Author: Stan Deatherage | Published: February 3rd, 2010

    North Carolina, under the Beverly Perdue administration, wants to encourage illegal immigration as a component of our tourism industry.

    This of course will not be the Democrat take on the interpretation of the Governor’s response to the Beaufort County Commissioners’ request that the Governor remove Spanish from the state website, but most reasonable folks do understand that providing easier access to Spanish speaking people will encourage those folks to use our overburdened state services, and moreover, hearten their cousins, many illegal immigrants, to cross our borders for a taxpayer funded better way of life. The Governor explained this as tourism in her brief response to Beaufort County, stating, “Furthermore tourism has a major economic impact on our state, and readily accessible information encourages travelers to visit us.”

    Me thinks she just doesn’t get it. She is not alone. Other Democrat Commissioners from across the state (although their numbers are dwindling) have expressed a similar advocacy. One and one half years ago, at a North Carolina Association of County Commissioners Conference in New Bern, Commissioner Hood Richardson and me took our “Illegal Immigration is Bad for Beaufort County and North Carolina Show” on the road and pushed that precept vigorously in a large meeting with over 300 county commissioners and county administration personnel in attendance.

    While we discovered that many other commissioners shared our concerns, but at that time were still struggling, at that time, to give voice to their concerns, a Democrat Commissioner from Chatham County (bordering Orange County and Chapel Hill) had no trouble expressing his advocacy. His position, in regards to my opinion that, “we can no longer afford to educate illegal immigrants children,” offered at that gathering of county leaders from across the state, was “I am a former educator and it is my professional opinion that it is our duty to educate the children of undocumented guests to our state. Furthermore, it is a way that counties can do their part to participate in foreign aid to Mexico.”

    I have never forgotten those comments made by that retired educator / county commissioner from Chatham County. It gave me a fervent desire to redouble my efforts to do our part in Beaufort County to restrict illegal immigrants from the services that the tax dollars of the citizens of Beaufort County pays for. When Beaufort County raises taxes to pay for the education of “English as a Second Language” children of illegal immigrants, while many of those tax payers have their jobs, and worse; lost their homes, I consider that commissioner’s gracious desire for counties to extend such a helping hand. I consider that commissioner and the ACLU groupies that often attend our meetings, with Spanish maxims emblazoned upon their poorly fitted t-shirts, and I vote my conscious for the taxpayers of Beaufort County.

    Fortunately there are three other Republicans on the Beaufort County Board that feel the same way I do, so Governor Beverly Purdue, from our discussions on the matter at our Commissioner’s General Meeting on February 1, 2010, we commissioners have sent you, yet again, a second request to remove Spanish from the State’s tax payer funded Website. And please, don’t explain to us how important tourism is when we explain to you, repeatedly, how the cost of taking care of providing for illegal immigrants in our state and counties is destroying our ability to continue. It diminishes the office that you were elected to administer and the Constitutions (State and U.S.) that you were sworn to defend.

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