Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39) is nothing if not creative. After Help Save Maryland targeted him for defeat next year, Ali used their declaration to help him raise money. Following is his solicitation.
Dear Friend,
As I conduct my work in our legislature, I try to be fair and judicious to all members of our society. Recently I voted against a bill state bill known as "Federal Real-ID". This was a complex bill with many nuances pertaining to illegal immigrants and drivers licenses.
Because of my vote on this bill, and because they know I am compassionate towards immigrants, I drew the opposition of a local anti-immigrant organization known as "Help Save Maryland" (HSM). HSM has been declared a Nativist/Extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center -- a major national civil rights organization. They track and expose racists such as the KKK.
HSM declared in a recent Gazette article that they are targeting me for electoral defeat. You can read that article by clicking here. (I have included the full text of the letter below for your convenience).
Quite frankly, I think if the extremists are upset by my work, I must be doing something right! However, I still need your help to defeat mean-spirited efforts like this one to remove me from office.
You can counter-act HSM by donating now to my campaign. Please make a contribution now by clicking here. No amount is too small or too large. And I certainly need all the help I can get. So please donate now.
Delegate Saqib Ali
(301) 685-3409
www.SaqibAli.org
Update: Saqib Ali is really serious about this. Check out how he is spreading the message to his Facebook friends in the middle of the night:
Last year, Ali recorded a greater net fundraising gain than any other Montgomery Delegate. His cash balance in January ($87,423.54) was higher than the rest of the District 39 delegation combined. So why is he looking so hard for more money?
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saqib Ali Uses Help Save Maryland to Raise Money (Updated)
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Navarro's Enemies and the Company They Keep
Help Save Maryland has released its latest challenge to Nancy Navarro to answer its questionnaire. But the challenge appeared on the "American Jingoist" blog, a national right-wing site with some eye-popping content. Check out some of the company Help Save Maryland keeps.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Help Save Maryland Challenges Navarro
Help Save Maryland sent us the following email that they authorized for release on this blog.
Dear Adam:
HELP SAVE MARYLAND is a nonpartisan, grassroots, multi-ethnic citizens group opposed to the use of tax dollars on programs and services for illegal aliens in Maryland. We are preparing a voter’s guide for the upcoming Montgomery County Council District 4 special election, and look forward to learning Nancy Navarro's positions on issues related to the impact of illegal immigration on Montgomery County's District 4.
But we are starting to feel ignored!
Sigh...
We have been trying to contact Ms. Navarro by email, phone, and in-person visits at her Bel Pre Road office for over a month.
But we still don't have a response!
Alas!!
Candidates Ficker & Gluck have already responded. Do you think Ms. Nancy is so arrogant that she thinks she can win the D4 special election without letting the voters know her position on this critical issue? Or is her staff just a little behind the curve?
I have attached a copy of the questionnaire.
An informed electorate is essential to the democratic process. I am sure that as a web journalist, you'll want to follow up on this important question!
For more information about Help Save Maryland, visit our website at www.helpsavemaryland.com.
Sincerely,
C. Paul Mendez
Montgomery Chapter
Help Save Maryland
*****
Candidate Questionnaire
2009 Special Election County Council District 4
Prepared by Help Save Maryland
Help Save Maryland is a nonpartisan, grassroots, multi-ethnic citizens group opposed to the use of tax dollars on programs and services for illegal aliens in Maryland. We are preparing a voter’s guide for the upcoming Montgomery County Council District 4 special election.
Please answer YES, NO or DON’T KNOW to the first 5 questions in our survey.
1) Would you support federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement 287(g) training for the Montgomery County Police Department in order to expedite removal of illegal alien gang members, criminals and immigration law violators from our community?
2) Would you support funding of groups like CASA de Maryland, Catholic Charities, Centro Familia and Identity Inc., even if they continue to serve immigrants without legal presence in Maryland?
3) Would you support a law mandating that all county contractors use the federal E-Verify program to ensure their workers were legally eligible to work in the US?
4) Would you require the operator of the county-funded day laborer centers in Gaithersburg and Wheaton to verify a person’s eligibility to work in the US before assisting them?
5) Would you support a study to determine the number of illegal aliens residing in Montgomery County and any net cost they may impose on citizen taxpayers?
6) Do you have any additional comments on the important issue of illegal immigration and its impact on the citizens of Montgomery County?
