10/01/2014
Jesse Mossman’s recent VDARE.com letter, A Reader Reports That In New Mexico, Nobody (Hispanic Or Not) Wants Illegals To Have Drivers' Licenses, reminds us of the critical referendum confronting Oregon’s voters this November: Shall their state make "driver cards" available to illegal aliens?(These cards would grant driving privileges in the state to Oregon-resident illegal aliens who could pass the usual tests for a driver’s license, and — supposedly — the cards wouldn’t suffice for boarding airliners, entering federal buildings, etc.)
Mossman reported that sentiment in New Mexico is 75 percent against their state’s current policy of letting illegal aliens obtain full-fledged New Mexico driver’s licenses. So, by analogy, it’s a good bet that Oregonians — left to their own instincts — will be overwhelmingly inclined to vote "No" on the driver-cards referendum, which is "Measure 88" on their ballot. (This link has what amounts to an official summary, from before the number "88" was assigned to the referendum.)
But those Oregon voters will likely soon be deluged with Yes-on-88 "arguments" financed by YES on Oregon Safe Roads, the treason lobby’s umbrella organization formed to bludgeon the referendum to passage. Major contributors are Local 503 of the Service Employees International Union [SEIU], the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Oregon Nurseries Political Action Committee, and Northwest Health Foundation.
To date, the YES on Oregon Safe Roads has collected more than $210,000 and benefited from more than $75,000 of in-kind donations, and their cash balance for the push to election day is more than $150,000. (In Oregon, voting is entirely by mail, and the ballots start going out to voters on October 15, so "election day" is simply the deadline for returning ballots.)
The "David" against this financial Goliath is Oregonians for Immigration Reform [OFIR], one of the most effective state-level immigration-sanity groups in the country. They explain what they're about at the website of their Protect Oregon Driver Licenses [PODL] offshoot:
Oregon Ballot Measure 88 is a citizen’s-veto referendum on SB 833, a bill passed in 2013 by the Oregon Legislature which would grant official driver cards to persons who cannot prove legal presence in the U.S.The OFIR-ites have been working without letup to overturn SB 833 ever since it was signed by the governor on May Day, 2013. It’s been a struggle at every step — a couple of points along the way are recounted here and here — but now it’s the home stretch, trying to make sure that Oregon’s citizens understand what’s at stake with Measure 88.Oregonians for Immigration Reform opposes the bill and was successful in gathering enough signatures to put the bill before voters for a Yes or No vote in the November 2014 general election. Citizens will have the opportunity to overturn SB 833 by voting NO on Ballot Measure 88, and the result will be that illegal aliens will not be accommodated with official driver cards.
For example, the treason lobby is trying to fool voters into thinking that the availability of driver cards for illegal aliens would improve road safety because "Drivers will need to … follow current Oregon law regarding proof of insurance." But as OFIR’s president Cynthia Kendoll explained to me, this just means that when applicants take the road test, there must be proof of insurance for the car in which they're tested. Nothing then keeps the newly "carded" from driving their own cars uninsured — or cancelling insurance for the testing car once the road test has been passed.
Kendoll also points to the experience in the aforementioned New Mexico, where the headline on a September 9, 2012 Fox News Latino article, by Joseph Kolb, tells the story: Undocumented Immigrant Drivers License Law Fails to Boost Number of Insured.
For OFIR/PODL, it’s been a guerrilla campaign. They've made do with less than $30,000 in resources, mostly in contributions of under $100 from individuals. And their treasury balance at the start of the final push is below $10,000.
(For comparison, the SEIU alone has poured $77,500 into the let’s-have-illegal-aliens-driving-in-Oregon campaign.)
But PODL’s No-on-88 campaign has been endorsed by most of Oregon’s sheriffs and by others with impressive credentials, and they've been able to piggyback the PODL literature on the door-to-door campaign efforts of sympathetic candidates.
As Kendoll wrote to a potential donor (copying me):
We have been functioning well on a virtual shoestring budget. Partially because I seem to have an inordinate way of procuring what we need for the campaign for very little money. But, even more importantly, we have an incredible base of volunteers across the state. I can’t express how much I appreciate all the people that have rolled up their sleeves, put their personal lives on hold and gotten to work to defeat Ballot Measure 88.The No-on-88 campaign is highly significant as the only state-level referendum this fall that lets voters have their say on illegal immigration. If they say "No!" loudly enough in the very blue state of Oregon, even some clueless politicians are bound to notice.
VDARE.com readers outside of Oregon who are frustrated by the lack of opportunity to express themselves electorally on immigration this fall may find opportunities to step up at the PODL website.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.