Awakenings: How citizens became immigration activists Following is a collection of first-person accounts of how certain Americans came to understand mass immigration as a terrible threat to the nation — its culture, environment and quality of life. In most cases it was a personal experience that led to recognition of the larger problem. Contrary to the message underlying puff pieces about individual immigrants in the mass media, illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. Every alien working for sub-living wages is displacing an American worker and incrementally ending the possibility of a middle-class life for American blue-collar workers. Low-skilled workers, particularly blacks, have been the hardest hit, with the wages of high-school dropouts reduced by 5-10 percent by immigration. That loss is serious for people already struggling to get by. It is very troubling when the media overlooks hardworking American citizens who are trying to achieve a better life but must compete with increasing millions of desperate aliens who have flooded job markets. Of course, we all suffer as America's quality of life deteriorates with worse schools, longer commutes in increasing gridlock, paved-over open space, higher taxes required for just maintaining beleaguered infrastructure and the many other ways in which daily life is harmed by American overpopulation. And the future looks increasingly grim, with the country on a track to double population in around 60 years. What Blade Runner future awaits today's kids because of our lack of resolve?     Carol Joyal is the Chair of Immigration Reform Network of Silicon Valley in California. A retired teacher and school librarian, she testified before the House Immigration Subcommittee in June 1999 about how immigration has affected her family. When her son (a black kid) was in high school, a gang of immigrants attacked him, pulling him out of the Joyals' own home and beating him severely. He had to go into hiding outside of the area for several months because of safety concerns. Terry Anderson testified at the same House hearing, describing how his black working-class neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles has been taken over by illegal Mexican aliens, typically with several families living in a small house. He has seen his own income as an auto mechanic fall as the area has become flooded with illegal aliens willing to work for less than a living wage. Black kids get short-changed in school because much of the instruction is given in Spanish and also on the job market because anyone who wants to work at a McDonald's must speak Spanish. On Sunday nights you can now listen to The Terry Anderson Show, a radio program which focuses almost exclusively on the immigration issue. Brenda Walker (the editor of this website) had an extremely powerful experience watching C-SPAN that convinced her that domestic population growth was out of control and something needed to be done. Like many, she took to heart the message of Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb, and decided that if overpopulation is bad in a Third World society, it is even worse in an industrialized nation that is wasteful with natural resources. Further self-education led to other concerns, such as the Mexicanization of the Southwest, the loss of the middle class because of immigration's downward pressure on wages and the inherent misogyny contained in multiculturalism, among others. The Education of Joe Guzzardi. Read the odyssey of a Lodi (California) Adult School teacher, who knew nothing about immigration until his "baptism of fire" teaching English as a Second Language. Welfare abuse (including the use of ambulances as taxis for regular medical care), disinterest in assimilation and no regard for learning English are some of the problems seen at ground level. Joe Guzzardi later ran as the immigration control candidate for California governor in the fall of 2003, bringing the message of common sense and fiscal reality to the debate. Jonette Christian: A Liberal's Re-thinking Do you believe the media's stereotype that everyone who wants immigration limited is a conservative of the Pat Buchanan mold? Jonette Christian's explanation of her own conversion to immigration restriction shows that is not necessarily the case. In addition, her views remain intellectually consistent with liberal ideals of solidarity with the poor and underprivileged. She has also written an important piece about the importance American population responsibility in a global context. Tom Tancredo is the founder of the House Immigration Reform Caucus and has been the most courageous leader in Congress on the issue of immigration anarchy and how it must be brought under control. The interview with FrontPage.com contains some interesting material about he became awakened to the issue as a teacher in the public schools of Jefferson County Colorado. Bilingual education had just been initiated to the detriment of the students for political reasons to advance the Aztlan agenda. Mr. Tancredo later attended a rally for bilingual education on the steps of the state capitol, where the steps were enumerated about how to achieve a sovereign Hispanic state out of the American southwest, including "Be sure the mother tongue is retained in the school system." A collection of Rep. Tom Tancredo's speeches in Congress is available here.