Candidate’s Name:____________________
Date:___________________
Please return your completed survey no later than April 14. You may email it to paul.mendez@erols.com or mail it to:
Help Save Maryland
PO Box 5742
Rockville MD 20855
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Nativist/Extremist Group Targets Navarro
Help Save Maryland, named a "nativist/extremist" group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, sent out the following message to mobilize opposition to District 4 Democratic nominee Nancy Navarro.Help Save Maryland Action Alert
Will Robin Ficker, who completed Help Save Maryland's questionnaire and has claimed in debates to have marched with Martin Luther King Jr., repudiate the group?
We need your help this Saturday and Sunday May 2 & 3 in Montgomery County. HSM is fighting the election of Democratic Candidate Nancy Navarro for County Council in a District 4 special election scheduled for May 19.
Navarro has close ties to CASA of Maryland and the illegal alien community. She is also a founder of Centro Familia, another front group for illegal aliens funded by Montgomery County tax dollars. Centro Familia is now under investigation by Montgomery County for "misplacing " close to $1 million dollars.
The addition of Navarro to the County Council will guarantee untold millions more in tax dollars to illegal alien support groups like CASA of Maryland. CASA leader G.Torres has publicly endorsed Navarro. We Must Stop Nancy Navarro!
We need cars/drivers and others in the car to distribute literature in District 4.
If you can volunteer either or both days please send me your name, phone and day/times available. I will contact you with additional info. Help Save Maryland!
Brad Botwin, Director, HSM
Friday, April 17, 2009
District 4 Candidates Respond to Help Save Maryland
Four candidates have responded to the questionnaire issued by nativist/extremist group Help Save Maryland: Democrat Thomas Hardman, Republicans Robin Ficker, Lou August and Andrew Padula and Green Party member George Gluck. Here are the candidates' statements from their completed forms.
Thomas Hardman, Democrat
I’m sick of special interest groups promoting the invasion of our sovereign nation and subversion of the rule of law. I’m sick of pandering politicians that will cave at the slightest whisper from the lawyers and Unregistered Agents of Foreign Powers that work endlessly to undermine the legacy of our Founding Fathers. I welcome and will assist every decent person who waits patiently for their turn to legally and reasonably come to the USA to become American. But for lawbreakers, I give NOTHING but endless opposition and my most vituperative expressions of OUTRAGE.
Lou August, Republican
Many of our schools have large populations of children from families of illegal immigrants. My wife is a substitute teacher in MCPS and she frequently recounts the significant behavioral issues of children she works with, many from children she suspects are illegal immigrants. Almost by definition, many of these families come from turbulent distressed backgrounds, which often has a negative impact on their children’s behavior. The result of this is a damaged learning environment for all students, even those here legally whose parents’ tax dollars support the entire system – all during a time when education is more important than ever. If we address illegal immigration issues earlier, these very significant consequential impacts will be reduced or eliminated.
The later in the “consequence chain” we address illegal immigration, the greater the humanitarian impact on the immigrant and community when enforcement is finally enacted. Our first steps need to be reducing the attractiveness of Montgomery County to illegal immigrants through methods such as enforcing E-Verify, requiring proof of legal residency to get a drivers license, and a timeline for ratcheted-down customs enforcement by county police.
Robin Ficker, Republican
We need to enforce the single-family zoning laws to protect homeowners.
Andrew Padula, Republican
There are hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty in this hemisphere. Unfortunately we cannot offer refuge to all or even a significant part of this population without risking the very fabric of our nation. We are robbing developing nations of the core of their workforce this leaving in their void nations populated by women, children, the elderly, and infirm, who are ill equipped to fend for themselves.
There is a direct inverse proportional relationship to the rise in Mexican and Central American cartel violence and our acceptance of an ever increasing population of illegal immigrants. In itself, our misplaced intentions of kindness are in fact supporting the tragedy of human rights abuses on a mass scale. When the concept of slavery is re-introduced into our free nation through indentured servitude and sex slavery, there is a big problem afoot.
The acceptance of “illegal immigrants” also sets up a two-tiered societal structure that opposes the even handed rule of law. More importantly however is the fact that the utilization of this underground workforce inhibits the natural flow of economic development by unduly influencing the marketplace for both wages and the prices of goods. I believe that it would be a far better course of action to encourage these individuals to return to their home countries and to rebuild them from within rather than to risk a societal upheaval in the United States that may very well preclude us from ever being able to genuinely assist any more developing nations in the future.
