Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2014, an annual radio row organized by FAIR may be one of this year’s best indicators for the future of immigration reform. The event occurs on April 9-10 on Capitol Hill and features the largest gathering ever of talk radio hosts gathered on a single issue.
Dozens of hosts from across the country will spend two days discussing immigration policy with listeners, lawmakers, law enforcement, immigration experts, activists and members of the media live from radio row while broadcasting their shows back to their home markets.
In a Townhall.com op-ed in February, Joyce Kaufman, talk radio host for WFTL in West Palm Beach, Fla. explained the goal of these radio hosts:
In short, do what the law says and what the public wants. It’s not too much to ask and we’ll be pressuring our lawmakers to do it while we’re in Washington.
Hear us, fear us, and join us. We’re talk radio – America’s Electronic Town Hall – and we’re proud of speaking the truth and holding our public officials accountable for the one basic thing we’ve elected them to do; serving our broad national interests.
The radio event occurs while the Department of Homeland Security reviews their deportation practices with a goal of expanding the categories of illegal aliens who will be exempted from removal.
The national radio row will also coincide with – and attempt to blunt – a massive lobbying effort by special interests to resurrect S.744, the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. This occurs with an even more aggressive push by corporate interests to convince House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to enact legislation that grants them greater access to low-wage foreign labor, even as some 20 million of Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2014 punctuates the increasing GOP divide over the immigration issue. Days after releasing a set of “immigration principles” Boehner backpedaled due to public disapproval and announced that legislation is unlikely in 2014. The Wall Street Journal directly credited talk radio for that decision, a sentiment echoed by NPR:
The truth is, the wind had shifted; and it had taken only a weekend. Within hours of leadership bringing forth its principles on Jan. 30, they were being denounced by conservative activists, bloggers and radio talk shows. The central objection: the idea that those now in the country illegally should have a path, albeit a difficult one, to legal status.
However, Dan Stein, the president of FAIR, warns activists and talk radio that the threat isn’t over:
But the moment the pressure is off, Boehner may proceed. Thus, our goal, and the goal of the hosts participating in Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2014, is to make sure that the House leadership continues to hear the voices of the American people and is reminded that it is their interests that our immigration laws are supposed to serve.
Boehner has already proven this warning to be true. Just 20 days after downplaying any Republican attempts to take up immigration this year, Boehner had a “healthy conversation” with President Obama on the issue. Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, corroborated Boehner’s report, “I can certainly confirm that immigration was one of the topics they discussed. I can certainly confirm that there is broad agreement that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.”
Since some House Republicans are currently working to sneak a form of amnesty through the National Defense Authorization Act, Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2014 comes at the perfect time to send another wake-up call to Congress.
20 Comments
I would like to see more of a “by any means necessary” approach by FAIR and other legal immigration groups. Right now, it seems you are too entrenched in playing by the rules when what should happen is at every turn Americans are educated to know what having these illegal aliens (ESPECIALLY FROM MEXICO) is really costing them! First, this country is expected to provide ammenities NONE of their home countries would provide to us were the situation reversed. Second, their home countries no longer have pressure to improve and make life better for their citizens. Third, the U.S. is rapidly becoming a country where Spanish is unofficially official. Though it’s a beautiful language, it is not the language of international commerce NOR does its core philosophies match ours. Here’s a simple but true example I often use. In English, we say “I missed the plane”. Who is the blame put on? OURSELF. WE are responsible. In Spanish, they say “El avion me perdi”, in other words, “The plane left me.” Who is the blame put on? THE PLANE. And, that is the overall philosophy of these people – someone else is to blame. Fourth, a house divided cannot stand. It is very conceivable that in a few short years one of the towns in California will declare Spanish its official language. There are already city council meetings being held completely in Spanish by foreign born California politicians. Fifth, we have already had over a hundred years of immigrants coming from various parts of the world. Their goal was to become AMERICAN. Why are we empowering these people NOT TO? Lastly, the very brief broad unity we had begun to experience over the past 20-30 years as Americans of various racial and ethnic origins can be completely erroded if these people and their tribal mentality continues to be tolerated. It is clear they don’t want to be citizens, so why offer the pathway? It is clear they don’t want to be Americans, so why are they in the country? We have got to build a much bigger, much broader coalition of support based on REAL evidence not emotional, knee-jerk reactions. We have got to get more bipartisan media or independent media to report on the real costs, not presenting these people as victims. If they are, it’s of their own home countries. We have got to fight harder, more visibly (though not violently), and more aggressively to make this renegade president and all of his cronies on both sides of the aisle and up the middle understand our parents, grand, and great-grand parents did not make all of their sacrifices and go through their sorrows for us to allow the country to be given away, dissentigrated, OR CONQUERED! We’ve got to fight like we mean it – with persistence, strategy, intelligence, and perseverence. WE’VE GOT TO DO IT NOW!!
CLOSE our borders to ALL illegals Those here,round them up and ship them back to where they came from. They are a burden on our country,get welfare,food stamps over crowd our schools,free housing,take jobs away from
american citizens ( don’t even mention that they take menial jobs that americans don’t want ). Just look around construction sites,road work and other occupations and you will see illegals there.Time to take care of the problem before we become a third world country.
NEWS FLASH !!!!!!!!!!!!
The real number of illegals in the USA (if you include children) is approximately 55-MILLION … !!!!!
