>Billboard crusade stirs immigration controversy
>By Greg Cresci
>
>NEW YORK, Aug. 25 (Reuters) - New York City has always been a place where
>people come to make a mark. And so it is for Craig Nelsen, a 39-year-old
>Nebraska native whose goal is to stem the flow of immigrants into the
United
>States. After moving last year to the city whose Statue of Liberty beckons
>the world's downtrodden, he set up a nonprofit group, ProjectUSA, and began
a
>controversial advertising campaign in May that associated traffic
congestion
>with immigration. ``Tired of sitting in traffic?'' his bright red
billboards
>asked motorists, ``Every day, another 6,000 immigrants arrive.''
>
>The signs, one in Brooklyn and two in Queens, were recently removed but
>others will come, Nelsen said. ProjectUSA for now consists of a Web site to
>raise money for more signs. ``The unprecedented level of foreigners
arriving
>in the U.S. every day is eroding our quality of life and threatening the
>foundation of our country,'' the Web site says.
>
>Nelsen, called a hate monger by critics, says the contract on one sign
>expired as scheduled but the other two were cut short after local political
>leaders unhappy about the message applied ``backdoor pressure'' on the
>companies that sold the advertising space. He said he has met with lawyers
to
>discuss suing the politicians who he says have infringed on his free speech
>rights.
>
>Nelsen said ProjectUSA's purpose is to bring immigration down to
>``traditional levels'' of around 300,000 people a year and to get people
>talking about the issue in general. ``I feel strongly that we don't need
any
>more people in this country,'' he said, insisting that his crusade is based
>not on enmity but on statistical concerns related to overpopulation.
>
>'WE CAN'T PRETEND THERE'S NO PROBLEM'
>``We can't pretend like there's no problem here,'' he told Reuters. ``We're
>doing something that is incredibly horrible to our country. It's a
>disaster.'' He said his effort was meant to keep the United States from
>becoming like China, where he taught English from 1995 to 1997, or India.
>China has more than a billion people and India is fast approaching the
>1-billion mark.
>
>``Immigration is an extremely important subject and everyone's afraid to
talk
>about it. What we're advocating is to retake control of the borders,'' he
>said. He said policymakers should use whatever means are necessary, perhaps
>even troops. Nelsen said Washington politicians ignore the issue for fear
of
>being labeled racists but he is prepared to force the debate, come what
may.
>``I'm willing to take the blows, and people are responding extremely well
to
>that.''
>
>Of course, not everyone has responded well to Nelsen's message. On Aug. 11,
a
>group of New York politicians including city council speaker Peter Vallone
>held a news conference at City Hall to denounce the billboards. The borough
>presidents of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan have also publicly criticised
>Nelsen and he said others have called him everything from a Nazi to a
racist.
>
>Pat Young, chairman of the board at the New York Immigration Coalition,
said
>Nelsen's billboards were bigoted because they attacked 25 percent of the
>state's inhabitants. ``Maybe these messages play well in Idaho but I don't
>think they play well in New York,'' he said.
>
>ANTI-IMMIGRATION CRUSADER CALLED 'A CRANK'
>Young said immigrants contribute to U.S. prosperity and enrich New York
>culturally. ``I think that ProjectUSA is out of touch with the American
>tradition of welcoming immigrants,'' he said, calling Nelsen ``essentially
a
>crank'' who runs an extremist group. Current levels of immigration to the
>United States, which the Immigration and Naturalisation Service says
reached
>about 935,000 last year, are appropriate, Young said. Conceding that only
>about 660,000 of those came legally, according to the INS, he said the U.S.
>economy and society can absorb the flow. ``The U.S. economy is at its most
>prosperous in history with current levels of immigration,'' Young said.
>``They (immigrants) help to provide services that wouldn't be done
>otherwise.''
>
>But Dan Stein, executive director of Washington-based FAIR, a group working
>to reduce immigration, said Nelsen's message is part of a meaningful
>political dialogue. ``This is not hate speech, this is political speech
about
>policy issues,'' Stein said, adding that his group will work closely with
>ProjectUSA in any effort to sue politicians who may have pressed billboard
>companies to remove Nelsen's signs. ``These billboards do not target the
>character of immigrants, they seek to raise a discussion of immigration
>policy. They are constructive, innocuous, thoughtful statements about
>policies that Americans need to be aware of,'' he said.
>
>Stein said opponents of immigration reform are living in a dream world
where
>only real estate developers could be happy. ``How can you defend an
>immigration level that's going to add 150 million more people to our
>population in 50 years?''
>
>Stanford University professor David Kennedy, who has written about the
>effects of immigration on U.S. society, says Stein's figures are
>``ridiculous.'' Global population growth is slowing, Kennedy said, and
states
>with the heaviest flow of immigrants such as California, New York, Texas
and
>New Jersey are helped by the influx. ``We have to get out of the frame of
>mind that immigrants are some kind of net drain on the wealth of society,''
>he said.''One of the hallmarks of American culture over two centuries of
>national existence has been its resilience and its capacity to be
transformed
>by ... successive waves of immigration.''
>
>22:01 08-24-99