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Eyebrow-raising billboard in Little Haiti declares: 'Stop the invasion' of immigrants

By Ruth Morris

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

May 19, 2006

A fledgling Internet campaign to close the U.S.-Mexico border to illegal immigration brought its message to thousands of South Florida commuters Thursday, unveiling a billboard that read "Stop the Invasion" along Interstate 95 in Miami.

Looming over a gas station at NW 79th Street near the city's Little Haiti neighborhood, where a heavily immigrant clientele gassed up their cars, the sign was the third billboard erected so far by the Grassfire Alliance. It follows similar unveilings in Dallas and Atlanta.

The five-year-old group paid for the advertising space with online donations to push for tough enforcement against illegal immigrants and to oppose a hotly debated guest worker plan proposed by President Bush, said Steve Elliott, the group's president.

"I would oppose a caste system worker class," Elliott said of the president's plan. Bush on Monday called for guest-worker visas for millions of illegal immigrants, if they pay fines and back taxes and pass background checks.

Elliott referred to the temporary worker proposal as an amnesty, something the president said the federal government would not offer.

"If the Senate and the president push through an amnesty bill, it is going to divide this nation," Elliott said.

Sitting under the shade of a tarp nearby, while attendants washed her car, Paulette Hopkins, 61, disagreed with the tone of the billboard.

"I think it gives a very negative impression of Miami and the United States," she said. "It's too blunt. I think a lot of people's feeling will be hurt."

Hopkins, a medical technologist, said her father came to the United States from Trinidad decades ago, but chose to live as a legal resident and never claimed U.S. citizenship.

"I think we need more border security, but I don't think sending the illegal immigrants who are here back will solve the problem," she said.

Auto dealer Tony Young, 37, looked up at the sign through his sunglasses and shook his head.

"We're all immigrants," he said. "My mother came from Trinidad and my father came from Venezuela. I was born in England. I find it offensive."

Although Florida is far removed from the nation's porous southwestern border, many of the state's illegal immigrants are thought to have crossed there. Florida also has the third-largest share of foreign-born residents in the United States, after California and New York.

Polls show Americans generally think illegal immigration is out of control and want the government to improve border enforcement. But at the same time, a majority favors some kind of legal status for illegal immigrants already here if they meet specific conditions.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in April found 63 percent of respondents supported an approach that combined tougher enforcement with a temporary work program. Only 30 percent opted for tougher enforcement alone.

Elliott said his organization's stance is in step with common sentiment on immigration. He said the conservative Grassfire Alliance, which also opposes indecency on television and abortion, received nearly $1 million in donations in 2004.

But in South Florida, the billboard already has raised eyebrows.

"This surprises me a lot. It's not consistent with the environment of tolerance and solidarity I've generally found in South Florida," said Jorge Lomónaco, the Mexican consul general in Miami. "It's probably because they realize they don't represent mainstream America and they're beginning to act desperately."

Floridians have shown a stable and fairly positive view toward immigration over the years, said Hugh Gladwin, director of the Institute for Public Opinion Research at Florida International University.

Although conservatives in other immigrant-rich states prefer tighter controls on immigration, Florida's conservatives include many Cuban politicians, who staunchly defend their countrymen's right to come here to escape communism, Gladwin said.

"Anti-immigration is not an issue that's gotten a big foothold in Florida," he said.

Elliott said recent immigrant marches had shifted those trends. He said the very size of the gatherings -- hundreds of thousands rallied in Los Angeles and Chicago on May 1 -- served as a wakeup call to Americans.

"People were very offended by what they saw in the streets. They want to create a civil rights movement," he said of illegal immigrants who marched, "when by definition a civil right is a right reserved for citizens."

As he hosed down a car at the carwash, Jamaican-born Paul Sutherland, 29, said he could see both sides of the issue.

"A few should get a chance," Sutherland said. But when asked how he would select those few, he paused and smiled.

"That's such a good question," he said.