Osama bin Laden steals headlines from immigration protesters - yet again
Sidetracks immigration reform movement
By ONANTZIN News
2011-05-03
Los Angeles, CA -- Less than 24 hours after thousands of immigrant rights advocates staged rallies in cities across the US during the annual May Day protests, news reports flooded the airwaves with the news that 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden had been killed by Navy SEALs forces in Pakistan.
The news was met with jubilation by all segments of American society, with the exception of the very frustrated community of immigrants and immigrant rights advocates, whose year long efforts to secure improved rights for illegal immigrants - financed with back-breaking labor, tears, and sweat - were once again overshadowed by news of their nemesis, the infamous Saudi figure – known by many as Osama bin Laden, and by others (such as immigrant rights activists), as the fictitious Osama bin Laden.
The organizers of the May Day March, who had been optimistic that this time their voices would be heard, were immediately disappointed when first they learned that president Barack Obama had slept through the Sunday morning protests, and then, less than 24 hours after the protests, the news of Osama bin Laden's death stole their headlines, marking the 10th time in ten years that their efforts to gain rights for immigrants were set back by news of the Saudi man.
Beginning in 2001, when it seemed like president Bush was on the verge of bringing about immigration reform, Osama bin Laden orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 and along with them, the complete annihilation of the words "immigration reform" from the American lexicon, which were replaced with "war on terror" – some people even claim that after 9/11, several major dictionaries stopped defining the words immigration and reform altogether. According to immigration rights advocates, every year after 9/11, whenever immigration reform seemed to be gaining some momentum, news of Osama bin Laden would surface and send the entire nation into a frenzy of fear, panic, and emotional stress – distracting people more than anything and making them forget about immigration reform.
Diego Jalante, active member of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC) said he was incredibly frustrated, and claimed that bin Laden was a fictitious character invented by the US to restrict individual rights and to use as a distraction every time the focus was shifting towards immigration reform. Diego claimed to have sources at high ranking government positions to back-up his accusations against the US, and pointed to the immediate burial of bin Laden at sea - long before journalists had a chance to take pictures of his body - as proof that the US had conjured bin Laden out of thin air and had no physical evidence of his existence. He also claimed his source revealed that no immediate photo of bin Laden's body had been released because the CIA's top Photoshop expert had been unknowingly laid off due to budget cuts and the agency was scrambling to find someone else to Photoshop a picture of a dead body and make it look like bin Laden.
A member of the South Central Neighborhood Council (SCNC), which asked to remain anonymous, said he could corroborate Diego's claims with news stories he had archived over the past several years. The stories he said, focused on the war on terror and Osama bin Laden, and were always carefully worded so as to be as vague as possible, but serious enough to grab headlines, change the conversation, and diminish any gains made by immigrant advocates, especially after the May 1st rallies. He said that by releasing the news of bin Laden's death on May 2nd, the US had gone for the jugular on immigration reform - the carefully planned announcement of bin Laden's death will certainly guarantee that every headline on May 2nd will be about bin Laden's death anniversary and nothing else, he said.
When asked about the prospects for the future of immigration reform, Both the SCIC and SCNC were in agreement that the May Day March would need to be switched to a different day, given that the new soon-to-be holiday on May 2nd will from now on commemorate the death of the infamous Saudi man, who - real or fictitious - did more to sidetrack immigration reform than anyone else ever has.