Officers of the law were equally unresponsive. How others view the controversy Bowing to intimidation, the company that rented the billboard space to the California Coalition for Immigration Reform returned its fee and removed the offending message. The coalition's leader, Barbara Coe, wants to know what was racist about her communication, which didn't mention race but decried a growing problem that everyone whose head isn't firmly embedded in the sand can perceive. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates the number of illegal aliens grows by 275,000 a year. That year, illegals accounted for two-thirds of the births in Los Angeles County hospitals and half of the kids in its juvenile courts.
Casualties mount in the war to control our borders and safeguard our national identity.
Ricardo Salinas and Susan Rodriguez. But don't suggest that America has an illegal-immigration problem. That would be racist, hateful and divisive, and cause Mario Obledo to reach for his acetylene torch. Politicians make ritual pilgrimages to his Sacramento office. Republicans are also in a pandering mode when it comes to America's fastest-growing minority.