Meet Claudia Spencer

Source: NC Times (H/T Immigration Watchdog)

Claudia Spencer speaks English with a heavy Spanish accent. The daughter of a humble construction worker, she grew up in a poor family in her native central Mexico.

Given her background, she might fit the mold of a conventional pro-immigrant rights activist, similar to those who have demonstrated recently against work and rental restrictions on illegal immigrants.

But instead, she frequently stands by her husband, Michael Spencer, on the opposite side of immigration rallies ---- the side that waves American flags and protests against hiring illegal immigrants at day-labor sites in North County.

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner. She gets it. Come legally, and become an American in every sense of the word.

Claudia Spencer's stance on illegal immigration has made her a controversial figure among some Latinos, some of whom have called her a racist, she said.

Of course they do. What's the easiest way to dismiss your opponent when you have no actual argument to support your stance? Call them names -- preferably "racist."

Claudia Spencer, a 37-year-old Vista resident, said last week that she would get angry at the TV images of people demanding amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Spencer, whose maiden name is Garcia, said her father's struggle in her small Mexican town to raise four children, all now university graduates, taught her that poverty in Mexico is no excuse to cross the border illegally into the United States.

"We were very, very poor," she said. "I had an opportunity to live among these people that you see in the streets of Vista, in the streets of Escondido and in the streets of all the United States ---- people that have a lot of ignorance that don't want to make any progress in their lives, and the only thing they want is to get everything easy."

While growing up in Morelia, Michoacan, she often heard people who returned from the United States saying that "gringos were stupid" and gullible, she said."

That's what makes me very angry, when people here (say) that these people come illegally to this country because they want to survive; they want to feed their families," she said. "You know what? The person that wants to do it can do it in Mexico without violating the rights of anybody in other countries."

Yep. She just plain gets it.

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Illegal Immigration * Claudia Spencer * Assimilation * American * Racist