George Gluck, Green Party
I believe that we do not so much have an “illegal immigrant” problem as much as we do an “illegal employer” problem. Enforcing existing laws which hold employers culpable for hiring illegal immigrants will result in a much lower demand for illegal workers. From a recent NPR broadcast about the present dearth of day labor openings: The other day I told my wife on the phone, “If I can just get a plane ticket – however I can find the money for that – I’m coming back to El Salvador.”
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Help Save Maryland Attacks Ben Kramer
At a recent District 4 debate, a volunteer from Help Save Maryland distributed the following anti-Kramer flyer. The flyer is illegal because it contains no authority line. But perhaps even worse, it plagiarizes MPW, blatantly stealing from our posts on Kramer’s record. Come on now guys, shouldn’t we get credit for our work with our nativist/extremist readership?
Monday, April 13, 2009
Help Save Maryland Issues District 4 Questionnaire
Help Save Maryland, which was recently named as a "nativist/extremist group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has issued a questionnaire to the District 4 candidates. Let's see if any of them fills it out. We reprint it below.
Candidate Questionnaire
2009 Special Election County Council District 4
Prepared by Help Save Maryland
Help Save Maryland is a nonpartisan, grassroots, multi-ethnic citizens group opposed to the use of tax dollars on programs and services for illegal aliens in Maryland. We are preparing a voter’s guide for the upcoming Montgomery County Council District 4 special election.
Please answer YES, NO or DON’T KNOW to the first 5 questions in our survey.
1) Would you support federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement 287(g) training for the Montgomery County Police Department in order to expedite removal of illegal alien gang members, criminals and immigration law violators from our community?
2) Would you support funding of groups like CASA de Maryland, Catholic Charities, Centro Familia and Identity Inc., even if they continue to serve immigrants without legal presence in Maryland?
3) Would you support a law mandating that all county contractors use the federal E-Verify program to ensure their workers were legally eligible to work in the US?
4) Would you require the operator of the county-funded day laborer centers in Gaithersburg and Wheaton to verify a person’s eligibility to work in the US before assisting them?
5) Would you support a study to determine the number of illegal aliens residing in Montgomery County and any net cost they may impose on citizen taxpayers?
6) Do you have any additional comments on the important issue of illegal immigration and its impact on the citizens of Montgomery County?
Candidate’s Name:____________________________________________ Date:___________________
Please return your completed survey no later than April 14. You may email it to paul.mendez@erols.com or mail it to:
Help Save Maryland
PO Box 5742
Rockville MD 20855
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Help Save Maryland Named Nativist/Extremist Group
The Southern Poverty Law Center has named Help Save Maryland a “nativist/extremist group” – its only such designation in the Free State.
SPLC, a civil rights organization devoted to combating white supremacist and hate groups, defines nativist/extremist groups this way:Organizations identified by the Intelligence Report as nativist extremist are groups that go after people, not policy. Rather than limiting themselves to advocating within the mainstream political process for tighter border security, stricter immigration controls or tougher enforcement of immigration laws already on the books, these fringe outfits target and confront immigrants as individuals.
In the past, Help Save Maryland has focused its efforts on cutting off public funding for day laborer centers and lobbying state lawmakers against drivers licenses and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. But Help Save Maryland Frederick County coordinator Steve Berryman has admitted that his group worked “hand-in-hand” with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization that SPLC claims has worked closely with hate groups.
Some conduct armed “citizen border patrols.” Others confront Latino immigrants congregated at day labor centers or informal roadside pick-up sites. Some conduct surveillance of apartment houses and private homes. Almost all of them disseminate vicious, immigrant-bashing propaganda.
Help Save Maryland is offering thanks to guest speakers at its recent rally night in Annapolis. Those speakers include:
Senator Janet Greenip (R-33)
Senator Andy Harris (R-7)
Delegate Gail Bates (R-9A)
Delegate Ron George (R-30)
Delegate Rick Impallaria (R-7)
Delegate Patrick McDonough (R-7)
Delegate Warren Miller (R-9A)
Also appearing was Jack Martin from FAIR.
Now that Help Save Maryland has been branded a “nativist/extremist group,” will the above politicians continue to associate with it? Or will they abandon it as election time approaches?
