April 23, 2004

The Truth Hurts Martin Frost (D.-TX)

For sheer entertainment value, nothing tops watching Congressional open borders advocates go ballistic when they’re publicly confronted with their own outrageous positions.

You’d expect more decorum from men who have been in the national spotlight for most of their adult life.

A month ago, Representative Chris Cannon (R.-Utah) disgraced himself. During a House Judiciary Immigration subcommittee hearing, Cannon carried on a Joe McCarthy-like interrogation of two of the immigration reform movement’s most moderate voices—NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation Executive Director Roy Beck and Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian.

Now Democratic Texas Representative Martin Frost—also being held accountable for his pro-illegal alien agenda—has blown his stack, too.

Like Cannon, Frost has a terrible record on immigration. According to Americans for Better Immigration, Frost’s grade is “F”.

And like Cannon, when Frost was forced to defend himself, he instantly played the race card.

Texas redistricting has created a new 32^nd District in Dallas. In what may be one of the closest November Congressional races, Frost—a 13 term Congressman from the current 24^th District—will face 32^nd District incumbent Republican Congressman Pete Sessions whose immigration record is A+.

What set Frost off is that, in the midst of this tough race that could end his Congressional career, he has been backed into a corner because of his co-sponsorship of H.R. 3271, the laughably-named Earned Legalization and Family Reunification Act.

H.R. 3271 would:

Give 6.5 million illegal aliens (1.2 million who live in Texas) an immediate blanket amnesty from all current penalties of their immigration law breaking.

Give those illegal aliens the right to legally work in the U.S., to qualify for permanent residency and to be put on the path to U.S. citizenship.

Give 250,000 additional aliens an unobstructed path to enter the U.S. to work.

To alert Dallas voters to Frost’s disastrous bill, the Washington-based Coalition for the Future of the American Worker purchased airtime for two weeks on four major Dallas television stations: ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Here are excerpts from the ad:

“With Dallas unemployment at 6.7% and hundreds of thousands of Texans jobless, his bill will import 250,000 more foreign workers every year to take jobs and drive down wages.”

“With Parkland Memorial Hospital costing Dallas taxpayers millions in unpaid bills, his bill encourages more abuse of our health care system by illegal aliens.

With Dallas schools so crowded they violate student teacher ratio laws, his bill will add to the problem.”

“With your kids struggling to pay for college, he’s even sponsoring a bill that gives in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens.”

Frost’s reaction was to deny that he supports amnesty and immediately charge that Sessions was hiding behind the “white sheets of white supremacy.”

This type of charge—“You’re not a racist but all your supporters are!”—is fashionable now. Instead of intelligent discourse about H.B 3271, Frost attempted to create a new debate about whether the Klu Klux Klan was maneuvering behind the scenes to defeat him.

Frost, apparently aware of the criticism that would be leveled, proclaimed to Dallas Morning News reporter Dave Levinthal that he supports the First Amendment. (“Frost says Sessions Should Denounce Immigration Ads”, April 7, 2004)

Regarding the Coalition ads, Frost said: “I have no idea what they're talking about, quite frankly. I'm for the freedom of the press. I'm for the First Amendment. But I'm not for people to lie with impunity."

But no sooner did Frost utter those words than he shelled out big bucks to stifle the free speech he claims to support. Frost hired leading Dallas public relations firms and the Washington D.C.-based law firm of Perkins Coie to pressure the television stations to drop the ads.

Of the four stations, only the NBC affiliate NBC5 (Dallas) pulled out prior to the expiration of the two week contracted period. [Email NBC5 at community@nbc5i.com, or sales@nbc5i.com]

Frost’s next step to cover up his pro-illegal immigration bias was to call on Sessions to sign a “Clean Campaign Pledge” to “disavow any television, radio, direct mail, e-mail or telephone calls that are not specifically and publicly authorized by our campaigns and to publicly condemn the sponsors of any such unauthorized effort.”

To date, nothing concrete has been determined regarding the “Clean Campaign Pledge” although the two campaign staffs have tentatively agreed to meet.

Judging by the Dallas dust up, Frost’s commitment to free speech can best be labeled “tentative.”

We at VDARE.COM have a different take. If anyone has anything germane to say in the Sessions vs. Frost confrontation, we’ll happily post it.

Accordingly, I called the Martin Frost Campaign Committee headquarters to request an interview.

Perhaps, I thought, Frost would care to elaborate on his “white sheets of white supremacy” comment. Or better yet, maybe he’d like to apologize for it.

But my calls were not returned.

I also e-mailed Dallas Morning News reporter Levinthal to see if I could ferret out more details regarding this sentence in his story:

“Federal records show that the Coalition for the Future American Worker's member organizations receive financing from other organizations, such as the Pioneer Fund, which studies racial differences and counts Nazi sympathizers among its founders.” [VDARE.COM NOTE: See the Pioneer Fund's website for its answer to this charge:"[A]ll of Pioneer’s founders capable of doing so participated in the war against the Nazis."]

I hoped that Levinthal might be able to identify these Nazi sympathizers.

I also hoped he might explain what “federal records” show that the Pioneer Fund contributed to the Coalition. Asked if Pioneer had contributed, President J. Philippe Rushton emailed us: “Nope, never heard of them.”

Short of that, Levinthal could explain what the Pioneer Fund has to do with H.B. 3271 at all.

But, unfortunately, I received no reply. [Email Levinthal. Or write a Letter To The Editor.]

Why can’t Frost defend H.B. 3271, legislation that he signed as a co-sponsor?

The obvious answer: he cannot muster up an intellectually persuasive case for his own bill.

Decide for yourself. Read the following e-mail I received from the owner of a small landscaping business in Texas:

“Times have really changed in the landscape business. Because of all the Mexicans that have come across the borders doing ‘door knocking,’ we can't compete with their prices.

“Of course, they don't have any training, insurance, or the proper equipment, or dump trucks so their overhead is much less than ours. But the illegal aliens are ruining the prices and we can't make the money we used to make.

“They are controlling the prices and the homeowners don't care. All they care about is getting the lowest price. Insurance, equipment, experience, accountability, and stability, those things don't really matter as long as the homeowners can get the cheapest price. We will be out of business in the next few years because the illegal aliens have taken over the whole city.”

No wonder Martin Frost is running away from the immigration issue as fast as he can.

Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.