By: Joy Juedes
REDLANDS - Dee Barrow waved to drivers from a lawnchair on San Mateo Street. Some honked or called in support.
“We can’t be in D.C. but we wanted to do something,” said Barrow, who lives in Upland. She wore an American flag baseball cap, earrings and necklace, and attached a flag to her chair.
She and several others stood at San Mateo and Brookside Avenue with flags and signs Friday afternoon. They asked passers-by to sign a petition asking Rep. Jerry Lewis to support HR 1026, legislation that would crack down on illegal immigration.
“We want them to know we’re not just sitting here waiting for them to pass a bill,” Barrow said.
The group brought the petition to Lewis’s Brookside Avenue office later Friday. About 100 signatures were collected, organizer Raymond Herrera said Saturday. He said Lewis’s staff said they would give him the petition, and he planned to call Lewis at his Washington office Saturday.
“What we’re asking is for Congressman Jerry Lewis to stand with his constituents,” said Herrera, founder of We the People, California’s Crusader, a Claremont-based grassroots group that organized the demonstration.
“The congressman always welcomes hearing from his constituents on any issue,” Jim Specht, Lewis’s deputy chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail from Washington, D.C.
“Congressman Lewis is opposed to considering legislation that would grant amnesty or other legalization of illegal immigrants at this time because Congress has not addressed the need to secure the border and to develop systems that will stop illegal immigration in the future,” he wrote.
“However, he has never been a supporter of Congress passing legislation that tells Congress what it can’t do.”
The resolution currently has 57 supporters and needs more than 200 by June to be voted on, Herrera said. It would require businesses to enforce immigration law, make E-Verify mandatory, strengthen border security and offer no amnesty to illegal immigrants.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that allows an employer to see if an employee is eligible to work in the United States.
Herrera said the group is giving Lewis 30 days to support the resolution.
“If he doesn’t sign we’ll pass out fliers to his constituents in supermarkets and parks,” he said.
If Lewis does not support it, he will not receive votes in November, Herrera said.
“The American people want deportation, so there is no compromise on this,” he said.
The group will also “demand” President Obama enforce the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, he said. The law requires “legalization of undocumented aliens who had been continuously unlawfully present since 1982, legalization of certain agricultural workers, sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and increased enforcement at U.S. borders,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Demonstration organizer Robin Hvidston said the group was receiving positive responses from passers-by. Many who stopped signed the petition.
“We are thinking as many as 70 percent of his constituents want him to sign this bill,” Hvidston said.
Volunteers came and went, most holding signs that said “Hire Americans,” “Stop Illegal Immigration” and “Support American Workers.”
“We love our country and don’t want to see it go down,” said volunteer Don Schenck of Corona.
Herrera led an immigration reform demonstration at Lewis’s office in June. He said We the People held demonstrations Friday in Arizona, New Jersey and Illinois, and all members of Congress will be asked to support the legislation.
HR 1026 was introduced Jan. 21 by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican.
Specht said Lewis is co-sponsoring HR 19, which would expand the E-Verify program and make it mandatory. He supported Rep. Ken Calvert’s effort last year to attach that legislation to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. The bill did not pass.
Specht said Lewis worked with former Rep. Duncan Hunter to pass the Secure Fence Act in 2006 by accepting it as an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Lewis has supported $1.2 billion in spending in appropriations bills to build at least 700 miles of the fence, Specht wrote.
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