There are 5-million in California, 4-million in Texas, 4-million in New York, 3-million in Illinois. We are up to 16-million illegals in just 4 States … !!!!
PS: Illegals make up about 50% of the population of New York City … !!!!!
save the country billons catch them and send them back home they draw welfare at the rate of $9,000.oo a year please take care of our own first not law breakers.
Senator Jeb Bush said they came out of love and knowingly broke the law to feed their family, right, not all the freebies they will get, anyway, “Mission Accomplished”, for over 20 years of broken immigration thanks to the Democrats and now pandering Republicans, they have come, conquered, and we paid for it. Now it’s time they went home to the land, homes, cars, etc., that they bought with the money they sent home that we paid for and that they most likely acquired fraudulently and illegally. He does not know what he is talking about from his upper class ivory tower. However speak to citizens whose neighborhoods illegals have invaded like locusts and monopolized all labor jobs getting paid cash from greedy employers, all affordable housing contributing to the homeless situation, and hoarding everything that non-profits give to the poor to send home or sell. Some have contributed to the crime rate and drug sales. They have made a mockery of the laws of this land and this country and have taken so much from poor and struggling citizens that unless you live in zip codes where this is the reality of illegal immigration and the damage they have done and cost, you continue to assume they are victims because they know how to work the gullible American. They are far from, they have had 20 years to perfect the manipulation of this country to get what they want and succeeded and they are going to fight because they do not want to give up all that they have acquired fraudulently and illegally. They live and eat better than the poor citizens in the community because they take it all like the glutton’s and degenerates that they are. They dress well and drive around in nice vehicles while the struggling citizen looks on to their in your face arrogance. It’s time they are held accountable and sent home. Enough is enough.
I’m glad that FAIR continues to hold the “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” radio row. In response to a Washington, DC event advocating liberalized immigration policies on Wednewsday, April 9, here is a link to my just-posted CAPS Blog Post, “How the Sierra Club Was Hijacked by Open-Borders Radicals”
http://www.capsweb.org/blog/how-sierra-club-was-hijacked-open-borders-radicals
Amazing that all the lawbreaking criminals who sneak into the country through the back door in the middle of the night are so adament about the Courts following all the rules and all their alledged “civil rights”. They have learned that if they deep six all their paperwork along with their cell phones it makes it harder to deport them back to their own country which doesn’t want them either. More than six years ago Bush tried an amnesty which failed, but six years later there are still about 12 million still here whinning everyone to death. In the past six years the Feds have done nothing!
They have been claiming that is `12million illegals for over a decade now, it’s at least double that! And these lying bastards in the White House and Congress know it.
Nancy, you are correct. Let’s count noses: 5-million in California, 4-million in Texas, 4-million in New York … WAIT !!!! We are up to 13-million illegals in just 3 States alone … !!!!
The real number of illegals in the USA (if you include children) is approximately 55-MILLION … !!!!!
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Good Luck on this Year’s Efforts
Its time to get on the FAIR microphones and start blasting out America’s severe overpopulation problems.
We need more groups like this to get the message across to our government. They are not listening to We the People as much so we need to make it louder and organizations like FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) can help do that. We need to hold our government accountable when they do not abide by the law.
Please read, sign and share my petition for NO IMMIGRATIONS REFORM…………… https://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-the-united-states-no-immigration-reform
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there are 2 to 1 that says no to immigration what part of that do they not get if they vote for this we need to vote them out if they would enforce the laws we have now we would not be where we are now if you are illegal and someone hires you and they get crought fine them big time if they do it again lock them up for 90 days and next time 200 days and so on no food stamps and no hand outs
They do not represent us unless it’s election time. The rest of the time they answer only to their corporate donors who want the cheap labor. Vote them ALL out.
Let’s count noses: 5-million in California, 4-million in Texas, 4-million in New York … WAIT !!!! We are up to 13-million illegals in just 3 States alone … !!!!
The real number of illegals in the USA (if you include children) is approximately 55-MILLION … !!!!!
There’s a very interesting law suit under way. Thousands of employees of Apple, Google, and other tech companies are suing those companies because they say that collusion among the companies prevented them from accepting offers from the other companies and obtaining higher salaries. The really interesting part is that there are numerous e mails that absolutely prove the allegations. One was by the late Steve Jobs, who told another company that if they hired one of his employees, it would be “war”. There are also other emails by individuals that confirm there was a pact not to hire each other’s employees.
The tech companies are always crying a river that they can’t get qualified employees, but what has always been obvious with the H1B program is that they want cheap compliant foreign workers. Guys like Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg can never have enough, no matter how many billions they have. This lawsuit simply proves that their bottom line is money. For them, not their workers.
To be clear, the e mail about “war” was one written by Google’s Sergey Brin, in which he said he had received a call from Jobs and Brin said that Jobs threatened war if Google hired Apple employees.
. Most of these professionals are paid properly regardless of status………..remember that… I DO KNOW THAT i work in that field.
I agree with you if they do that they deserve to pay the consequences of making the market a black market. So they deserve to be punished BUT……………it is a free market so most likely it would have to go to the Supreme Court to have a just verdict.
But Leland
Its OK to break laws and cut wages like insider stock trading criminals….afteral,l the open border pundits indirectly allege our Constitution was written on toilet paper….LOL