WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- A Congressman from Chicago says the White House is more interested in persecuting Hispanic citizens in U.S. neighborhoods than in defending borders.
"Rather than protecting our borders, this administration has decided to protect us from Windex-wielding cleaning ladies taking their children to school, or shopping for their families, hundreds of miles away from the border and deep in Latino communities," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Caucus Immigration Task Force.
Delivering this week's Democratic Hispanic radio address, Gutierrez cast President Bush as more interested in a virtual ethnic cleansing of Hispanic neighborhoods than in legitimate border control.
"The president has allowed anti-immigrant extremists to take control of his party's immigration agenda and to promote mean-spirited, misguided, and malicious anti-immigrant policies," Gutierrez said.
He also blasted as "extreme factions" House Republicans who oppose giving undocumented farm workers legal residency.
Said Gutierrez: "We deserve better. Because America, as it has for generation after generation, depends on our hard-working immigrants, and America deserves an immigration policy as dependable as they are."
