Jerry McLaurin.

“We need to make [the amnesty debate] politically correct,” he added.