Oregonians Urge Delay of New Driver’s License Rules

MEDIA ADVISORY
December 31, 2007

Contact:
Ramon Ramirez, President, PCUN 503-989-0073
Erik Sorensen, Communications, CAUSA 503-789-8213

Oregonians Urge Delay of New Driver’s License Rules

Coalition to Hold Press Conference urging DMV to delay implementation of new rules restricting diver's license access

What: Press Conference announcing petitions calling for a delay in implementation of new drivers license rules

When: Monday, December 31, 2007 at 11:00 A.M.

Where: Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles Headquarters, 1905 Lana Avenue NE, Salem, Oregon 97301

Today the Oregon Coalition for Public Safety, an ad-hoc group made up of 25 organizations, will hold a press conference in front of the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Headquarters in Salem. Members of the Latino Community and leaders will present DMV officials with over 3000 petitions signed by Oregonians concerned with the implementation of new administrative rules, as set forth by Executive Order 07-22.

Under the Executive Order's provisions announced by Governor Kulongoski last month, the Oregon DMV will limit the documents accepted to get a driver's license, eliminating documents commonly available to immigrants such as the Matricula card and foreign birth certificates. Presently under Oregon law, all residents of Oregon, regardless of legal status, can obtain a driver's license, an important public safety policy.

There are over 120,000 undocumented immigrants in Oregon, many of whom drive on Oregon's roads to get to work, buy groceries, and take their kids to school. Under the Governor’s new rules, these drivers would not be allow to take drivers classes or pass driving tests, will not be able to get insurance, and will be more likely to be involved in a potentially fatal accident.

Since the release of the Governor's executive order, community leaders and organizations from around Oregon have been raising awarness about the potential danger to public safety. Among their concerns is the probability that immigrants affected by the new rules may be still unaware of the changes. During today’s press conference, the coalition will be calling on officials with the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles and Oregon Department of Transportation to delay implementation of Executive Order 07-22 until adequate outreach has been made to inform the most affected population.

The press conference will begin at 11:00 am. For more information on this event, please call Ramon Ramirez, President of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United) at 503-989-0073.

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Oregon Anti-immigrant Activist arrested for Child Sex Abuse

An Oregon anti-immigrant activist and blogger is being held on five counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, two counts of sex abuse and two counts of hindering prosecution.

According to a news report appearing in the Salem Statesman Journal yesterday, Bruce Elliot Benkle, a barber at the Fairview Barbershop in Dalles, was arrested last month on a range of sex abuse charges he is suspected of committing on both male and female children. He is currently lodged in the Polk County Jail with bail set at $200,000.

Bruce Benkle, a well known anti-immigrant activist frequently seen holding signs and taking photos for Oregonians for Immigration Reform at their events, is a frequent commenter among Oregon’s top anti-immigrant weblogs. Benkle, who goes by “Bruce the Barber” among other pseudonyms, is often seen commenting on Daniel’s Political Musings, one of Oregon’s most active anti-immigrant blogs. He is also seen regularly posting comments on message boards of news sites in the Marion County area and elsewhere.

Yesterday’s story caught our attention as there were similarities between a mugshot of Benkle and a photo (on the left) of anti-immigrant blogger “Bruce the Barber”. It wasn’t until reviewing an entry appearing at Daniel’s Political Musings from last March that the photo along with another were in fact that of Bruce Benkle and Vice President of Oregonians for Immigration Reform and Vice Chairman of the Marion County Republican Party, Rick Hickey, at an OFIR-Oregon Minuteman rally.

In the photos, the two are shown holding signs with other OFIR activists outside the office of the Service Employees International Union Local 503 during an anti-immigrant rally in downtown Portland. Benkle later commented on the entry identifying himself in the photo with Hickey.

Benkle has a long history of threatening and intimidating behavior, and racist commentary. Among his racist commentary, one in particular shows him boasting on Daniel’s Political Musings of a website he enjoys with cartoons he says are "a little racist". “If you want to e-mail me”, Benkle said “I will show you a website with a lot of funny cartoons about Mexicans and others, and NO they are not racist....well maybe a little” Following the comment he left his signature "old time barber" email address that he often posts along with his full name on other internet sites.

As a close ally of the leadership at Oregonians for Immigration Reform, the identification of Bruce Benkle’s enjoyment of promoting racist material comes on the heals of a report released last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center showing among other things white supremacists among the ranks of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group that is directly linked on OFIR’s website.

According to the Polk County Sheriff's office, they have concerns that there may be many more victims of Benkle, as he used the barber shop in Dalles to perpetrate many of the sex crimes. In a KATU News report, Polk county prosecutor Tim Park said that “every time we talk to one [victim], it turned up one or two more, and it's kind of in a domino effect”. Police are asking parents whose children may have had any unsupervised contact with Benkle to contact them immediately.

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FAIR Exposed as a Bona Fide Hate Group

Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report exposing the anti-immigrant organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), as a "bona fide hate group".

In their report, The Teflon Nativists: FAIR Marked by ties of White Supremacy, SPLC cites FAIR's long time anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes and history of questionable statements and associations.

Among the findings of the report, SPLC showed that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

is the creation of a man who operates a racist publishing company and has compared immigrants to "bacteria;"

has employed members of white supremacist groups in key positions;

has promoted racist conspiracy theories; and

has accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to eugenics and to proving a connection between race and IQ.

Read their complete report Here

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Oregon Voter-Roll Complaint Doesn’t Stand Up To The Facts

Last Week, former State Rep. Jeff Kropf, Voting Restrictionist Ruth Bendl, Jim Ludwick, President of anti-immigrant group Oregonians for Immigration Reform and anti-tax activist Jason Williams held a press conference about their beliefs that Oregon's Voter rolls are saturated with voters using “false addresses, improbable or impossible birth dates and ones allowed to register without showing any proof of identification”. They cited examples such as thousands of people registered to vote at one address to birth dates like 11/11/1111 printed on voter registration cards.

According to The Oregonian, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury’s office responded the following day saying that “The examples provided Thursday did not appear to show anything out of compliance with election laws”. They added saying that, “The examples included many inactive voters, who are listed in the two-year-old statewide voter database but are not among the nearly 2 million Oregonians who are eligible to vote”.

In an Albany Democrat Herald article yesterday, State Elections Director John Lindback disputed all claims by the group as "unfounded". Addressing the issues the group discussed in their press conference, Lindback added that the group of four never approached his office about the so-called problems saying, "I wish we could get them to talk to us, but they shoot first and ask questions later”.

The press conference held by the group of four last Thursday was a failed attempt to play on anti-immigrant sentiment to bash Oregon's Voter Registration process and the successes of Vote-By-Mail. With Anti-immigrant Initiative #112 having a provision which would eliminate Oregon’s current process regarding registering voters, the group was clearly hoping to generate interest as a "fix" to all the now unfounded problems they cited in their press conference. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Lindback skewered them with the facts.

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Legal foreign guest workers caught in middle of immigration stalemate

Thousands could lose jobs unless Congress revises work permit law

BY PAMELA BROGAN
Gannett News Service

December 3, 2007

It took a while for foreign workers Monica Regalado, a nursing assistant from Honduras, and Clara Hermosillo, a housekeeper from Mexico, to get their permits to work in the United States.
Both work in environments that employers say are needed to meet industry demands, and which they claim many American workers won't take.

Both also are among hundreds of thousands of legal foreign workers, including engineers, teachers, hotel employees, landscapers, nurses, and nursery and farm workers, who are caught in the crossfire of a stalled immigration debate. >>read entire article

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